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Gestalt said..


Been watching windsurfing at hookipa since early 80's, none of it recorded with drones and all of it incredible. Go figure hey.

There is probably a thread on here from 2019 where people were praising drone coverage.




livestream.com/accounts/9351246/events/8856670/videos/198418220

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PhilUK said..
Anyone else think that the PWA are distancing themselves form the IWT events so they dont get stick for the poor media coverage, want to highlight the difference in coverage between the 2 of them? They used to ban sailors from competing on the IWT tour, as the PWA wanted to ensure the events were well run and decent media coverage, and importantly, gave the sailors decent money. Thats right, the pros are paid. The winner of IWT Peru got $500 iirc. I think the IWT is a very good tour for amateurs, but most just do 1 event as a holiday.

Last year's Aloha:
Event Prize Pool: 2022 USD $10,000 - EQUAL between Pro Men and Women as always.

The iwt Fiji coverage was better than anything the pwa has done. Pwa dropped the ball too at some of their events.

If both groups are interested in achieving better coverage they would gain a lot from analysing each others events and cherry picking the things that work.

a look at EFPT would be handy too. Their setup is slick.

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PhilUK said..

Gestalt said..


Been watching windsurfing at hookipa since early 80's, none of it recorded with drones and all of it incredible. Go figure hey.

There is probably a thread on here from 2019 where people were praising drone coverage.




livestream.com/accounts/9351246/events/8856670/videos/198418220

Ok. So we don't have budget for a drone, we have a phone or 2 or 3 that shoot at the same resolution and picture quality.
Do we just pack up and go home or do we give them to people to use?

a similar conversation goes on in audio circles. What's worse than an sm57. No mic at all.

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Gestalt said..
Ok. So we don't have budget for a drone, we have a phone or 2 or 3 that shoot at the same resolution and picture quality.
Do we just pack up and go home or do we give them to people to use?

I dont know what the phone was in use, but I'm 100% sure it wont be the same resolution and picture quality as even a decent budget DLSR & 300mm lens.
Ben and Paul stepped in to bring some coverage, but the phone clips were taken, finished, then uploaded to view.

The PWA tried a test livestream yesterday, but it failed. I dont know what the problems were. Hopefully there will be a highlights video later, but iirc from what I heard someone say (Ben?) that might not be happening either.

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PhilUK said..

Gestalt said..
Ok. So we don't have budget for a drone, we have a phone or 2 or 3 that shoot at the same resolution and picture quality.
Do we just pack up and go home or do we give them to people to use?

I dont know what the phone was in use, but I'm 100% sure it wont be the same resolution and picture quality as even a decent budget DLSR & 300mm lens.
Ben and Paul stepped in to bring some coverage, but the phone clips were taken, finished, then uploaded to view.

The PWA tried a test livestream yesterday, but it failed. I dont know what the problems were. Hopefully there will be a highlights video later, but iirc from what I heard someone say (Ben?) that might not be happening either.

I have a pro level dslr and a 300mm L lens and my phone shoots at higher resolution.

did you think the windsurfing tv clips were no good? I thought Tomak did a better job than the pros shooting the pwa events.
when thinking about the entire year all the good footage both pwa and iwt was from the semi professionals.

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Gestalt said..

sheddweller said..
Windsurfing is an amateur sport. IWT focuses on the event itself and not so much the promotion of the event. If there is no money it's a solid choice as the events are financed by the sailors entry fees. You can argue that without better media, financing will not improve, but the flip side to that is that they had better media before and the financing didn't improve. If they don't pay to fly Duncan out then there is enough money to pay a videographer, but then there will be a load of moaning about the standard of judging. I am not sure that there is a real understanding of the amount of work it takes to put on a comp, it's a lot and its stressful and tiring and being done on a shoestring. So comments like "it costs nothing" to do this or that are misplaced, it costs a lot, it's extra work, organisation, stress.
There is not an easy answer, money will help solve it, but honestly, where is it going to come from?

It's hardly misplaced. We saw what a shoe string budget achieved today with a guy and a phone. Thinking it's all too hard and needs some level of technology that's unattainable to the average punter is just not the reality.

It was too hard because it would have come on top of every other facet of event organisation. It's not just that one thing going on.

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Gestalt said..

I have a pro level dslr and a 300mm L lens and my phone shoots at higher resolution.

Really. What phone?

Paging Basher for his opinion on this. He has Canon L lenses iirc.

I used to have 300mm F4 L, and it was amazing, even with 40D camera.

I'm going to stick some comments on here, whilst thinking there's no reason to take sides, or to knock the PWA or the IWT.


1) The wave tour has been great this year and the best for a long time, simply because there were several events at a huge range of locations. We can thank the IWT for that, although the cost to the sailors was to accept less prize money.
2) The IWT tour is effectively an amateur tour, for people with the money to do it, but better to see that than just two events per year at flat water locations.
3) This last event, the Aloha Classic, should have provided the best finale, and the stage was set for that, in terms of the sailor rivalries, and with a 12 day window set to ensure good conditions. It only went wrong because those conditions didn't reliably turn up for the 12 day window.
4) The lack of predictable conditions then meant it was hard to get the livestream budget to work. They could only compete on five days out of the 12 - under their license - but they could only film on four days because of the costs, I think?
5) It was only later that someone worked out you could film the Ho'okpa event from the hill side with your phone, if need be. But the problem remains with how you then broadcast that. The IWT have apparently filmed the last day's action, and will edit that and post it up on YouTube at some point.


There are lessons to be learnt, so I'll continue.

6) The IWT communication was appalling, and no-one outside the event site knew what was going on. The PWA were clearly embarrassed by that, given they were still connected to this last event. But this issue is simply one that needs sorting for next year. Even the PWA resorted to posting live clips on their Instagram page, but then told nobody about that. If you happen to favour Instagram as your social media platform, then fine because you're already inside that closed information bubble.
7) The IWT have all season used Facebook live reels to post their own updates, and again they told nobody about that. The way my busy Facebook feed works is that I don't get shown reels until days later. So once again, as a fan, I'm forced to go and look for stuff, and generally have no idea what is happening.
8) We fans now 'expect' a livestream, but of course that does cost money in terms of Starlink connections and bandwidth time, and then you generally need to pay a lot for cameramen, drone pilots, and studio editors, plus commentators. And the media budget needed then detracts from prize money and other staffing issues.
9) It is however important to realise that a livestream serves your sponsors the best, and can build a loyal world-wide audience that then brings in more sponsorship. On this occasions we, surprisingly, had very few ad breaks.
10 I've been critical of Kai Katchadourian's macho commentary in the past but he is much better at focussing on the heats now, and he and Simeon did a very good job at this event when paired up together.
11) One way forward with the livestream might be to keep the broadcast free, while allowing viewers to contribute money where they/we felt able to. That would create ask additional income source, on top of sponsorship money. Drone footage also helps to build an audience.


In the end, we got a disappointing final event, both for the sailing conditions, and for the coverage. So I guess tthat's why a a lot of people are shouting.
I'd actually like to thank the organisers for bringing us this tour and this event.
The event has also produced some worthy champions, both for the local Aloha Classic crown and for the world rankings.

Let's keep all these events going next year, please.

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sheddweller said..

Gestalt said..

sheddweller said..
Windsurfing is an amateur sport. IWT focuses on the event itself and not so much the promotion of the event. If there is no money it's a solid choice as the events are financed by the sailors entry fees. You can argue that without better media, financing will not improve, but the flip side to that is that they had better media before and the financing didn't improve. If they don't pay to fly Duncan out then there is enough money to pay a videographer, but then there will be a load of moaning about the standard of judging. I am not sure that there is a real understanding of the amount of work it takes to put on a comp, it's a lot and its stressful and tiring and being done on a shoestring. So comments like "it costs nothing" to do this or that are misplaced, it costs a lot, it's extra work, organisation, stress.
There is not an easy answer, money will help solve it, but honestly, where is it going to come from?

It's hardly misplaced. We saw what a shoe string budget achieved today with a guy and a phone. Thinking it's all too hard and needs some level of technology that's unattainable to the average punter is just not the reality.

It was too hard because it would have come on top of every other facet of event organisation. It's not just that one thing going on.

On the to do list things need to be prioritised.

It's really difficult to have this conversation online. Primarily as I don't want to throw stones or undermine everything the iwt or pwa does. I'm a very big supporter of everything they are trying to do.
but, it's been hard to watch at times. Especially knowing both organisations are trying to promote the sport in the digital media space (as written on their websites) and then seeing that not happen.

anything I add beyond that is uninformed opinion as I don't know the organisation structure or event hurdles. When I look back at the year we've seen I'm stoked with all the events and thankful I saw them. I've especially liked the format and locations. (I've watched every minute). Some of the coverage has been mind blowing. it's interesting to see windsurfing has specific needs to demonstrate how dynamic the sport is.
The pieces are there. The drone pilots, the vloggers and commentators, but there is no cohesion. to bring it all together I think the pwa and iwt are going to need to share media resources and bring it all in house. Use the money spent on external parties to fund in-house media. Give the competitors paid employment opportunities beyond their competitive roles.

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PhilUK said..

Gestalt said..

I have a pro level dslr and a 300mm L lens and my phone shoots at higher resolution.

Really. What phone?

Paging Basher for his opinion on this. He has Canon L lenses iirc.

I used to have 300mm F4 L, and it was amazing, even with 40D camera.

Don't quote me but I think iPhone 6 onwards had 4k
canon dslr needs to be fairly recent for 4K. Like 5d mk iv or 90d in crop sensor.
Other than canon, i've got a Sony a7 and it's only 1080. Think v4 does 4k

sports cams, drones and phones are hard to beat if on a budget and chasing 4-8k resolution.

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Gestalt said..

Don't quote me but I think iPhone 6 onwards had 4k
canon dslr needs to be fairly recent for 4K. Like 5d mk iv or 90d in crop sensor.
Other than canon, i've got a Sony a7 and it's only 1080. Think v4 does 4k

You can have as many pixels as you like in the sensor, but if the sensor is small the quality goes down in low light as ISO increases.
More importantly, no point in having 4k sensor if you put a milk bottle on as a lens. I guess if people are watching on a tiny phone screen then it might not matter so much. There is a reason why a 300m L lens is the size it is, compared to the lens (plastic probably) on a phone.

Regarding how you follow IWT/PWA on social media, it wont take long to set up a userid on those platforms just for that purpose. It doesnt take much effort to go looking for it either.

I think PVB (or someone in the comments) said on Ben's program that a lot of people expect too much these days, are impatient, are too used to watching videos on YT to appreciate the work that goes on to produce them. I remember watching these events on Trans World Sport on the TV, about a fortnight after the event.

Hopefully the slalom finale in Japan gets some wind and coverage is good.

Seems to me the wind gremlin's have not been kind to some of these wave events especially the aloha classic the past couple of years. I have nothing against float and ride but it does put the bigger guys at a disadvantage especially when the waves are smaller anyway that's my little rant for the day

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PhilUK said..

Gestalt said..

Don't quote me but I think iPhone 6 onwards had 4k
canon dslr needs to be fairly recent for 4K. Like 5d mk iv or 90d in crop sensor.
Other than canon, i've got a Sony a7 and it's only 1080. Think v4 does 4k

You can have as many pixels as you like in the sensor, but if the sensor is small the quality goes down in low light as ISO increases.
More importantly, no point in having 4k sensor if you put a milk bottle on as a lens. I guess if people are watching on a tiny phone screen then it might not matter so much. There is a reason why a 300m L lens is the size it is, compared to the lens (plastic probably) on a phone.

This is silly. Low light is hardly an issue at the beach. If you are using a dslr for video the issue is too much light.
Anyways, I watched the windsurfing tv coverage on the tv in my lounge room. It was all filmed on a phone. It could have been filmed on anything. Technology, budget whatever isn't the issue.
Creativity breeds innovation.

?si=sngJw1zUy1bP1-H5

Photos are up on iwt Facebook page.

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Gestalt said..
The pieces are there. The drone pilots, the vloggers and commentators, but there is no cohesion. to bring it all together I think the pwa and iwt are going to need to share media resources and bring it all in house. Use the money spent on external parties to fund in-house media. Give the competitors paid employment opportunities beyond their competitive roles.

That's what I'm thinking ultimately what needs to be done Gestalt.

Not sure it's going to happen however I'm trying to line up a podcast with Ben & Kai in 6-7 hrs (4-5pm Perth Time). Keep an eye on Windsurfing TV YouTube channel. Kai is up for it however it's 2am in Portugal at the moment so we'll see if Ben can do it when he wakes up.

Fingers crossed for you and all the people that contributed along the way. I think you've all proven yourselves, changed the rules and done it with little in the way of resources.

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Gestalt said..

This is silly. Low light is hardly an issue at the beach. If you are using a dslr for video the issue is too much light.

I was thinking of events in general, not just Hookipa. Plenty go on until sunset or in low light, Sylt springs to mind.

Anyone know what the actual issue was with the livestream?

No after the event video either.

Sorry guys, couldn't make it happen today. maybe tomorrow.

In the last 10 years there have only been 3 or 4 counting events per year, with the exception of 1 year with 5 events.
This year the combined PWA/IWT had 7.
Japan (5*) only had the 1st round done. =1st scored more points than a 4* win which is odd, but never mind.

I think the combined effort been a success.

www.pwaworldtour.com/index.php?id=2292

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Flying Dutchman said..
Sorry guys, couldn't make it happen today. maybe tomorrow.

On the plane home?

I've been watching the Day 2 finals this morning, appreciate the effort it takes.
When I render my go-pro videos my ****ty little laptop takes about 15 minutes to output 1 minute of video

I was expecting an upload of the whole day's sailing and having to FFWD to the best bits. This is a good roundup of the day's sailing, picking out the best waves of the heats with scores and after heat interviews. It must have taken hours to produce and well worth it. Cheers.
Looking forward to part 2.

?si=ONyTXtGR3PkCUCUC

Looking back at this event, it was successful in the way that it produced results and drama. So well done to the organizers and volunteers that made this happen.

I think there will be a debrief and there is going to be a lot of leaning to be done from this. Communication (is it on?) was dramatic, this could be easily fixed. If developing an app (as suggested by Ben) is to expensive, just make a mailchimp mailing list. Anyone that is interested can subscribe and when it's on, one push of the button and everybody knows.......

The live-streaming is another part which was dramatic, I don't know where this went wrong but I am sure that the organizers are going to have to have a good look at this. Previous Aloha Classics had live streams so we know it can be done, especially as technology has only improved over the years. The IWT advertises the Aloha as the Superbowl of windsurfing, and however small is the current windsurfing community, there will be eyeballs that will want to watch it. Especially this event, I would think. Inform the people, are you going to do a livestream? Great, but then do it. When for whatever reason you can't, pump out good recaps. But don't leave fans thinking there will be a stream and then all of a sudden there isn't.

Again kudos to all the people who made this event happen and hopefully they will take away something from this to improve next years (if there will be one at all).

Nice breakdown by Ben and Paul

Finals day highlight video Part 2:

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Gestalt said..
The iwt Fiji coverage was better than anything the pwa has done. Pwa dropped the ball too at some of their events.
If both groups are interested in achieving better coverage they would gain a lot from analysing each others events and cherry picking the things that work.
a look at EFPT would be handy too. Their setup is slick.

As always it's about the money. It's easy to say "cherry picking the things that work" ... a lot of the media coverage is done by people either volunteering their time or doing it for next to nothing. That's sustainable for only so long. Last time I checked exposure isn't a currency they accept at the local supermarket.

I know it is easier to be critical than to be constructive when giving feedback on the Aloha 10 x Goitre Challenge I especially love the portrait mode rider interviews, with associated awful varying audio quality all over the shop.

Just perfect to mix in with the "proper" landscape shot action. I feel the editor's pain.

(oh god I hate vertical video so much ) and the "oops forgot to take the nd filter off " nighttime windsurfing shots. Not a single drone shot could be sourced? - even for the finals. Just a few dronies would have been easy and nice in the highlight video. Was there an issue with drone flight clearance or angry local surfers that I am not aware of?

With so many drones around it just seems inexplicable.
These are issues that shouldn't be happening on an event of this importance. But it was good to at least get some images from the event.

But here we are , yet again, re-learning the lessons time and time again.
Trying to create a live stream, under-resourced and in difficult circumstances to be fair, just compromises everything else.
I know a vocal self entitled minority will scream for a live stream - just tell them "hey, we don't have the budget for live streams, or "we prioritised prize money to competitors over a live stream - but the highlights will be out hours after the event"

I am sure the world doesn't mind waiting for quality coverage and daily highlights.
With an agile editor and a strategic and targeted approach these can go out pretty quickly.

- my advice - do what is achievable and do it well.

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stehsegler said..

Gestalt said..
The iwt Fiji coverage was better than anything the pwa has done. Pwa dropped the ball too at some of their events.
If both groups are interested in achieving better coverage they would gain a lot from analysing each others events and cherry picking the things that work.
a look at EFPT would be handy too. Their setup is slick.

As always it's about the money. It's easy to say "cherry picking the things that work" ... a lot of the media coverage is done by people either volunteering their time or doing it for next to nothing. That's sustainable for only so long. Last time I checked exposure isn't a currency they accept at the local supermarket.

maybe it's just me but i don't perceive any limits either from budget or gear and see cherry picking the ideas that worked as critical to moving forward.
limits are created when people think something can't be done. I know it sounds clich?, but it's true that creativity and desire can solve all problems.

I enjoyed the entertainment value of Ben and Paul chatting. They have a great chemistry (does anyone else call Ben "Benny"?). If it's going to be done on a shoestring then it'll be hard to beat those two.

Agree. They make me laugh. Pvb behind the scenes at fiji was excellent too. As a punter that made me feel like part of the event.

Iets not forget kai.. hes excellent too. I like what he says as much as ben and pvb.