How to film a game Reel can actually read

Almost every team films now. Phones are good enough, someone's parent is already recording, and the footage ends up somewhere. The recording problem is solved.

What is not solved is that most of that footage cannot be analysed, by software or by a human. It is shot from the baseline, zoomed onto the ball, and shaky.

Why the camera decides the ceiling

Any analysis of a possession is really an analysis of spacing: who was open, who rotated, what the passer could see. If the footage does not show the floor, that information does not exist in it, and no amount of processing invents it.

That means footage quality is not a detail that makes reports slightly better. It is the cap on how good a report can possibly be. A badly shot game and a well shot game produce different amounts of truth.

Which is good news, because it is the one input you fully control. Here is what matters, roughly in order.

Get the camera high

From floor level players stack on top of each other and spacing disappears, so a pass that was open reads as covered. From six rows up you can see where everyone is, which is the whole point.

If the gym has a balcony or a raised corner, use it. Centre court is ideal, but a high corner beats a low centre.

Stop zooming

The instinct is to follow the ball tightly. Resist it. The ball is the least interesting thing in a decision. What matters is the help defender stepping over, the corner opening up, the cut nobody saw.

Frame so you can see about half the court at once, including players away from the ball. Pan slowly and let the play come into frame rather than chasing it.

Jersey numbers are the weak point

Numbers are small, they move fast, and they are the first thing lost to shake or a wide shot. A misread number puts the stats on the wrong player, which is worse than not reading it at all.

• Film at the highest resolution your phone offers, not the default.
• Brace the phone on a rail or a tripod. Handheld shake blurs exactly the frames a number is readable in.
• Fill in your team roster first. Numbers get checked against it, so a misread 6 can be corrected to the 8 that is actually on your team.

Keep the scoreboard in frame when you can

If the scoreboard appears even occasionally, the real score can be read off it and the box score checked against it. That is the difference between a final score you can trust and one summed from plays that happened to be visible.

You will see a coverage meter on your report, something like "101 of 117 points tracked". That is how much of the scoring was actually accounted for. A lower number is not a bug, it is the honest version of what the film showed.

Film the whole thing

Clips are fine for one play, but the thing worth fixing is almost never one bad decision, it is the same decision made eight times. You cannot see a habit in a thirty-second clip.

The short version

1. 1Sit high, around centre court.
2. 2Frame wide enough to see half the floor, and pan slowly.
3. 3Brace the phone, and film at full resolution.
4. 4Let the scoreboard into the shot now and then.
5. 5Record the full game, then paste the link.

Do that once and every report you get afterwards is better, without changing anything in the app.