I have been visiting family in England over the Christmas vacation and, while I was here, I got a chance to see the coverage from the 2004 Stars on Ice Champions Gala in Obertsdorf on British Eurosport.
Whenever one of the skaters would go into a spin, they would switch to a zoom-in of the skating foot on the ice. I would assume this would be to show the viewers watching at home how well that particular spin was centred on the ice; a nice touch, but you could see whatever position the skater had attained in the spin.
I've noticed this is somewhat indicative of European FS coverage. In the rather extensive collection of figure skating videos that are downloaded on my laptop, I have a number of videos taken from Finnish TV coverage of the 2004 Euros and Worlds and the cameras in those videos do the very same thing (they also tend to have the camera at very weird angles in general with the spins, such as zooming in close and positioned just above Stéphane Lambiel in his "butt in the air" spin)
Maybe some of the Europeans in the forum can offer me some input into this...is this a common thing with European TV coverage? Is it just a difference preference/cultural context when it comes to presenting a skater's spins? I'm just curious...
Whenever one of the skaters would go into a spin, they would switch to a zoom-in of the skating foot on the ice. I would assume this would be to show the viewers watching at home how well that particular spin was centred on the ice; a nice touch, but you could see whatever position the skater had attained in the spin.
I've noticed this is somewhat indicative of European FS coverage. In the rather extensive collection of figure skating videos that are downloaded on my laptop, I have a number of videos taken from Finnish TV coverage of the 2004 Euros and Worlds and the cameras in those videos do the very same thing (they also tend to have the camera at very weird angles in general with the spins, such as zooming in close and positioned just above Stéphane Lambiel in his "butt in the air" spin)
Maybe some of the Europeans in the forum can offer me some input into this...is this a common thing with European TV coverage? Is it just a difference preference/cultural context when it comes to presenting a skater's spins? I'm just curious...
I would find that really annoying in competition as you would miss seeing the skater's line and position in the spins.
