Art can take many forms. We’re concerned with two…
The Romance of Film and Football
Ok, when you watch a movie, how do you know it’s good? Not just entertaining, but, good. Usually, you kind of just… feel it. After ingesting the whole movie, you simply realize if it’s a quality piece of art or not. Observing specific facets and techniques requires, without being pretentious, a trained eye. The good news is, you don’t need a Ph.D. or an Oscar or a feature on Rotten Tomatoes to obtain a trained eye. You need experience and self-reflection. We are all in the midst of training our eyes (and ears for that matter), and this blog will reflect our journey. It’s difficult to write about art. Written languages aren’t meant to be able to encapsulate a film. I mean, that’s why there are films and then there are books. Bear with me as I attempt to learn, teach, and discuss each post.
Now let us begin with what makes a good film. Writing, cinematography, acting, and sound design are the four main components of a film. They all intertwine heavily through the deliberate art of picking and choosing when to drop bits of information for the viewer to digest and handle. I’m going to start a new paragraph deliberately because I want you to think about that sentence for a second. Ok. Onwards.
In writing, there is a key balance between subtlety and exposition, leading to the perfect combination of mysteriousness and context. The camera acts as a second tool: choosing angles, movement, or focal length depending on the mood or actions needed to carry on the story. Strong acting can be found via obvious actions such as physical responses or impressive monologues, to minute moments such as the timing of when to blink or an ever-so-slight smirk where lips are moved by one single millimeter. The sound design provides the viewer additional sensory stimulation, especially when dialogue is not present, by creating beats and rhythm audibly, leading to emotional responses we are used to from listening to music, and suspense from uncomfortable sound effects or the timing of those sounds in relation to what we see.
Similar to film, understanding the sport on a granular level requires a trained eye. In football, it can be quite easy to pick out a standout performer from an average bunch. Take a player like Allan Saint-Maximin at Newcastle for instance. His attacking output and penchant for successfully taking players on has made him a fan favorite at St. James’ Park during what has admittedly been a rocky few years up on Tyneside for the club. Anyone that watches him play can appreciate his finesse and tell for themselves that he’s a cut above his teammates in terms of individual ability. But there’s more to it underneath. Appreciating one’s center of gravity, control, and balance is less clear than dazzling scissors and flicks. Recognizing a player’s decision-making and mental mapping skills is even more obscure. In modern times, deciphering player performance requires focusing on a multitude of moving parts, which is rarely a one-person undertaking.
Football clubs have turned to new approaches for automating the link between observations and takeaways. The heavy stats discourse behind most major American sports has yet to pervade the football sphere, that is, until roughly the last half-decade, which has seen the creation of novel metrics to assist in player evaluation and recruitment. Among these, expected goals (xG) have helped determine the quality of chances a team creates over a 90-minute period, while other more comprehensive statistics such as field-tilt and passes per defensive action (PPDA) are intended to quantify territorial dominance and defensive intensity, respectively. These terms may sound novel to the typical fan, but trust us when we say they’re well entrenched in smaller, more analytical footballing circles.
For better or for worse, the shift towards actively using data in football has unintentionally created a subsequent backlash amongst traditional viewers of the beautiful game. Former players, managers, and pundits of previous footballing generations have publicly derided some of these newer metrics, citing the unwanted Americanization of the sport in a way that’s historically uncharacteristic of the game’s fluid viewership. For years football has managed to keep its proverbial gates shut — but change is afoot. From the influx of foreign money precipitating controversial elite-driven reforms to the recent inclusion of hard data in football analysis, the game is in a golden state of globalization and these trends are harder than ever to ignore.
Similar cash-charged adaptations to the once creative-led film industry have been materializing since Jaws. Every year, Marvel flicks account for a larger and larger percentage of total box office sales. However, just like spotting a superstar on the pitch, it’s easy to tell which films deserve to be in the running for an Oscar. The nominees for Best Picture may not be everyone’s favorite movies from the year, but they all have an objective quality to them that warrants their inclusion, just like a team’s tactics lead to more points in the league standings. Much like Hemingway and his Iceberg theory, the deeper meaning behind these two expressive mediums can only be tacitly understood if the viewer has an eye for detail. Whatever buried excellence there may be present, it’s not something that can easily be put into words, and the nuance behind it is hardly surface level. With this in mind, our ambition for this publication is to lend our insight to the subtleties of both sport and cinema, discussing what we think is worth paying attention to when navigating these spaces.
