Behind The Camera

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Behind The Camera

Simon Hicks is the Director and principal cameraman of most of Fighting Films' DVD and video productions. He is currently directing the IJF's official record of the Athens Olympic Judo competition, and a DVD about coaching judo to children.

Well it has been a really busy couple of months gathering and editing judo footage. First there was the IJF Coaching seminar in Rio de Janeiro, organised by Mr Yamashita and last week was the Senior European Championships held in the Ahoy stadium in Rotterdam.

The Coaching seminar had the theme of introducing children to judo. Mr Yamashita had asked three European experts to present their different methods to a group of coaches from around the World, (two plus the Coaching Commissioner from each continent and 30 from Brazil). The experts were Franco Capaletti from Italy, Michelle Brousse from France and Peter Gardiner from Great Britain. Their presentations, filmed on the mat with all the coaches in Rio combined with footage of the experts in action with children in their countries is now being turned into an IJF DVD that Fighting Films will release at the World Championships.

Aimed specifically at the coaches of developing judo countries this will be one of a pair of DVD's on the subject that Mr Yamashita will promote in his role of IJF Coaching and Education Commissioner. The other will be about the Japanese system of coaching to children in school. I have to say that the organisation of the seminar in Rio was absolutely fantastic and bodes very well for the World Championships there in two weeks time. I also took the opportunity, whilst in Rio to film Athens Olympic medallist Flavio Canto coaching the young talent emerging from Rio's massive Favella (slum) and some of this footage will be included in the DVD.

The Europeans turned out to be one of the best ever, with really excellent TV coverage by Dutch National Broadcasters NOS, and I like to think that Fighting Films had a major influence on this. Firstly I had the pleasure of working with the Dutch Federation's great team of workers in the stadium to make the tournament really look good.

Nothing was too much trouble for them. By the time we had rehearsed the final fights and medal ceremonies 15 times on the Thursday night we had a really slick presentation with great lighting and dynamic commentary. Then real co-operation with NOS resulted in low cameras, on tracks, giving great moving images from the fights themselves.

I was able to add expert advice on which shots and slomos to take and the slomos were soon being dropped into the live broadcast within five seconds of the action. Numerous national broadcasters used the footage, including Eurosport - which took two hours live for the first two days - and Fuji TV in Japan. The coverage was so well received by all broadcasters that a third hour, from the semi-finals, was also produced on the Sunday.

Another of Fighting Films' directors, Neil Adams, was back in the Eurosport commentary box for the first time since the 1990 Europeans, along with Ippon Books author Syd Hoare. So if any of you Judo fans out there enjoyed this year's coverage and commentary please let Eurosport or your National broadcaster know. The more of you that write in, the more likely we are to be able to offer you the same and better.

Unfortunately we have far to many productions underway to produce a special DVD of just this championship but for those that missed it, the best moments will be available in a future 101 Ippons.