Paintball is impossible to film live.

This shot looks great on a poster. It sucks during live coverage.

Anyone can make an exciting paintball reel in premiere or final cut.

It's MUCH harder to do it live. 

We've been debating this for so many years. Paintball has certainly been on TV before, but it's always been... mid.

If you ask a paintballer why it's so hard to film they'll normally tell you "because there's no focal point". And they're right - paintball has no single point of focus. Action can be happening everywhere, all the time. Every player "has the ball" all the time. That's part of what makes it so much fun - you're not being left out if nobody passes to you. But mate it sucks to film in a way that is easy to follow.

How do you know where to point the cameras? And even if they're pointing the right way, things happen so fast that a lot of the time you end up missing things because you're on the wrong camera at that moment. So how do you decide which camera for any given moment?

And that's before we get to these pesky things called bunkers that get in the way. In traditional sports all the cameras are on one side of the field. Team A will always be moving to the right while team B will always be moving to the left. This rule is never broken. At half time they switch, but that's then locked in for the half. In paintball there's a constant temptation to move to a camera on the other side so we can see something hidden by a bunker. This is confusing as hell to the viewers.

But wait, there's more. "For f#$% sakes", I hear you say, "why don't we just give up already". And I hear you. But I'm not done.

Maybe the last and most important thing is that in paintball, action happens at a distance. In football when a player tackles someone you get them easily both on screen. In paintball most of the time a player in a fight with another player will be 20 meters away. How do you show that?

Here's the thing: It CAN be done. How do I know? Because I've worked in TV. I did shot composition. I studied film theory. I've also coached and captained teams in paintball. So hear me out.

My top 6 tips for filming paintball live are:

1. Treat it like esports, not traditional sports. Forget the static camera on the sideline.
   
   
2. There should always be at least one player from each team on screen. Forget side on shooting shots of one player. They are boring and they tell the audience practically nothing. There is no drama. Instead, get shots which get both ends of a gunfight.  The best way to do this is with an over the shoulder shot, but if it must be side on at least pull out a bit to show both players.
   
   
3. Move the cameras further away and zoom in. This makes it easier to frame the shooter and the target in shot and makes them look closer to each other. Hormesis 1v1 did this.
   
   
4. Rotate your 180 (aka line of action) by 90 degrees, and make one endzone your main camera location with a few cameras spread along the line and corners.
   
   This way almost by default you're getting the best angles. Better dorito and snake action, a sense of attacking vs defending teams, and this makes it much easier to respect the 180 while doing so. It also will make everything much easier to follow. You wont need cameras at the other end other than for instant replay angles if you have budget. Teams switch ends each point, so you get to show both.
   
   (note: your sky camera will be from the same end, not side on. It's actually easier to frame the field this way!)
   
   This is super related to:
   
   
5. Don't bother trying to show everything! Esports do this. Ignore most of what's going on. Choose one team (or player!) to mainly focus on for each point. Tell their story. Show the tactical situation sometimes from a high camera, but don't try to highlight everyone all the time.
   
   
6. Use a desynchronized feed if you have the budget. By that I mean: cuts are live, footage is a couple seconds delayed. That was the editor can see a hit or some action, cut to it, and then the viewer sees and hears the moment happen. It requires buffering all cameras by a couple seconds and needs to be something that can be toggled.

PS, never use picture in picture unless it's to keep the live feed up during a replay. It just causes confusion as people don't know where to look. Choose a camera and stick with it.

All of these can be done without extra personnel or admin requirements.

Once that's all sorted, then I think you can move on to the "nice to have". For example:

• clear masks, mandated. No tint, no mirror, and mandated perfectly clear lowers. So what if they're hard plastic, everyone is in the same boat.
• Grey bunkers so the players stand out
• Simple jersey designs with block colours that work from a distance

I would love to see some of these principles put into action. Let me know if you do.

And once you get all that, it's time to try some better formats