Television Directors’ Visual Focus on Sport Games: An Eye-Tracking Study

Abstract

With the advent of digital media, live television sports broadcast became an important training for future sports communication professionals. Sports TV directors will usually direct all broadcast sports visual contents, in the training of student (future) sports TV directors, they must first have solid background knowledge of the sports itself, be familiar with sports TV directing and their sports onscreen visual focus should be the most important aspect of all. The current study is an exploratory and pioneering eye-tracking study in sports communication that combined sports TV directing with eye-tracking methodology, examining the visual focus of sport TV directors on volleyball games, with a Cognitive Load theoretical framework. It attempts to fill the gap in the sports communication and education literature, comparing and analyzing the differences between senior and junior students with sports TV directing experiences, examining their visual focus of the Business Enterprise Volleyball Games . Results found that (1) Visual focus differences were found among senior and junior student sport TV directors. The eyes of senior students, with more than two years of sports and games training, scanned at a faster speed than junior students; (2) Visual focus of senior students were more detailed as they focused on sports athletes’ movement and close-up shots; (3) Panoramic shots of sports games allows TV directors to have an overall visual pace and a better interpretation of the game. Application of the cognitive load theory can further explain the differences in visual focus among the senior and junior students. The more sports expertise, familiarity with the players they have in their long term memory, the more onsite performance and observation they would have in handling the complexity of the game. Results of the current study served as a benchmark for future research and contributed to the education and training of sport communicators.