Look at a football field. It looks like a big movie screen. This is theatre. Football combines the strategy of chess. It's part ballet. It's part battleground, part playground. We clarify, amplify and glorify the game with our footage, the narration and that music, and in the end create an inspirational piece of footage.
Interpretation
Football is like a theatrical performance, blending strategy and artistry.
In this quote, Steve Sabol likens football to a theatrical spectacle, emphasizing the blend of strategy, artistry, and narrative that defines the game. He highlights how the presentation of football through film, narration, and music transforms the sport into an emotionally resonant performance that captivates audiences, much like a film or live theatre does.
In practice
During a sports documentary screening, one might quote Steve Sabol to emphasize the artistry of sports.
I have loved football as an almost mythic game since I was in the fourth grade. To me, the game wasn't even grounded in reality. The uniform turned you into a warrior. Being on a team, the mythology of physical combat, the struggle against the elements, the narrative of the game.
Design in art, is a recognition of the relation between various things, various elements in the creative flux. You can't invent a design. You recognize it, in the fourth dimension. That is, with your blood and your bones, as well as with your eyes.
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting...
The artist need not know very much, best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as he breathes or walks.
I thought that was a pretty stupid argument, really, because it's the final product that matters. The look of the film, however it's done, is still the cinematographer's vision in my mind. People said the same when color film came in, didn't they? The world evolves, and image-making evolves.
Art must be in touch with nature - and wherever that touch is gone, Art degenerates - yet it must be above nature.
When I'm writing from a character's viewpoint, in essence I become that character; I share their thoughts, I see the world through their eyes and try to feel everything they feel.
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