Fans moaning about coverage may not know it’s often shot by a lone cameraperson precariously balanced on scaffolding
By Paul Buller for When Saturday Comes
The life of a lower-league cameraperson is not an easy one and the last year of relying on online streams and highlights of the games has brought a lot of criticism from fans about the quality of the footage. As someone who has filmed at many grounds, I’d like to lift the lid a little on what it takes to shoot that footage in the first place.
We’ve been spoiled by mega-productions for the
Premier League, where games are covered by at least 30 cameras at every conceivable angle and production costs run into hundreds of thousands of pounds. Down in the lower leagues it’s somewhat different. You turn up on your own at Dagenham & Redbridge with a camera, tripod and microphone, and the chairman pulls a ladder out of the undergrowth and tells you to make your own way up the back of a stand on to a knackered-looking scaffold tower. Or not being able to film any play in the corners of the pitch at Gillingham because the gantry is so tiny.