Paintball is impossible to film live.

Or is it?

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

It's MUCH harder to do it live. But you can if you:

1. Treat it like esports, not traditional sports. Forget the static camera on the sideline.
   
   
2. Forget side on shooting shots. They are boring. Instead, get over the shoulder shots which get both ends of a gunfight.
   
   
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 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!)
   
   
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, you can move on to the "nice to have" option stuff:

• 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