Soccer!

This past weekend I worked for Telemundo and had a great time. I love bi-lingual crews, it gives me a chance to brush up on the 30 or so spanish words that I know.

We were broadcasting the Olympic soccer trials. Apparently, soccer is huge outside of the USA. For me, It was like working out of the country. The Director was bi-lingual and would direct in English, except when he got frustrated, then he would divert to his native language where he could express himself more fully. I enjoyed trying to translate and got excited when I recognized something. I felt like a dog listening for a specific command.  It sounded something like “blah blah blah camera 3 blah blah”  Luckily,  I was camera three, and since I can count to 6 in Spanish, I could recognize my number.

The other twist was that my camera was being fed to two broadcast trucks. I found I needed to keep an eye on my program monitor, because while I could not hear the other director, he would take me quite a bit. This was fairly fun. Even if I screwed up, I never got yelled at, or if I did get yelled at, I was unaware.

We went on headsets at 5 and went straight thru till 10:30 shooting two games and a postgame show. Towards the end, I was in autopilot. During the entire second game, some guy in the first row was screaming at me the whole time to put him on the jumbotron. I explained I had nothing to due with that feed but he did not understand. I hope he has a sore throat today.

Soccer is interesting to me. A player can get bumped and fall down and he will writhe in horrible pain, until he realizes that the officials are not going to call a penalty. Then he jumps up and runs back to the game. The also have magic spray, that when applied to the hurt area, heals said area instantly. To judge how badly a player is hurt, watch their hands. A very serious injury will be indicated by one very fast jazz hand. Mortal injury requires two fast jazz hands. Also in Soccer they try and kick a ball into a net, and it is much harder than it sounds.