Just to try to get a little organized–
Here’s the basic rules about footage:
- No releasing footage of semifinals or finals
- No releasing big screen event footage (money matches, etc)
- Pools footage, everything not above should be OK to release
Plus whatever further rules they want to clarify. When in doubt, ask.
If you’re coming prepared to film, you’ll want to bring:
- Extra tapes (I will bring about 40. I typically use between 10-30. For average use, 4-10 should be fine.)
- Extra power. I go through it quickly enough that I’ll be bringing my own extension cord and power strip. But it’s annoying to all involved when you need to drag a power cord through a playing area. If you can, avoid it.
- a tripod! hand-held footage looks kinda crappy. If you really have to do it that way, try to use two hands and make sure YOU are looking through the view-finder. Otherwise your hands will jitter and you won’t notice until a week later when you watch your Touretted footage. Plus if you look through the internal viewfinder, you’ll save hours of battery life on most cameras.
- pencils: this lets you jot down what’s on the tape, and erase it if you screw up. There’s no good reason to be writing on your tapes with pens unless you’re planning on single usage of the tapes.
It can be cool to get ambient noise and crowd sounds between exciting matches, but you’ll save hours of film by pressing pause between matches. That’s your call. It’ll make your editing a lot easier if you use pause, though, since that’s a natural break in the camera’s recording that any decent editing application will automatically mark as a new match.
Try to say the names of the players before each set of matches between them, maybe even twice. You’ll likely never remember who was playing (if they don’t have a unique team), and you may not be able to hear yourself if you only say it once (crowd noise will foil you).
People are usually pretty good about letting you film, since it benefits them. You can usually repay them in part by sitting down while filming, which lets them have a nice view still. On the other hand, for really crowded events, it can be nice if your external viewfinder is extended so the people in the back rows can vaguely see what’s going on. As Bacardi mentions, if people don’t want to be recorded, don’t do it.
Anyways:
If you want to see something taped, ask to get it taped. Make sure you have the contact information for whomever is filming it so that you can actually ensure the footage gets out.
If you’re taping stuff, it’s nice to finally put it up. If you need a distribution channel: http://youtube.com , http://massmirror.com , my site, http://combovideos.com all should work for starters. There’s always some random awesome footage every tournament that was clearly taped and yet disappears forever. I try to track the best of that stuff down, but it can be difficult to find. A lot of the early Street Fighter footage is still probably only available in somebody’s shoebox. =\
I will probably be bringing two cameras. I think Rotendo is bringing a camera or two. I don’t know about anyone else. If you’re interested in taping CvS2, 3S, ST, or other non-Marvel footage - do it. I don’t often see many people taping those, so if you want it to happen, make it so. 
Anyways, just some random thoughts. See y’all this weekend.