In this next section, we're going to be talking about the cameraman's responsibilities before the ball is height. And we're going to mostly be talking about these as they relate to runs and passing plays, plays on the line of scrimmage, where the quarterback takes the snap. And you might be saying, Well, what about the kickoff? We're not doing games chronologically, the kickoff we're going to stay for the section later on on special teams. So here we're mostly going to focus on plays from the line of scrimmage. And in the last video, we learned that we want to start rolling early before the play starts, so that we don't cut it off because it looks awkward.

Well, there's a lot more reasons to be rolling early than just avoiding cutting a play off. If you're filming for coaches, coaches want to be able to see the formation as we mentioned in the last video, where's the defense aligned, who's in motion, okay, we want to get a sense of what's going on before the ball is height. And there are other responsibilities as well, which we'll get to as we look at some clips, but the main rule I want to communicate here is that you should be rolling at least five seconds before the ball is height now You might be saying, I don't know when the ball is going to be hiked. So how can I be rolling five seconds before, we're going to use some visual clues. And we're going to try to use instinct and guesswork and some body language of the players, as you'll see here in a minute.

But you want to err on the side of rolling for too long, not on the side of rolling for too short. If you chance that and try to wait to the last possible second, you might end up with a play that gets cut off. So we're going to roll potentially for too long. Now that contradicts what I said earlier, where you said, well, anything that you should fast forward through, we probably shouldn't be shooting. In this case, we have to give you a motion on that one, because we just don't want to miss a play. And I think people who are watching would rather you be rolling for 10 seconds before the ball is hiked, not one.

And of course, we don't want to be rolling as early as when the players are in the huddle. That's obviously too early. So we're going to use body language and some indicators to determine when to start rolling. So let's look at that right now. This is an actual clip from one of the games that one of my cameramen shot and I'm freezing it here at the beginning so you can get a sense of what we're doing. Looking at, we can see the formation we can see that the offensive line right here is still standing up, they came out of the huddle and they walked to the line of scrimmage.

So the best time to start shooting really is when the offensive line is about to get into position. And as we play this out here, we can see that they're doing just that. They're getting ready, they're getting into position, quarterback is about to hike the ball, and he takes the snap. If you put a timer on that play, you'll see that it was between six and seven seconds from the time we started rolling to the time when the ball was hiked, and that's about accurate. If you use the offensive line as the barometer and start rolling just as they're getting into position, you probably will be okay. Of course the caveat there is to make sure that you're not in a two minute drill where the team is rushing the line and trying to get a playoff before the clock hits zero if that's the case, you want to be rolling earlier.

But for the most part during standard game action, you can roll about five or six seconds before and use the body language of the players is a guide. Now the next part of pre snap is what we're actually putting in the shot. How much are we seeing. And for this, I want to communicate what I believe is one of the most important rules you're going to learn in this course. It's another rule like in camera editing, that's going to thread through everything we talked about from here on out. And that rule is that we want to get as many players in the shot as possible, while staying close enough to see detail.

Let's look at examples on both ends of the spectrum here so you can see what I'm talking about. Here's an example of a play where the cameraman got way too close. I mean, it looks pretty good. We can see the offensive line it really feels like we're there on top of the action. The problem is, is we let this thing play. Want to realize the quarterback is off the shot, the quarterback is over here.

And when he hands the ball off, he's handing it off to a running back who we never saw. So you can't do this. You can't be this close, you have to give coaches a chance to see who's on the field before the ball is height. Now here's another play which I believe is too wide. We can definitely see the entire formation. We can see all the players but just look At the top of the screen, this is all dead space, so much dead space that I can actually fit the words dead space over here without covering up any players.

So the cameraman here should have zoomed in to right about here. This allows us to see all the players and get as close as we can. So looking at this another way, there's kind of a sub rule that goes along with all of this and the sub rule is to eliminate dead space. We want to take the top bottom left and right sides of our frame and look at it closely to see if we can push it any further so we can eliminate things that are not going on around the edges. From the left and right perspective. A good rule of thumb is to take the player who is the furthest most left player on the left side of the screen and have the left edge be right next to him.

And then take the player who's the furthest most right player on the right side of the screen and put the right side of the frame next to him. As far as the top and bottom go in general rule is to have the top of your frame be right about at the top of the heads of the players standing on the opposite sideline at The bottom of your frame, you should probably see about the mid torso line of the players standing on the sideline closest to you. Of course, sometimes these two ideas don't work well together. Here's a play where the cameraman has correctly placed the leftmost player the running back on the left side of the frame and the rightmost player the safety on the right side of the screen. But because these players are so far away from each other, we're breaking the part of our rule that asks us to stay close enough to see detail.

Plus, we have a little too much of the bleachers at the top of the shot. So what we want to do in this case is establish all 22 players on the field first, and then if we think the shot is too wide, we can push in and actually crop a player or two out so we can center the action more see more detail and make the play easier to follow. Notice that even after we've pushed in this shot still follows the left and right framing rule for the players we can see the top and bottom aren't exactly as I described, but based on where the players are positioned. This is certainly acceptable as it eliminates most dead space, we've obeyed the rule, get as many players in the shot as possible while staying close enough to see detail. Now this rule is also going to take precedence when we are filming plays that are taking place down by the goal liner inside the 10.

Unlike plays that are directly in front of you where it's easier to get all 22 players a play down at the goal line, you have to be shooting at a much different angle. So you have to be a lot wider in order to see all 22 players. So again, we want to start wide enough to see all 22 players and understand the formation, but that is going to be inherently wider than any other shot will ever take. So after we establish those 22 players, you'll have to make the decision to how far we can push in and how many players we have to crop out in order to see the main scope of the action which is the line of scrimmage and the blocking. So that's a judgment call. But keeping in mind the rule we want to get as close to the action as possible.

You can use that to determine how far to get in at minimum We have to make sure we always have the running backs and all the linebackers in the shot. Occasionally, depending on the angle, you might have to crop out a wide receiver or someone who's covering them. As we wrap this section up, let's keep in mind what we learned in the previous video, which is that we want to be rolling at least five seconds before the ball is snapped. So now you understand what has to be done in those five seconds, and it could be six, seven or eight seconds, we want to start wide enough to see all the players and then make a decision as to whether we can push in a little more to crop a few out to get closer to the line of scrimmage or not. And all this has to take place within five seconds.

Hopefully, you start rolling, you establish the players, you push in, you settle and then the ball is snapped. So you'll have to use your own internal clock to decide when to start rolling in order to accomplish all of these things we talked about in this video. So now once you've pushed in all the way and you're settled, the ball will be snapped and we're about to follow the action. So let's move on to the next module where we see what happens in running place.