NFL Films
Parent National Football League | | |
Website | Official website |
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NFL Productions, LLC, doing business as NFL Films,
Founding
Founder
On August 6, 2011, Ed Sabol was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a major contributor to the National Football League. Sabol died on February 9, 2015, at his home in Arizona.
Style
Much has been made of the Films style. Salon.com television critic Matt Zoller Seitz has called NFL Films "the greatest in-house P.R. machine in pro sports history...an outfit that could make even a tedious stalemate seem as momentous as the battle for the Alamo."[6]
NFL Films productions follow certain patterns. Film is mostly used, one camera is dedicated entirely to slow motion shots,
Team-specific films such as year-in-review films have occasionally been narrated by broadcasters or personalities involved with the team in question. Examples include the
The style has been called tight on the spiral, a reference to the frequently-used
The company also makes prolific use of footage of players and coaches in the locker room after the game. With these techniques NFL Films turns football games into events that mimic ballet, opera, and epic battle stories. Among the company's most famous creations is the poem and accompanying music cue "The Autumn Wind", which have become official themes for the Las Vegas Raiders.
Television programs
One of NFL Films' most popular series is Hard Knocks. With production run entirely from the field and the NFL Films facility, NFL Films and HBO follow one NFL team as they go through training camp, leading up to the beginning of the season.
NFL Films produces the Greatest Moments series, which details classic games from the 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, 1990's, and 2000's (decade); the Lost Treasures series, which uses old NFL Films footage which had previously never been shown on television to look at football players, coaches, and referees; and NFL Films Presents, an umbrella title for other NFL Films productions that do not neatly fit an existing series (Katie Nolan serves as the current host of NFL Films Presents).
NFL Films also produces the
Among other television programs NFL Films is credited for producing include NFL Total Access and much of the NFL Network's programming output.[8] NFL Films also has a dedicated channel on free over-the-top service Pluto TV that launched in August 2019.[9]
NFL Films' game highlights were also a staple of HBO's Inside the NFL for its entire run; this will continue on that show's new network Showtime, in addition to having the company produce the show. NFL Films also produced for Showtime the five-part miniseries Full Color Football: The History of the American Football League, which aired in the fall of 2009 as part of the American Football League 50th anniversary celebration.
NFL Films produces an annual highlight film for each team every season, distributed by home video. If a team had a good year the film often revels in each victory, while breezing through, or skipping altogether, losses during the season. Inversely, if a team suffered through a poor season, the highlights commonly attempt to still show the team in a good light, however difficult that may be. Losses and pitiful play is commonly, and conveniently, edited out, leaving only isolated moments of success, prompting the viewer to not always realize how bad the team might have been. Most films conclude by portraying teams optimistically for the upcoming season, whether founded or not.[10]
The Sabols have used NFL Films to showcase their sense of humour, as in the
The presence of NFL Films' cameras allowed for the preservation of video footage from many of the NFL's 1960s-era games in an era when sports telecasts were either broadcast live without any recording or whose films and tapes were destroyed and recycled for later use, a practice that did not fully stop until 1978. Without the presence of NFL Films, there would be no surviving footage of several of the early Super Bowls. In comparison, other major leagues that lacked the film resources that the NFL had to have archives missing up through the 1970s, with much of the time before that preserved only by Canadian television broadcasters, though the National Hockey League struggled to find a national audience in the United States until after the 2004–05 NHL lockout. In Major League Baseball, the broadcasts of many World Series games before 1975 have been lost, and nearly all broadcasts of League Championship Series from the first series in 1969 to 1978 are gone.
Current programming
Source:[11]
- A Football Life
- NFL Films Presents
- Inside the NFL
- NFL Turning Point
- NFL Gameday All-Access
- NFL Matchup
- Peyton's Places
- NFL Icons, released through Epix on October 2, 2021[12]
- Good Morning Football
Upcoming programming
Success
Although NFL Films earns more than $50 million in revenue a year and is expanding at a double digit rate, compared to the $18 billion in revenue that the NFL earns from television alone, most consider this to be minor.[4] The real value of NFL Films is how it packages and sells the game and many credit it as a key reason that the NFL has become the most watched league in the United States.
In addition to covering the National Football League, NFL Films has also ventured into other unrelated documentary films, such as documenting the
The company has also done films for major college football programs, such as Colorado State University; the company's 1977 film on CSU's football program used John Denver's song "Rocky Mountain High" as well as an instrumental cover of The Beatles' song "Tell Me What You See", and noted alumni of the team who had gone on to NFL careers, such as Bill Larson of the Lions and Bill Kennedy of the Colts, Kevin McClain of the Rams, and Greg Stamrick of the Oilers.
NFL Films' distinctive style has been parodied in numerous commercials, particularly for the NFL's sponsors, including
NFL Films has won 112
Music rights controversy with Sam Spence
This section's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia. (September 2013) |
Sam Spence was long involved in a controversial situation with the NFL regarding the rights to perform or use his music in any media outlets.[15] In an interview, Spence reported he was convinced to sign a contract that relinquished all of the rights to his music to NFL Films under the promise that the League would return the document to him. Spence alleged that NFL Films claimed that his music was "stolen" and signing the document would empower them to protect the music in court.
Albums
- The Power and the Glory: The Original Music & Voices of NFL Films (1998)
- Autumn Thunder: 40 Years of NFL Films Music (2004)
- NFL Country (1996)
- Music from National Football League Films, LP NFL-1, c. 1970s.
Films
- Truth in 24 (2008)
- Lombardi (2011)
- Fantasy Football (2022)
- The Perfect 10 (2023)
NFL Films Lab
NFL Films operates its own in-house 16mm and 35mm Color Negative Processing Lab. This enables the film that is shot at each game to be rushed back to the Mt. Laurel facility and processed immediately so as to give the production team the maximum amount of time to produce its weekly shows.
The lab is open to the public for development needs. Clients include feature length and short films shot on location in Philadelphia as well as students at local universities.
The current lab is the third incarnation. The original lab was located in a building next to NFL Films original offices at 230 N 13th St in Philadelphia. The second lab was housed in the center of the NFL Films offices at 330 Fellowship Rd in Mt. Laurel, NJ. That entire one-story building has since been razed and replaced with a modern 4 story office building.
The third lab is located at the NFL Films current location in the Bishop's Gate industrial park in Mt. Laurel behind a two-story glass wall. This allows visitors to the offices to see the inner workings of the entire processing lab. Those on morning tours can often watch as employees develop film for use in weekly shows.
NFL Films Lab is also in charge of the archiving and maintenance of the vault. Containing over 100 continuous years of football footage, the vault houses all of the film that NFL Films has shot or acquired from other sources in its entire history. Currently, NFL Films is in the process of re-transferring all of its footage into high-definition format, although the original film will always be kept as it's likely to outlast tape medium in terms of degradation.
See also
- Football Follies
- Sam Spence
References
- ^ "NFL Films Gets Voice-Over Artist's Harassment Claims Tossed". Bloomberg Law. November 15, 2018. Retrieved February 7, 2021.
- ^ a b Ed Sabol: A Football Life television program, 2011
- ^ Rebecca Leung (December 5, 2007). "NFL Films, Inc". 60 Minutes. CBS News. Archived from the original on February 5, 2013.
- ^ a b "This Is NFL Films". Fortune. 2010-12-14. Archived from the original on 2005-12-18. Retrieved 2012-09-11.
- ^ "- YouTube". YouTube.[dead YouTube link]
- ^ Seitz, Matt Zoller (2011-02-07) The Super Bowl's bloated, chaotic spectacle, Salon.com
- ^ ION Media Networks Secures Rights to Air 2007 Season of "NFL Game of the Week" Produced by NFL Films, Yahoo!, September 10, 2007
- ^ List of programs offered by NFL Films Archived 2007-11-05 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ Hayes, Dade (2019-08-20). "NFL And Pluto TV Team For Streaming Channel "Celebrating" Pro Football's Past". Deadline. Retrieved 2019-08-21.
- ^ "2006 Bears: All For One". National Football League. 2007-09-23. Retrieved 2012-12-08.
- ^ "They Call It Pro Football". Official Blog of NFL Films NFL Films Productions. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
- ^ "NFL Icons". Epix. Retrieved 2 January 2022.
- ^ Porter, Rick (February 22, 2023). "Netflix, NFL Films Team for 'Quarterback' Docuseries". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved February 22, 2023.
- ^ "NFL Films Celebrates Five Emmy Wins". NFL Films. 2013-05-08. Retrieved 2013-05-28.
- ^ Alexander Klein, "The Sam Spence Case: The shocking truth about production companies and royalties," Film Score Monthly, April 2013.