ZERO TO ONE MILLION IN FIVE DAYS • BY JOHN AMODEA
When I asked Ryan McIntyre, a friend of a friend, if he was interested in shooting
video for us (Painball.Media) at the 2015 World Cup I had no idea what was about
to happen. At the ripe old age of 21 years, Ryan has already been shooting and
editing video for ten years, but this was paintball and he’d never shot a paintball
game before. Any great paintball videographer or photographer will tell you
understanding the game is everything when it comes to shooting tournament
paintball. So I assumed there would be a steep learning curve for Ryan. Still,
having spoken several times before the ‘Cup and having watched literally every
video on his YouTube channel, I was expecting good things.
On Wednesday before the event started Ryan shot a drone flyover video, which
he edited and uploaded to our Facebook page the same day. To my knowledge
this was the first shot and edited video from this year’s ‘Cup, which was already
impressive. Within a few hours the video was watched by 11,000 viewers and
shared 135 times. And for the next three days Ryan shot and edited highlight
videos from each day’s play. The videos were some of the best highlight clips
I have seen in paintball, especially considering they were shot, edited and
uploaded the same day, each day of the event.
Alicia, Ryan and Colton.
That’s all good stuff but what
happened on the last day of
the World Cup was even more
impressive. In the last pro game
of the event it was Dynasty versus
Houston Heat. Kyle Spicka of
Dynasty shot the last three Heat
players as they attempted to
hit the buzzer for a game and
event winning point. The third
player to attempt the buzzer hit
was shot literally a fraction of a
second from the buzzer. In fact
it was so close that one
ref called it a win for Heat
and another called it a
win for Dynasty. But Ryan
was in perfect position to
capture not only the hit,
but in slow motion you
could see it happened
within inches of the Heat
player hitting the buzzer.
Game and event win for
Dynasty.
Later that evening Ryan
uploaded the 29 second
video to the Paintball.
Media Facebook page
and by the end of the night the video had a Facebook reach of more than 300,000.
Five days later we had our first “viral” video with a reach of 1.01 MILLION, with
1755 shares and 150 comments. When I asked Ryan how he was able to get in
position for the shot he said, “I saw what was happening and when I looked
around I noticed there were no other cameras around me. I waited for the shot
and it happened.” Yes it did….
Check ou t the original Facebook video here:
www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10153745482829662
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paintball.media magazine