Now we've reached what should be the most fun part of the course, which is following game action with the ball in play. And through each of the next series of videos here, we're going to assume that what you learned about pre snap framing is going to be in place that you're going to be doing exactly what you should have done before the ball is snapped. As you'll see that's going to help you as each play unfolds. We're also going to talk a little bit more about in camera editing as it applies to particular place, mostly on the back end of plays, how long to hold at the end of a shot. So we're starting with running plays. Let's jump right in and take a look at a few so we can see how this is done.

I want to start once again by showing you this play that we saw earlier that I said was too close. And the reason it was too close was because we did not see the running back in the shot. This is going to make it hard to film something like a running play because the guy who is going to get the ball is going to seemingly come out of nowhere. It's much harder to follow somebody who is entering frame having been off of it than if he starts in frame. So when we frame our plays properly, like we've done here, we'll always be able to see the running back That's going to help when he gets the ball because all you have to do is keep them in the shot, keep them centered. And assuming that you've set your tripod properly, like we've learned in an earlier module, moving up, down, left and right should be smooth, and we simply have to keep the running back centered in the shot until the play is over.

You may have noticed in that shot that the camera was zooming in slowly as the play developed. So let's stop and address that for a moment. I've read several articles online, I've seen a few tutorials and most seem to think that you should never zoom in when you're filming football. Well, I have to say that I completely disagree with that, in my opinion, and the way that I teach my other cameraman. There's no reason why you should be hanging back in a wide shot. If the running back is running up field and taking blockers and potential tacklers with him and there's dead space around the edges of the shot.

The goal of zooming in is to continue to keep the most detail in the shot as possible. So as we're going to see here in a couple of examples, we're going to use zoom sometimes slowly, sometimes a little quicker. Sometimes not at all, but we are going to use it to follow the rule of keeping detail. And this is how we're going to follow running plays more precisely, let's take a look. So we'll start with this play. And my first comment, of course is going to be on the framing, you can see that there's a little too much room at the bottom of the screen, this should be tighter than it is, the cameraman does push in, he does get into the action a little closer or being a little late.

Because the running back gets the ball. Watch what the cameraman is doing. You can see he's already zooming in. I'm going to freeze it right here. Just to give you an idea of what we're looking at, you can see that all the detail all the players in pursuit are still all in the shot. And the part that we've cropped out, there is nothing happening down there that's of any value to us.

So there's no reason to stay wide and to see the entire field when the action is toward the top of the screen. So the cameraman did the right thing here to be pushing in slowly. And of course, by the time the shot ends here we're in nice and tight. We can see everybody who's been involved in the play. And this next play I also think the shot start too wide I personally would have established all of these players and then pushed in to crop out these two players on the right. But either way the cameraman instantly identifies run and starts a nice slow, steady zoom, which eliminates all the dead space which would be at the bottom of the screen and even the top and as he holds on this shot, we ended up in a nice tight shot at the end of the play.

Notice also how long the cameraman continued rolling after the runner was tackled. This is the in camera editing concept in play. There's at least six seconds there of footage after the runner went down. And the reason is we want to be able to see the jersey number of the player who made the tackle coaches and recruiters who may be watching this tape or this play want to know for sure who made the tackle. Also the additional time gives us the breathing room that I talked about in another section. The breathing room allows us to get our bearings before we move on to the next play.

So in fact let's watch this play one more time and also see the play that came after it and this is exactly the way the cameraman shot it. This will allow us to get a sense of how a final game looks if you've shot each play for as long as you should have. So the running back here has gotten the ball we started rolling early enough before the shot. As we noted, we have time at the end to see that number 19 is the one that made the tackle some breathing room. Now we go to the next play. And there's plenty of time before the snap to see the formation might have even had an extra second or two that we could have used at the beginning of that play.

And at the end of the play, especially here we're holding long enough to see these guys who made the tackle get up number 53 number 75 number nine. Let's take a look at a few more examples now and in this running play. There's actually nine seconds of footage before the ball is snapped. Again, err on the side of too much, not too little. The running back gets the ball and is running away from the camera again. So he zooms in a little bit, centers the action and sees more detail.

Here is a shot where the cameraman is not going to push in very much at all. Running back gets the ball burst. Through the line, there's many defenders chasing him. So there's no reason to crop them out instantly. He pushes in slowly and he continues to do so toward the end of the play. That's well done.

Here's a goal line shot. And in anticipation of a quarterback sneak or a quick hand off and dive over the middle, we're really tight. And when the ball gets handed off, there really isn't a lot to do here except push in just a little bit to show a little bit of detail, center the action more and establish that yes, that is a touchdown. Now here's a situation where the cameraman did not zoom in. In fact, he actually pulled out a little bit you can see the difference here over the next couple of plays. The runningback takes the ball and for whatever reason the cameraman zooms out a little bit.

Perhaps he wants to see all the players on the field so that's fine, but it is more effective to push in and in this play. You see what I'm talking about. This play is blown up right away. He's going down instantly. The cameraman recognizes that and pushes in right away to see that. Then of course he holds on the player.

Who celebrates. Now let's take a look at what happens when a running back breaks along gainer and how to handle that from several perspectives. Here the guy gets the ball and great job by the cameraman to push in and get more detail. Also a great job by the cameraman here of the tracking this guy and keeping him mostly centered as he runs for a touchdown. So that's good camera work there. Now, at the end of the play, we're not going to cut as quickly as we normally might not going to be six seconds, but we're allowed to film the celebrations, I highly suggest it.

As long as the guy's doing something celebratory, it's okay to film it for as long as it lasts, it's a nice ending to the drive. Let's go back and watch this play again now, so I can demonstrate another rule and this has to do with how far in you should zoom on a player whether he's running free or not, and this is called my Tic Tac Toe board rule. I'm going to freeze this play right here to demonstrate and the Tic Tac Toe board rule basically says that you should imagine that your screen is divided into nine quadrants just like a tic tac toe board, and you never want to let the player with the ball exceed the center square. You obviously want to keep them centered, but you don't want him to be bigger than any of the lines that are around him. It's going to be tough to do on a play like this when you're tracking somebody who's sprinting down the field, but for the most part, the idea is you want to be able to see what's around him Is there a defender closing on him like there is here, we want to be able to see everything that's going on around them, we want to avoid the hero shot.

Plus, it's going to be easier to keep somebody in the frame. If you're not pushed in all the way. If you keep them in that center square, even if he goes a little too fast or slow, you'll be able to track and really well, like you can see here. So keep the Tic Tac Toe board rule in play here whenever someone has the ball and never zoom in beyond that, unless of course someone has just scored a touchdown. So there you have it, the basics of running plays. Not a whole lot of big concepts to remember we mostly have to know to keep the running back centered.

We want to keep them in that Tic Tac Toe board that we described. And we want to use zoom slowly and smoothly so as not to draw attention to the channel. camerawork and to eliminate the dead space on the edges of the shot and keep the detail focused, if your camera is set the way that we talked about if the tripod is set smoothly, and if you're good with your zoom, which goes back to the section on cameras, where we talked about being comfortable, all those factors in place, you should be able to handle runs without a problem and do it as well as anybody else. So next we're going to move on to passing plays, which is a little more complicated. Let's go there now and we'll talk about how to handle those sorts of situations.