Bohemian Cinema By Jonathan Pacheco

The Prophet Vince McMahon

Tags: TV, Sports, HD, XFL

In 2001, Vince McMahon brought us what many call one of the biggest flops in TV history: the XFL (and no, the “X” does not stand for “eXtreme”). Football was hot and wrestling was hot; why not create a hybrid? But a WWF-style in-your-face broadcast mixed with a rougher style of football didn’t seem to appeal to audiences or “true” sports journalists, and after one full season, the world bid adieu to the XFL.

I remember watching the first XFL game (was it really that recent?), and I was mystified by the presence of on-field cameramen. Guys with Steadicams ran around behind the quarterback to acquire an unprecedented view of the action. It seemed so wrong to have them there, as if it went against the integrity of the game, yet the angle was cool. A similar angle was achieved using a Cablecam that glided over the field on a set of wires.

Players and coaches were interviewed during the game, and the key ones were constantly mic’d. All this was done to bring a different experience to football—to get rid of the cold, stoic distance of the NFL broadcast and to put the viewer right onto the field with these larger-than-life characters (remember “He Hate Me?”). The funny part is that it seemed like the XFL was trying to make things feel more real for the audience, yet a constant criticism of the league was that, because of its professional wrestling roots, no one knew if any of the action and drama that they saw was even authentic.

So the XFL stunk, right? Pathetic, one of the worst ideas to ever pollute our sports and entertainment world. Right?

Yet, only a couple of years later, the National Football League implemented Cablecams and Skycams. We see Steadicams on the sidelines, getting right into the endzone action. Coaches and players are mic’d for “sounds of the game” segments that follow commercial breaks. This seems familiar….

No, Vince McMahon is no genius, and the XFL wasn’t the first to do a lot of these things, but it did help push sports broadcasting in the direction that it’s going in right now. I think the key thing to latch onto here is that McMahon understood, at least in part, what viewers want: to be closer to the action. The standard, tired formula of professional sports broadcasting is growing stale. They want something that will put them into the game, but at the same time, they want it to look and sound pretty. Sure, you can put handhelds on the sidelines to get them “into the game,” but wouldn’t a smooth Steadicam be better? Wouldn’t a slick, gliding Cablecam look a lot cooler? Wouldn’t some crisp, clean, candid audio from the field really put them into the game?

With HD running rampant in professional sports, a pretty picture is more important than ever. The NBA uses a Cablecam (though instead of being directly behind the players, it usually stays to the sidelines, moving from one end to the other), and the NHL has dabbled with it too (as well as the OmniCam, which I think is much better, at least for hockey).

But it’s very obvious that professional sports broadcasters are still trying to figure out how to use these tools. NBA games often tip off with the Cablecam providing a live feed, but they usually don’t cut to a more conventional angle until a team scores. Sometimes this can take a while, so the Cablecam is forced to follow back and forth basket-to-basket action which, because of the NBA’s infant status with the technology, can be very difficult; I can almost feel the camera operator sweating as he desperately tries not to mess up on live TV. It’s almost as if the broadcasters are afraid to cut from the Cablecam in the middle of any action for fear of jarring their viewer.

The NHL has tried something different called the Railcam. This camera is mounted on a contraption that runs back and forth on top of the glass. The resulting footage is definitely interesting, but it comes at a cost. Because the camera is close to the ice but only on one side of the rink, it’s difficult to see the puck when it’s on the opposite side. But the Railcam is also distracting. When the broadcast cuts to the standard wide shot of the game, you can easily see the Railcam running back and forth, and sometimes it blocks the action from the viewer’s eyesight (and from what I hear, it’s quite noisy too). To add to that, I’ve noticed little things that show that the broadcast team is still figuring this thing out (for example, the Railcam footage was a different color temperature than any of the other shots, making it stick out like a sore thumb).

But the point is that these sports are trying to make things more interesting—more cinematic if you will (the Cablecam is predominantly used on film sets, I’m guessing for epic battle shots). Is it because we’re in the age of HD and widescreen home theaters? I think that, because consumers are investing in creating a more vivid cinematic experience for their homes, the sports world feels it needs to meet that standard by giving them shots closer to the action, shots that really display the power of high definition, and yes, movie-like shots that glide over the field, giving us spectacular Lord of the Rings-type angles.

Was Vince McMahon thinking about the future of home entertainment when he employed some of these techniques for the XFL? Did he know that home theaters and high definition would create a demand for more dynamic broadcasts? I doubt it. But I do think that he recognized a desire for more experience and entertainment oriented events when it came to sports (I find it telling and ironic that TV Guide named the XFL one of the Worst TV Shows Ever. Shows).

So what does the future hold? Is this trend going to continue? Will broadcast teams hire cinematographers to help set-up and execute more artistic and experimental camera work? Or will something else come along? It seems that there’s already a push in sports to implement the technology that’s supposed to save the movie theater experience: 3-D. Will this be the next big thing?

Let me go ask Vince McMahon.