Actually I don’t know if the bocce bowling game now being shown in full on EuropSport is live. But judging by the make up of the spectators, its unlikely that the games are played past seven o’clock.
Whatever the case, bocce goes down with biathlon as one of those sports that really don’t need to be on TV.
For the record, the two competitors each look like they are in their thirties. One of them looks like he could be an accountant, the other looks like he could be a Special Forces op turned body builder.
I’m not the only one to link to the following story today, but it is too timely and too interesting, considering everyone watching the game is intimately familiar with the work of sports television producers. Yet, we are also unfamiliar with the process, which makes this article so interesting.
If the production crew of a televised football game is like a symphony orchestra, Bob Fishman is its conductor. He sits front and center in the dark trailer, insulated from the sunshine and the roar of the crowd, taking the fragments of sounds and moving images and assembling the broadcast on the fly, mediating the real event into the digital one. He scans the dizzying bank of screens to select the next shot, and the next, and the next, layering in replays, graphics, and sound, barking his orders via headset to his crew, plugging into a rhythm that echoes the pulse of the game.
I have no clue why some sports attract spectators beyond the families of the participants. Right now EuroSport (playing on the big screen in the internet cafe/pub in which I am sitting) is broadcasting some biathlon event.
On TV it is not exciting, but I can see the appeal of watching the skiers try to overtake each other in the comfort of your living room with a (large) case of beer in front of you. On TV you can see how far the various competitors are from the leader and if any challengers are gaining ground. Live though, it seems like it would be nearly impossible to notice any change in position and, thus, create a sense of drama.
It does occur to me that the thousands of people at this televised event likely have a big-screen broadcasting action out of sight. Still, you would have to be extremely dedicated to your particular skier or nation (turns out this event is a relay) to attend such an event (it does not look warm out there.)
Note, I’m not attacking biathlon as a sport, just puzzling over why it is a spectator sport (particularly when the dangerous corners seem to be away from the spectators.
As for the shooting aspect. There isn’t that much to see. Participants ski up to their rifle, unload a few shots then ski off. No blood whatsoever.
According to the Polish news apparantely this American election was more of a priority for Russian networks than four years ago, when a man who resembled “a squirrel-muskrat” was found in a local swamp.
Laugh, but that’s a story you want to read, don’t you? Unfortunately I couldn’t find it anywhere.
The intro gives McCain a backhanded compliment, lebelling McCain’s speech last night the best lof his life. Soon thereafter they say it’s hard to remember when so many people gathered on American streets happy.
Polish Dubstar, the name I am hereby giving to the man who reads the scripts, in Polish, of nearly every English-language series or movie that makes it onto TV here is now reading both male and female parts in an INFOMERCIAL pitching a swiffer-like broom.
Then read this story, which gives one a broader overview of the current situation in Poland.
The author’s observation of Warsaw as being dotted with cranes holds true a few months later, altough I’ve been told the building boom the city has experienced in recent years is starting to cool.
Oh, I haven’t personally seen this commercial yet, and my ears would definitely have perked up had I heard someone speaking English.
Game shows here are even more common than in North America. One speculative reason could be their low cost. Poland has around eight or nine million more people than Canada. But, crucially, for its own culture output, it has its own language. That means there is a higher demand for Polish TV shows than there is in Canada for Canadian shows. Canada, after all, can leach off the U.S. To run American movies, which they do frequently, Polish television stations require the scripts be dubbed over to suit a Polish audience. This inherently decreases the entertainment level. Much better to run a show in which the actors (or contestants) speak Polish. Game shows, which are produced at a fraction of the cost of scripted shows, are a cheap way, then, of getting real Polish voices on the air.
Poland has also appropriated shows developed in other countries for its own purposes. This of course is done everywhere. The Americans steal The Office from the Brits, the Canadians repurpose American gameshows with Canadian contestants and everyone runs redubbed versions of The Simpsons.\
Here BrzydUla, a Polish version of Ugly Betty, is very popular and, according to Magda, quite funny. There is also a Polish version of So You Think You Can Dance? and a talent contest similar to those on American television.
As I mentioned earlier. Polish TV loves American movies. (It also bears mentioning that they seem to also like Italian soap operas and French dramas). To Poles though, all the shows sound the same. That’s because, as far as I can tell, they have the same fellow reading the script over top of the actual dialogue. Every show, save The Simpsons, seems to be dialogued by the same guy. He reads the script from end to end, with the English track turned way down. The guy reads both male and female tracks along with any handy English-language subtitles that would, for instance, give a movie’s setting.
The Simpsons, for their part, are dubbed over by competent voice actors who, while they don’t nail the voices exactly, do a competently shrill approximation that generally coincides with the characters’ mouth movements.
Right off the bat, I’m in no place to be laughing at the language mishaps of others. And yet…
I watched Polish TV for the first time yesterday. The options were Polish, Polish and more Polish, but dirt-track motorcycle racing offered some pure mindless entertainment that didn’t need translating. Still, between races I’d occasionally flip through the other 12 channels. On one station a television show called Galileo was testing what everyday piece of equipment could compete with a luge on a bobsled track.
The winner, beating out a bike, skis, a kayak and a toilet seat, was a wok. The rider sat in the wok, weighed himself down with lead weights and desperately tried to keep himself pointed in the correct direction (although he finished the track backwards).
I also regretfully found a Polish version of Wayne Brady’s Don’t Forget The Lyrics. Of the three songs to which I partially watched contestants crooning, two were Polish. One however was in English: Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs.” It was pretty hilarious just watching a small Polish-Asian guy belting out the words to a Ricky Martin song while the four modestly-dressed dancers surrounding him tried to add to the mood without being too overtly sexy to offend Polish sensibilities.
Anyways, he premise of the show is for contestants to fill in the missing lyrics, after singing them. The fellow on the TV went through the line “When she moves, she moves” and then had to fill in the next three words. He sung “I go crazy” and soon thereafter the music stopped. The Polish Wayne Brady guy came on stage and evidently asked him if he’d like to change any of the words. The guy evidently responded in the affirmative and decided to change “I go crazy” to “I’m go crazy.”
So I laughed. A lot. The judges evidently split the difference and said “it’s good enough,” which is probably fair. For one, while it was hilarious to me, singing a song in a foreign language has got to be insanely difficult. After a half-dozen years of French in school, I learned my fair share of grammar but likely couldn’t pull off a full song of singing in the language. And if I was asked to sing a specific line and decide if it was right or not? I would probably end up singing something mighty hilarious. But what’s wrong with a laugh?
