A Call to Shoot Sports Championships on Actual Film
HD has run its crystal clear little course.
It’s time for pro sports to zig while everyone else zags.
It’s time to shoot major sports championships on actual film.
Ditch the HD video cams, ditch the expectations of seeing every pore on Tiger Wood’s face when he lines up for a putt. Ditch the expectations of seeing every thing in real time. Put in a ten second lag, or whatever it would take to process the film and then broadcast it into our living rooms.
Film would add a layer of visual epicness that the modern presentation of sports has left behind. There was a time during the 1960s, when the baseball game of the week was presented on film. The videos exist on YouTube. And even seeing the clips on YouTube, the footage is pure magic.
There is a richness and a romantic quality to footage on film that all the accurately aligned pixels in the world could never simulate. Film is human. Sports are human. It’s a perfect conceptual match.
Even better yet, bring in a big name film director to shoot major sporting events. Lets see how Spielberg would compose and frame the World Series. What if we gave the track and field events at the Olympics to Scorsesse? Imagine if David Fincher shot the Super Bowl. Not the commercial that played at halftime, but the actual game itself?
Allow these top directors to bring our favorite sports traditions to a new light. Let them use the magic of film to explore and amplify the subtle human drama that eludes HD video. Lets put a director’s eye, and the medium of actual film in play at major sports championships. Why does every World Series have to fit the same visual format? Why does the Super Bowl always have to have the same types of shots? We deserve the freedom to see sports as the art and exploration of human drama that they are. Lets enhance these events by raising the quality of presentation to levels that no HD video camera can take us.
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