The Olympics is one of the all-time most recorded events. There are cameras everywhere, recording everything, all the time. It’s easiest to see this with the figure skating. If you can tear your eyes away from the skaters for just a minute, you’ll see that they are constantly passing banks of multiple cameras. These cameras represent different networks, different formats, and different angles to ensure that every mistimed landing or perfect quad is available in close up and every dramatic sweep and dance move is available at the best perspective for us all to appreciate the beauty of it. Working a camera at the Olympics is, in its own way, a gold medal event. And like the athletes, the cameras at the Olympics make the footage look easy and effortless.

It isn’t quite that easy, and most live event recordings don’t have individual cameras at every corner. Really, most events don’t require that level of detail. If you have a single speaker at the front of an audience, often a single camera will do the job you need at a price the budget will like. If capturing the audience participation is important to your end product, then your live event might require two cameras. If your speaker is extremely important, perhaps at the level of a visiting dignitary or celebrity, it’s possible you might even want a third (or fourth) camera. One dedicated to your VIP, one person zooming in and out between the speaker and the audience to capture the interaction, and one who will focus on the audience, getting footage of the reactions. If your end video will be income generating, it might be worth the initial expense of that third camera to get the variety in footage.

Multiple cameras will produce a lot of screen time that needs to be edited. At the Olympics someone is spending all their time editing the best highlight shots, the most interesting crowd interactions, the most intimate reactions of the other competitors, and putting it all together in a way that tells the story captured by all those cameras in a single presentation that winds up on our televisions. The most complete stories are caught by multiple cameras and then woven together.

So, while the Olympics is an amazing example of what the outer limits of video production capability is able to achieve, most companies, quite rightfully, don’t really want to invest that much money in their event video. Either way, give Capture Video a call and we’ll be happy to create your own Gold Medal video production.