I’m happy about this. I went out to watch my team’s opening day fixture, I’ve made some preliminary plans to make my first trip to North London on a match day.

I’ve an issue with being a dedicated sports fan: I despise idol-worship. Being an Arsenal fan, I feel the disappointment and the happiness of a win as much as your average armchair fan. However, the thought of getting a player’s name emblazoned on my replica shirt (which I got for free with my last broadband package, go figure!) sits very uneasy with me. Not least because next season they could be gone to some other club.

Things changed in April 2010.

As for the previous four full seasons, I’d been at nearly every Belfast Giants game since mid-September. Originally as a duty – I was helping out a friend who ran the video team – and latterly while working but more and more enjoying the game, and the atmosphere. The Giants were all set for the quarter final game; possibly their last of the season. A home-and-away double header against the Newcastle Vipers, a team now extinct after they folded this summer. Belfast emerged victorious, whitewashing the Newcastle team 10-3 over the two-legged fixture. A swift advance then, to the Easter weekend finals.

Penalties decided the Giants v Nottingham Panthers semi-final after 65 minutes (60 regular + 5 minutes of sudden death) – a gritty affair with one of the Panthers players sent packing a few minutes early.

Before the final I experienced something I’d never really been through before: My team, in front of me, in a position to achieve glory or insignificance.

I was toting a HD video camera; not an unusual task at the time, but this was a little different. This was to capture the fans, not the game. The game passed by with a normal level of interest, a cheer when Brandon and George scored for the giants in the 22nd and 32nd minutes, a groan when Max Birbraer made it 2-2 with two goals before the final period began. Tension for twenty minutes until the end of regulation and five minutes of bouncing heels through sudden death overtime.

Words really don’t do justice to the nail-biting edge of the penalty shots. I was trying to hold a camera steady and hoping for a glimpse of steel from Stephen Murphy in the Giants net. I wanted to see the fans around me roar when Cheverie, Walsh and Szwez took their turns, but all three missed the net. Thankfully Murphy had the steel, he stopped all four of Cardiff’s attempts. Evan Cheverie took the fourth shot and scored sending the team and the fans crazy with the win.

So. The new years begins in a fortnight with a double header pre-season friendly in Belfast hosting the Nottingham Panthers. Not your average pre-season. The Panthers are hated rivals (as much as can-be in a non-native sport market) and it should be a decent show.

Usually I would be promoting our webcast but we won’t be broadcasting this particular game. Check it out some time though, and if you’ve never been or seen, hit me up for a free view and I’ll send one your way.

More info:

• Belfast Giants (facebook and twitter)
• Giants Live webcasts and DVDs
• UK Hockey Live
• Elite League website

Enough’s been said about it on the Giants website and the event’s Facebook page already, but we’ve just announced the game will be broadcast, and so if you can’t get to the Odyssey (tickets are still available) you can watch online.

Unfortunately not a glorious win to celebrate, but said I’d do it, so here’s game review video from Saturday 29 March 2008 in Dundalk.

Game detail here: http://ih-update.co.uk/game_details.php?id=976
Giants Website: http://www.belfastgiants.com/

FWIW: This is the main camera feed from the live webcast we do from Giants games. The season’s over for 2007/2008, check it out in August/September.

I’m running the show tonight as Ronan’s away so toss a coin and if it’s heads then the stream’ll be up and running showing highlights and gtv clips from recent games around 7pm. I don’t think we’ll be able to do pre-game interviews this week due to a few logistical things, but I might run the ivs from a few weeks back

Off to Belfast to find American Steve and then to Dundalk. Go on… watch the web cast… it’s the last time I (might) get paid until July!

Many thanks to Paul at Through the Plexi / Breakthrough for their coverage of our webcasts, check out the hockey blog.

Detail to be found here: http://www.belfastgiants.com/webcast.aspx

Off to the O.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: giants, stingrays, blaze, belfast, hull, coventry, eihl, elite league, ice hockey, uk

(out of order):
Mark Dutiaume Goal
Tallari Missed Penalty
Fight: Carlyle Lewis v Brett Clouthier
Fight: Mark Morrison v Unpronouncable Staffacher
Lewis Christie’s Maiden Professional Goal
Scott Cameron’s Goal

Update:
There have been links to this video from
http://www.dropyourgloves.com/Fights/GameEvents.aspx?Game=164372 (cool!)
and
http://throughtheplexi.blogspot.com/2008/01/double-overtime-20th-january.html (thanks again)
And well over two thousand hits on the video in two days, that’s pretty neat!

Barney delivered it up to Belfast this morning (thanks boss…) and we gave it a wee test – it worked, which is a pleasant surprise! Very nice feel, good improvements on the PD-170 especially (disregarding the hi-def) the XLRs with independent volume controls on each channel; new 20x Zeiss lens which rivals the XL-H1 and lots of new buttons; chunkier and smoother iris/exposure wheel (it’s default setting is to automatically move from iris opening to positive gain increments when the iris is fully open; which is good unless you hate gain; but it appears that even +18dB gain is pretty clean, we’ll see how that looks in a low-light show setting on Friday night when we’re doing a gig for CEA. Something to do with Music Performance, so if you’re playing your Ukelele at the Waterfront Studio on Friday… See you there.

This is the toy that I’ll be bringing to America with me this summer; got a really pro looking (and feeling) PortaBrace bag to go with and then remembered it comes with a free Sony case; which really would have been up to the job but is a little bit bigger (unnecessarily for such a compact hdv) hopefully I’ll be able to get rid of on eBay unless someone sticks their paw up (unlikely?). In the States I’ll be back at Beaver Cross camp this year working on Media and leading Worship again (most likely, and sadly, without my Gibson), teaching kids some stuff about making movies (I imagine it’ll be a bit of basic theory – I’ll speak to you soon, Pete! – but mostly making stupid videos – pt1 pt2) as well as documenting the summer for PR/media purposes and being in charge of the photo collection and collation. Quite excited about all this, I suppose I should confirm to Chris and Tina that I’m coming! I’m not looking forward to my Thursday nights… A seven hour marathon was required to produce that video mentioned earlier but in my defence I guess it was my first real edit – Pete once again thank you for telling me about the Blade Tool/cmd+s or b or whatever it is thing.

No tripod as of yet, plenty around to beg, steal or borrow but if you’re in Upstate New York and fancy selling me a Vinten or Manfrotto for cheap let me know.

MacBook Air: Meh, looks good, but packing a bit too little as of yet. I imagine a writing journo or author loving it but without the optical or firewire or multiple usb ports it’s too restricted for the various things that I might want to do with it. First move into SSD laptops which is very cool, and maybe a model or two down the line the MacBook Pro will benefit and by then mine’ll have stopped whining and scraping and perhaps will die altogether (I fear… but hopefully it’ll do me through the summer with a couple of hours of video captured and edited every week).

Heading to the Giants tomorrow night to do a bit of capture, we’re not webcasting (so it should be nice and relaxed) because the big boys from TeleVideo on behalf of Sky Sports are in the house for the broadcast on Friday night, on Sky Sports 3 or Mix, I believe.

Adios.

I quite fancy getting a mailing list up and going so people know exactly which matches are coming up (and which are being covered for sure) as there seems to be quite a growing interest in live match night footage primarily from away fans (which is our target audience, don’t worry Todd) and we aim to increase our subscribers from far away places, as there seems to be an interest in British hockey and in particular in the Giants from North America. That is at least where two of the owners of the Giants live!

As for this week’s web cast: The usual line up: Nigel Ringland (play-by-play) and Wayne Hardman (colour-commentary) will talk you through the game with full audio commentary and _at least_ video highlights in the first two periods and then high quality (the UTV guys are impressed!) video coverage of the third period and any overtime or shoot-outs that may occur. Recent feedback has been awesome and we’re really pleased things seem to be going well.

To connect to the webcast (please don’t try doing this until Thursday about 6.45 ready for the 7 PM faceoff – actually it may be 7.30 so check the giants website before doing that) go to http://www.belfastgiants.com/webcast.aspx and check out Octoshape – download the plugin and ensure your Windows Media installation is up to date (a quick restart wouldn’t go down too badly either – just to be sure) then proceed to the pay-site, share the love with your £3.30 (consensus is that this is a fair price for what you get)

Also the game on the 10th of January against Newcastle Vipers will be shown, but more of that in due course.

Oh, and I want to get one of these.

Live video is produced by Hidavid Ltd, which is what Ronan does.

So much for making it to the Odyssey for dinner with the Albany folks I got to Scott’s house realised hte snow was definitely beyond reasonable driving conditions and ditched the car in their driveway. Much snowballing and Chinesefoodeating later I made the land speed record (not) from Princes Street back down to the house and managed to get mammy’s wee carsafe back in the garage.

Anyway, Paul from the Breakaway British Hockey blog has given a very
nice plug on today’s posting; here’s some love in return. And like he said, there’ll be a live webcast from the Odyssey on Saturday night of Giants v Panthers which is bound to be a good game. Details on Breakaway or at Belfast Giants.com.