Monday, October 1, 2012
EPCOT and the '64 NFL Championship Game film
NFL Films' blog discusses the connection between EPCOT and the third NFL Championship Game film produced by Blair Motion Pictures, aka NFL Films: http://nflfilms.nfl.com/2012/10/01/this-date-in-football-nfl-films-lands-on-spaceship-earth/
Monday, September 24, 2012
R.I.P., Steve
When I heard the news last week, I felt as though I'd lost a friend.
NFL Films tribute promo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8Kb_ZVFWTh8
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Blair Motion Pictures becomes NFL Films
NFL Films has its own blog now, as you may be aware. I'll post here periodically as I find items of interest, but it seems appropriate and necessary to link to the NFL Films blog in recognition of the day Blair Motion Pictures became NFL Films.
http://nflfilms.nfl.com/2012/03/05/this-day-in-football-nfl-films-is-born/
Friday, November 11, 2011
Tales from Big Game America
Regarding the 1969 film "Big Game America:"
http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-videos/09000d5d82401c37/Tales-from-the-Vault-Big-Game-America
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
1966 -- Impressively ambitious
In 1966 only, NFL Films produced a "Game of the Week" program for nearly every game played. Six or seven games each week, according to the Game of the Week special-order page at NFLFilms.com:
http://www.nflfilms.com/specialorders/index.html
It's worth noting that the league had 15 teams that season -- it was Atlanta's first year in the league, and New Orleans did not join until 1967. As post-merger interleague play (Super Bowl excepted) took place only in the preseason, and not at all in 1966, one NFL team had a bye each week of the season. So on weeks where seven games are listed, that means that each of that week's games was given a "Game of the Week" treatment. (I haven't been able to determine why, for some weeks, only six games are listed.)
Here's an example of the "Game of the Week" in the 1966 style. If you watch it -- and I know you will -- you'll see that there was very little music incorporated into the production. It looks like they edited the film, had the narrator come in to record, then rushed the prints to the respective affiliate stations:
I know they were sending a crew to each game at this point, but to produce a 25- to 28-minute program for each of those games? I'm guessing they hired a lot of freelancers that season.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
1967 Sports Illustrated feature on Ed Sabol
From the Nov. 20, 1967 issue:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1080582/1/index.htm
It's great fun to take a look at the early days of NFL Films, when "They Call It Pro Football" was something they'd made earlier that year. But here's an intriguing bit, from that article:
All of the NFL highlight recaps one sees on television this season are the work of Sabol. So is the official NFL championship game film. His off-season show, Edwin Sabol Presents, muscled into prime time last spring and ran all summer.
In an earlier post on this blog, I shared what I'd found in the New York Times TV listings from the spring and summer of '67. But it's only in this article that I've seen the weekly show described as "Edwin Sabol Presents."
The credits sequences on the team highlights for the '66 season -- those that I've seen, that weren't omitted from videotapes issued by NFL Films -- are for a show called "NFL Action." There's a quick-edit sequence of about 5 seconds, and then you see the film's introduction by Frank Gifford. (I picture Frank hopping from city to city in the spring of '67.)
I'm mystified. Was Sabol pulling the SI writer's leg? Was the series actually called "Edwin Sabol Presents" in 1967? I lean toward the former, since there's no evidence of the latter.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1080582/1/index.htm
It's great fun to take a look at the early days of NFL Films, when "They Call It Pro Football" was something they'd made earlier that year. But here's an intriguing bit, from that article:
All of the NFL highlight recaps one sees on television this season are the work of Sabol. So is the official NFL championship game film. His off-season show, Edwin Sabol Presents, muscled into prime time last spring and ran all summer.
In an earlier post on this blog, I shared what I'd found in the New York Times TV listings from the spring and summer of '67. But it's only in this article that I've seen the weekly show described as "Edwin Sabol Presents."
The credits sequences on the team highlights for the '66 season -- those that I've seen, that weren't omitted from videotapes issued by NFL Films -- are for a show called "NFL Action." There's a quick-edit sequence of about 5 seconds, and then you see the film's introduction by Frank Gifford. (I picture Frank hopping from city to city in the spring of '67.)
I'm mystified. Was Sabol pulling the SI writer's leg? Was the series actually called "Edwin Sabol Presents" in 1967? I lean toward the former, since there's no evidence of the latter.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
The Names of the Programs
"NFL Play by Play Report" -- The game-of-the-week program in 1965.
"NFL Game of the Week" -- From 1966 to ... well into the 1980s. I can't recall when the "Game of the Week" stopped being a staple of Saturday afternoon fall programming. Around 1987, perhaps? That was the year that the league started televising one regular-season game a week on either TNT or ESPN.
"NFL Action" -- The weekly program from spring 1967 until at least 1969. I've seen this title used in the introductory credits for '68 highlight films.
"This Week in the NFL" -- During the 1968 season, the show with highlights of the previous week's NFL games. Pat Summerall was the host of this 30-minute program. Not all of the previous week's games were featured.
"AFL Hilites" -- NFL Films handled the highlight films for the last two seasons of the AFL. Sabol's crews wore "AFL Films" windbreakers to shoot the games. Original AFL announcer Charlie Jones hosted this 30-minute weekly highlight film, and the end credits said the shows were a production of AFL Films Inc. This same copyright was used for the 1968 AFL Championship Game highlight film, and '69 season highlight films for AFL teams.
"This Week in Pro Football" -- The predecessor to "Inside the NFL" on HBO, and later Showtime. In 1969, with the NFL-AFL merger not yet complete, Charlie Jones (AFL) and Pat Summerall (NFL) were the co-hosts of this hourlong program, which had segments on each of the previous week's games, and often a featurette, such as Rudyard Kipling's "If" read by John Facenda. Beginning in 1970, the co-hosts were Summerall and Tom Brookshier.
"NFL Game of the Week" -- From 1966 to ... well into the 1980s. I can't recall when the "Game of the Week" stopped being a staple of Saturday afternoon fall programming. Around 1987, perhaps? That was the year that the league started televising one regular-season game a week on either TNT or ESPN.
"NFL Action" -- The weekly program from spring 1967 until at least 1969. I've seen this title used in the introductory credits for '68 highlight films.
"This Week in the NFL" -- During the 1968 season, the show with highlights of the previous week's NFL games. Pat Summerall was the host of this 30-minute program. Not all of the previous week's games were featured.
"AFL Hilites" -- NFL Films handled the highlight films for the last two seasons of the AFL. Sabol's crews wore "AFL Films" windbreakers to shoot the games. Original AFL announcer Charlie Jones hosted this 30-minute weekly highlight film, and the end credits said the shows were a production of AFL Films Inc. This same copyright was used for the 1968 AFL Championship Game highlight film, and '69 season highlight films for AFL teams.
"This Week in Pro Football" -- The predecessor to "Inside the NFL" on HBO, and later Showtime. In 1969, with the NFL-AFL merger not yet complete, Charlie Jones (AFL) and Pat Summerall (NFL) were the co-hosts of this hourlong program, which had segments on each of the previous week's games, and often a featurette, such as Rudyard Kipling's "If" read by John Facenda. Beginning in 1970, the co-hosts were Summerall and Tom Brookshier.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Copyright issues
I absolutely love NFL Films. But sometimes they have issues with identifying what year a film was made.
"They Call it Pro Football" was once identified, on "This is the NFL" (I think that was its name then) in the early '90s, as having been released in 1966. But there's a montage in the beginning from Super Bowl I, which of course was played on Jan. 15, 1967. In a couple of interviews in recent years, Steve Sabol has been quoted as saying they made it in 1965.
They have recycled some program titles, so I can't say with certainty that they didn't make a film in 1965 titled "They Call It Pro Football." But the one with narration by John Facenda, music by Sam Spence and the ground-breaking editing of Yoshio Kishi couldn't have been made before 1967, since it has the Super Bowl I footage.
But that's such a miniscule nit to pick: As Sabol said in the "Lost Treasures of NFL Films" episode "NFL Films Style," when they brought together Spence and Facenda for the first time, they knew they were on to something. Plus, they'd made the boss really happy: Sabol quotes Pete Rozelle as saying, after the film premiered at the Huntington Hartford Theater, "That's not a highlight film. That's a movie."
"They Call it Pro Football" was once identified, on "This is the NFL" (I think that was its name then) in the early '90s, as having been released in 1966. But there's a montage in the beginning from Super Bowl I, which of course was played on Jan. 15, 1967. In a couple of interviews in recent years, Steve Sabol has been quoted as saying they made it in 1965.
They have recycled some program titles, so I can't say with certainty that they didn't make a film in 1965 titled "They Call It Pro Football." But the one with narration by John Facenda, music by Sam Spence and the ground-breaking editing of Yoshio Kishi couldn't have been made before 1967, since it has the Super Bowl I footage.
But that's such a miniscule nit to pick: As Sabol said in the "Lost Treasures of NFL Films" episode "NFL Films Style," when they brought together Spence and Facenda for the first time, they knew they were on to something. Plus, they'd made the boss really happy: Sabol quotes Pete Rozelle as saying, after the film premiered at the Huntington Hartford Theater, "That's not a highlight film. That's a movie."
Every Subculture Needs a Place to Meet
I've been a fan of NFL Films for more than 20 years. I remember the thrill I felt early in 1984, when ESPN (there was only one then, kids) aired "Lombardi," the 1968 biography of the coach that pre-empted "The Ed Sullivan Show" when it was shown on Sept. 15, 1968, the first day of the '68 NFL season. It was my first time seeing it.
Being a Packers fan stuck, at that moment, in the long stretch of mediocrity (at best) between Lombardi and Holmgren, I was agog: "Look at that great footage!" I think I knew the name of John Facenda at that point; I didn't know that he was stricken with the cancer that would take his life a few months later. (The Super Bowl XVIII highlight film was his last, Steve Sabol said in a tribute piece.) But I had a sneaking suspicion that it was between him and James Earl Jones as the Voice of God.
Were you like me? Did you scan the (printed) TV listings to see when ESPN would show "NFL's Greatest Moments"? Did you look forward to August because you knew it meant the team highlight films from the previous season would be shown daily? If so, you've come to the right place.
Being a Packers fan stuck, at that moment, in the long stretch of mediocrity (at best) between Lombardi and Holmgren, I was agog: "Look at that great footage!" I think I knew the name of John Facenda at that point; I didn't know that he was stricken with the cancer that would take his life a few months later. (The Super Bowl XVIII highlight film was his last, Steve Sabol said in a tribute piece.) But I had a sneaking suspicion that it was between him and James Earl Jones as the Voice of God.
Were you like me? Did you scan the (printed) TV listings to see when ESPN would show "NFL's Greatest Moments"? Did you look forward to August because you knew it meant the team highlight films from the previous season would be shown daily? If so, you've come to the right place.
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