NFL Films & Hollywood: A Mutual Admiration
The Shadow
By Randy Williams
Special to NFL.com
Note: What makes a Hollywood blockbuster? It's a combination of visuals,
script and music. The same can be said for NFL Films highlights, so it's no
surprise NFL Films and Hollywood have influenced each other over the years.
With the Academy Awards being announced March 23, NFL.com examines the
relationship.
Just like every other fan, some of the most respected and talented creative
artists in Hollywood have grown up watching Bart Starr's Ice Bowl plunge on
NFL Presents or "The Catch" by Dwight Clark on Inside the NFL. Academy Award
winning producers and directors of some of the biggest films of the silver
screen have been greatly influenced by the film style and vision of Steve
Sabol and NFL Films.
They've applied some of his innovative techniques to their motion picture
projects. As a winner of 82 Emmy Awards in just about every category
applicable, NFL Films is greatly respected by its film counterparts on the
West Coast.
Hollywood directors and cinematographers have expressed their gratitude for
what they've learned from NFL Films' ability to capture the theatrical
essence of telling a story.
Ron Howard, winner of last year's Academy Award as best director for A
Beautiful Mind, credits Sabol with the use of montages as well as the use of
slow-motion combined with live-action and powerful music as a significant
impact on modern filmmaking.
David Anspaugh, director of Hoosiers and Rudy, said: "The sights, the
sounds, the action -- NFL Films paints a canvas of the entire football
experience. It's not just a documentation of a game, it is about emotions
and striving."
Certainly the slow-motion cinematography seen in many feature films has
drawn upon NFL Films' innovations -- the heightened reality, the sense of
personal involvement, the detail. All of these elements help the viewer feel
more personally connected to the event.
NFL Films has a reputation for its dramatic flair but has also excelled in
the comedic vein, spawning the blooper industry long before Dick Clark.
Sabol, NFL Films president and the son of Films founder Ed Sabol, recalls
the origins of Football Follies, one of the most popular sports shows ever.
"I remember going to the league office with my dad to show a few clips of
player goof-ups," he said. "This league official, a stiff, old-school,
ex-marine begins yelling at us saying it was humiliating to the league and
the players. I was petrified. But my dad insisted it would humanize these
big players and Commissioner [Pete] Rozelle was willing to give it a try if
the players agreed. Remember this is 1967, so we were taking a chance. We
went on to show it to the Eagles players after one of their practices and
they howled with laughter. I was pissed we didn't bring more footage."
Sabol has worked on many of Hollywood's football movies over the years --
Rudy . Paper Lion . Heaven Can Wait . Brian's Song . Semi-Tough . The
Waterboy . Jerry Maguire -- but he soon realized what movie directors didn't
understand about the filming of football action: "The thing that would
strike me was that . we would be brought in to shoot it and then it would be
edited in a way that would take all the realism out of it," the football
director said. "A football game has a certain kind of jagged rhythm to it.
We would set up the shot and they'd be using tape measures where one guy
would take the handoff and another would block and still another would
tackle. We said, 'Just do it. We'll get it, that's what we do. You can't
break it down, it won't look natural. Just let it flow.' "
While NFL Films has influenced Hollywood, Hollywood has certainly impacted
Sabol's style and philosophy of filmmaking, from camera shots to music.
"I remember Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones climbing up a mountain at the
end of Duel in the Sun," Sabol recalled. "There's this dramatic music and
the camera just shows Gregory Peck's bloody hands on the cliff, then
Jennifer Jones' face, then Peck's foot. That selection of detail stood out
for me because as we started shooting the NFL with a telephoto lens, I kept
in mind that detail from Duel in the Sun. Getting the details was very
important to me."
As an art major in college, Sabol remembered the words of French
impressionist painter Paul Cezanne, who said, "All art is selected detail."
That is probably where the indelible images of Dick Butkus' bloody, clasped
hands and Jack Lambert's toothless grin emerged from.
Strangely it was a love story, Claude LeLouch's A Man and a Woman , that
also greatly influenced the future NFL Films president. There is a sequence
where the audience basically sees the lead actor and actress fall in love
over cocktails and there is no dialogue, just music and a camera that sort
of swoops in and out. "I remember seeing that and telling myself, 'Wow, if
you could show something as complex as a man and a woman falling in love
with no script, we should be able to do that same thing with a football
game,' " Sabol said. "Because a football game is passionate and visceral. I
felt we could convey that intensity of a football game through our camera
angles and music."
The music has always been a key element of NFL Films productions. "I have
always loved the film scores of people like Elmer Bernstein," Sabol
revealed. "Being able to tell a story and have it complemented by a unique
style of music is something Hollywood . has done very well."
To that end, NFL Films has a whole music division, creating their own
scores, often using complete orchestrations. "Every time fans tell me how
much they like NFL Films, they always remember the music," Sabol said. "No
one ever seems to forget an NFL Films melody. The images we create as
storytellers become indelible because of the power of music."
The connections with Hollywood don't end there. "NFL Films may be the last
great Hollywood studio," stated David Thompson, film historian and author of
"The Biographical Directory of Film." The company's self-contained
"script-to-screen" operation in Mt. Laurel, N.J., is reminiscent of major
film studios of yesteryear. "We do everything here," Sabol said, "from the
film developing, music, writing, editing, and production. By doing it all in
one location, it provides us with a great continuity, spirit and is
definitely one of the secrets to our success in that we've had one
continuous creative vision for 40 years."
A creative vision influenced by, and influential to, Hollywood.