Raceday Summary - How did BAA do this year?

[janicesg]

Hello hello,

We here at BAA HQ are trying to wrap things up for the year and we're wondering what you all thought of how we did, and we want feedback for next year. Let's hear it.

Specifically I'm curious about:
- The Raceday Preview sent to members
- The Auction
- Coverage for people who didn't make it to carnival
- The Raceday Guide that was handed out at the Alumni tent
- The BAA Reception after races on Friday
- Anything else you want to talk about

thanks!
Janice

[mldarm]

The raceday preview was great, once again. Better prognostication than compubookie.
The auction participation seemed to be much lower. Perhaps due to limited hype beforehand. I wasn't even sure if it was going to happen until a couple weeks out. It's out of BAA's control, but if Sweepsakes did heats earlier, it would have helped as well.
The jumbotrons (along with the great cmuTV coverage) are probably the best addition to races. We need to keep helping fund them.

[Carl Nott]

I think the BAA should make a greater effort to advertise things like the members preview and the auction in the weeks before raceday. Personally I did not know/realize/whatever that I needed to re-up my membership before receiving the preview.

I might suggest that the auction gives folks the option of choosing heats as opposed to giving them specific heats. So the highest bidder gets first choice, etc.. That would be a way to avoid the 'waiting for heat selection' thing, but it changes the auction enough ('gah, the only heat left is ato b vs. zbt d?!?!' <- deliberately dumb example) that it should be pondered thoroughly.

The on-website leaderboard didn't link the comments to the team commented, just the position on the board. I was somewhat concerned that Spirit had missed a pushbar, for example, but that comment was for a Fringe team that had been pushed down on the leader board.

I might also suggest adding a 'BAA member: 2011' or something tag to forum/website members. Both to show if we're contributing and reminding us if we're not.

[blue]

I'm still doing the 'broke college kid' part of buggy, but from talking to my dad (who I convinced/convinced himself to watch the streaming coverage on Friday at work...hehehe mission accomplished) and looking around I have a few comments anyways. The first 2 are of 'meh' importance, but the last 2 I are more significant to me.

I might also suggest adding a 'BAA member: 2011' or something tag to forum/website members. Both to show if we're contributing and reminding us if we're not.

I really like this idea.

Whatever yall/sweepstakes can work out to raise/maintain hype for the auction, I support it--I love having jumbotrons to watch from. I can see all the Chute excitement without having to time a walk down there and back to our truck between when I'm actually needed.

The only thing I miss from last year's coverage is that it included drops in the broadcast. I understand covering a slower team that is still finishing the course instead of drops, but I think that if drops are what's happening, they should be shown. It's not just a throwaway extra chunk of the race, but a significantly important check of the buggy's safety (or at least it's supposed to be). It's taken seriously enough that failing drops essentially negates whatever awesome time a team might have gotten, so people serious enough to watch the races online when they can't come should be able to see drops as well. Also, when a team gets DQ'd for failing drops and the leaderboard gets jumbled around to reflect it, it can get confusing for people who didn't actually get to see drops happen.

I know I've been told there are sound and legitimate reasons that we/cmutv can't record all of the cameras at once, but I still want to ask: If at all maybe pretend a little bit possible, could we record all of the cameras? By virtue of having 2 or 3 buggies in a heat, it's all too easy to miss an important or exciting shot. Even if we could only pick one cameras, recording what happens in the Chute would be awesome.

Sorry for yet another extra-long post, awesome job covering Raceday, and thanks!

[tbach0729]

With the production truck/tech that cmuTV rents out to cover this event, I have no idea why its not possible to B-roll the other cameras. It would be awesome to split screen or show all 3 chute turns instead of a fairly boring hill 4.

Alternatively, include the B-roll of the full course for all 3 buggies on the DVD, and keep the main broadcast as is for now, if thats the decision.

I also second the drops coverage. I didn't know SigEp A or Pioneers A failed drops until checking the leaderboard on BAA much later. It could, at the bare minimum, be announced.

On the topic of announcers, maybe some more rule explanations for the laymen watching? I had someone ask me "isn't that a 5 second violation?" for a few very obvious ones (AEPi and SigEp womens) and it would have made sense for those in the booth to comment on it, I think.

Another idea that was brought up to me - with the rosters submitted in advance anyway, why not grab headshots and basic stats of every team (the driver and 5 pushers / team thats on the course) and do some fun stuff with that like real sports broadcasts do. Might up the 'cool' factor and get some kids involved in buggy that are watching, seeing how seriously its taken and the 'glory' factor. Also would make it fun for the people that are on the course to get a little recognition. But most importantly it would give cmuTV something to do instead of the 'kiss cam' crap in between heats.

[lemuroid]

On the topic of announcers, maybe some more rule explanations for the laymen watching? I had someone ask me "isn't that a 5 second violation?" for a few very obvious ones (AEPi and SigEp womens) and it would have made sense for those in the booth to comment on it, I think.

I am a one of the broadcasters for CMUTV/wrct. My job is easy. Show up to 1 or 2 production meetings and then show up on raceday and blabber on air. They do all the hard work.

I do the broadcast from the perspective of an announcer, not an official. It was clear that several 5- second infractions may have occurred. However, it is/was not our place to point them out or discuss them as the officials had not made any sign concerning the infraction and I was not aware if anyone had protested. We might have hinted a bit by mentioning that they were late getting to the line, or that we had a pusher missing a buggy at the start, but really tried not to cross the line between the 2 jobs. Thus, the constant stream of "unofficial results" that was injected when discussing the leader board.

Once the sweepstakes officials made it clear that they felt an infraction had occurred, we talked about it. (ex. the false start that saved the SDC women "A" team's bacon, or the re-rolls that were granted). I was not aware of the rulings about the 5 second infractions or even the failed drop test of Sig Ep until I read the official preliminary results on this site. This approach may miss a bit of the story but it better than having the announcers enforce the rules. How often do you hear NFL announcers call "holding" before the officials do. Not often.

RE: rules explanations, We typically do not try for too much buggy 101 as we figure the people watching are not casual fans and have someone with knowledge nearby. Again, that is the same approach Monday night football takes. We did cover a bunch of buggy basics by default ( 5 pushers, 1 driver, rules related to rain outs, hand on pushbar, pusher interference ...).

re: rosters and head shots. The cmu.tv folks have done driver head shots for each heat in the past (2010 for example). I do not believe it happened this year. I am not sure why it did not. might have come down to a failed piece of equipment or a lack of time. I know that they have limited resources and that they get the rosters 3.5 days before the race. To collect and organize headshots from 22+ drivers during the week before buggy is no small task. In the meantime, there is a huge amount of work to get done to pull off the broadcast. I know it was their intent to have them but it is an easy choice when allocating resources between head shots vs. getting the chute camera working ( example, not a fact this year).

From my perspective, they did a better job of integrating the packages they had into the broadcast this year. They did not have sufficient packages to fill all the gaps, especially the long unplanned delay due to the SN crash.

I believe they would love to run more pre-planned packages between heats in the future. If anyone would like to help them make this happen, it would be great.

B roll: I suspect the b roll may be possible as the technology the cmu tv crew uses gets better each year. (this year, we were able to get replays much more quickly for example). However, the cameras focus on the lead buggy, and in many cases, like action in the chute, there is not much of a b roll to consider. The chute camera tracks the lead buggy from the upper transition flag until it goes out of sight on hill 3. This often only catches a small shot of the slower buggies near the transition flag and rarely captures the slower buggies in the chute. When the feed changes from the chute camera to the hill 3 camera, the chute camera has a long focus/zoom and is pointed ~90 deg from where the action may be occurring. Though they swing back to get any left over action, resetting the shot takes a few seconds (typically long after the action is finished).

[tbach0729]

Thanks for the explanation.

As far as the B-roll, if it was a significant desire of the community and cmuTV to do that, I think they could shuffle some cameras to make it happen. Obviously I don't know for sure, but it seems to me like the chute camera doesnt have to track past the chute itself, and a Hill 3 camera could pick up the buggy on its rollout. Regardless of full coverage of all 3 buggies, I think that a lot of people would want to see all 3 chute turns if possible.

And I agree that setting up team stat inserts with headshots and rosters is a lot of work. I think that it could be some good coop between the orgs and broadcasters though - if orgs submit the headshots with their rosters, and cmuTV can pull org stats from BAA without a problem given the history setup here. Maybe there's a way sweepstakes/BAA/cmuTV can work together to get them some of that information earlier so it isn't such a time crunch.

What you say about the rules makes sense, mostly the part about not wanting to step on officials toes. I only asked because I do think there are a lot of casual people watching that might want to learn more about buggy through the broadcast, and it seems like sometimes there are some gaps to fill in the broadcast. Maybe between mens and womens heats there could be a 3-minute 'Buggy 101' or something, it could cover rules and history for the average fan.

Maybe next year cmuTV could have (and maybe they did this year and I didn't notice) one or two cameras that aren't on stands roaming to get crowd shots, drops, and do some interviews between heats, if they really want to expand their broadcast.

All these suggestions aside, I do think cmuTV does a really great job for a broadcast, especially given that very few of them touch equipment/broadcast tech like this before raceday to my knowledge.

[Carleton]

To collect and organize headshots from 22+ drivers during the week before buggy is no small task.

Perhaps this is something the teams can chose to provide.

[blue]

I haven't finished reading everything past what I'm about to quote, but I wanted to reply to one point really quickly: (it's not the greatest idea, but Im antsy and should get back to work soon).

The cmu.tv folks have done driver head shots for each heat in the past (2010 for example). I do not believe it happened this year.

At one of the driver meetings at the beginning of the semester, they did in fact take head shots of all of us. There were a few people who ended up going to the make-up meeting the next night, and a few of us who emailed a pic we felt was less embarrassing than whatever we were [read: I was] wearing that day, but that was still a while ago. Organizing the driver pics to correlate with the heats each person was driving might have been difficult, but I'm fairly certain sweepstakes tried to supply the head shots early enough to be useful.

now to go finish reading and see if I just embarrassed myself...

[rlbrowne]

I haven't finished reading everything past what I'm about to quote, but I wanted to reply to one point really quickly: (it's not the greatest idea, but Im antsy and should get back to work soon).

The cmu.tv folks have done driver head shots for each heat in the past (2010 for example). I do not believe it happened this year.

At one of the driver meetings at the beginning of the semester, they did in fact take head shots of all of us. There were a few people who ended up going to the make-up meeting the next night, and a few of us who emailed a pic we felt was less embarrassing than whatever we were [read: I was] wearing that day, but that was still a while ago. Organizing the driver pics to correlate with the heats each person was driving might have been difficult, but I'm fairly certain sweepstakes tried to supply the head shots early enough to be useful.

now to go finish reading and see if I just embarrassed myself...

Indeed, the sweepstakes officials collected headshots early this semester at the driver meeting (in late January, I believe). It seemed to me that for the first race abordick was looking at the rosters up on BAA and having to click on each individual name to see who was driving/pushing, which is a silly thing to have to do. I would be happy to put together driver headshots (which did happen this year) and full push team rosters organized by team for my org, and I'm hopeful that there is at least one person who would be willing to do so in each org.

I just want to add that I am really glad cmuTV covers races for us. I do wish we could get shots of trailing buggies and of the chute especially, since most of the action happens there. Also, if something that may be grounds for a reroll is not filmed, a team may not have a chance to roll as well as they could. It would also be nice if the wrct student would talk less and let the alumns talk more, but I suspect that won't happen...