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| Posted by: ATG |
15/02/2007 11:53 |
Last year I heard about a film that had been made about football that was supposed to be the best moving image representation of the sport/game. I am not one to run out and buy things like this straight away, 15 years of the commercials business has made me cautious of 'well marketed formats' and as the subject matter was a difficult one to capture I waited for the grass roots to start whispering.
Although the subject matter and methodology of the film was intriguing.
A director had taken a great number of cameras to a Real Madrid game and they had followed Zidane, the great Zizou for the entire 90 minutes to capture a performance of a true maestro.
Those of you not schooled in the ways of football are safe to bet that Zidane was one of the absolute best, most graceful and toughest footballers of all time. Just a magician with the ball at his feet.
So it was when a good friend of mine came over for dinner and mentioned he had a copy of 'the movie' with him that with some trepidation we sat down in my living room and loaded the film on to my DVD player.
The concept of the film was bold and the risk great.
I have been on many film shoots were the set has been completely controlled, every move timed and practiced, every lighting shift measured and every camera angle set up and at the end of everything when reviewing the rushes we have realized that we still didn't get it right.
The aim of this film was to completely cover Zidane's movements, which over 90 minutes would be difficult to translate to the screen and keep the audience interested he may only get 45 minutes of actual action, meaning he may only be in possession for that time, but as he is a play maker, Grid Iron Quarter Back or Baseball Short-Stop if you like, the action should be great.
So to cover themselves the crew used loads of cameras and loads of angles, lots of different lenses and lots of different techniques. this would leave the editor in post production a lot of material to pad out the rest of the 90 minutes so as to keep us all involved.
A good plan and from what I could see that had set up a very professional shoot, to capture a very difficult piece of action, they used some lovely filmic techniques and they have an excellent soundtrack, essential for this kind of montage film.
The only thing that could go wrong would be 'he doesn't get much of the ball' or 'he gets sent off' but and this was the great Galacticos Real Madrid team where he is at the heart, surely he would be pulling the strings the whole game, surely ???
Er well actually no!!!
Despite the best efforts of everyone involved in the project, from the camera men, the director, the post editors even Zidane himself calling constantly for the ball to be played inside from the left wing, where it appears Roberto Carlos had decided to spend the whole game running down the left wing and ignoring Zidane in the middle, the great Zizou hardly got a touch all game.
He layed off some possession and he made one run which he crossed the ball and created a goal but unfortunately in the entire film all of his possession added up to maybe 6 minutes. Essentially the guy got one piece of proper possession and created a goal immediately, what were these Real players thinking of...
Oh! Did I say entire film?
Well yes, not entire match because he was also sent off for pushing the ref or arguing or whatever, but by that time I was too annoyed and disappointed.!!!!!!!!!
I have been in these edit suites many times with directors trying to get as much content in to a movie as possible, they had some nice quotes from him about what Americans sports people call the Zone but these were few and far between and seemed half hearted, or should I say ill prepared.
The bottom line is that you can't make a movie that is supposed to be 90 minutes about one guy when he is only involved for less than 10% of the time.
So to wrap up, it looks great, it sounds great, the bits Zidane does are great but it is just boring because there is just not enough material of the guy we are actually interested in seeing...
If you want to see some of Zidanes' stuff there are some clips on http://www.youtube.com
Click on this pic below to go and see one of them, it is about 10 minutes of skills and shots of other stuff! and it won't cost £15.99 at HMV.
What a shame as the great Zidane was and is such an awesome player!
Regards
Alistair
 The Great Zinedine Zidane
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