Wednesday 6 February 2013

'The Smell Of Football' - Daniel Musty (2012)

I saw this short documentary on a programme called The Shooting Gallery which showcases a range of different documentaries each week and the week I watched it it just happened to be about sports and I watched 'The Smell of Football' which was about a Portsmouth super fan. It started with him in the library doing his job dressed in ordinary work clothes and then it shows him at home and all the Portsmouth memorabilia he has, he then transforms into his Portsmouth fan outfit and is shown on a match day - at the pub, going in to the match and during the match.


I like how they show the transformation from normal week day to weekend where he transforms in to this big colourful well-known character because you see him at work in a library and it is such a contrast to his weekend persona when he becomes the super fan. What I also like is how he is narrating all the way through and through this you find out he is always the super fan, it doesn't go away during the week, it doesn't depend what league there in, his live is following Portsmouth.


I felt that this piece fitted in to a poetic style of documentary because of this way it was filmed and it also didn't contain sync sound because he narrated over the top and there was also gentle music in the background  which built at certain points in the film.
There were lots of cutaway shots to help paint the picture of this man and his life - in the library there were close up shots of books, in his house there were close up shots of his memorabilia and then of his clothes when he was getting ready like his big blue and white (Portsmouth colours) clown shoes, putting his Portsmouth stick on tattoos on to his face and then at the match there were a range of different cutaways of things you see at a match like programme sellers, burger vans, people queuing, the football ground, rowdy fans etc.




These shots have given me a lot of inspiration for how I want our 2 minute to be filmed because I want to include loads of cutaway shots that help paint a picture of what Tango is like and also establish a context and tell a story. I also like the use of close ups as I think they are intimate and when you're trying to tell a story about someone you want it to be intimate so the audience can identify and really get a feel for this person.
I think this is a really effective way of getting a point across of how something is without saying what it is or explaining it, it's nice just to watch all the visuals and take it all in.




At the end there was a shot of him from behind walking away from the stadium after the match and even though it's quite simple I liked the way they built it up towards the match with all the fans and colours and things going on then at the end it had all stopped and everything was quiet again and he was just walking home to start his week and his ordinary job all over again - until next week that is.


I also noticed that they had used colour as well to give it this quite white/hazy-dream like quality and this was quite effective and for me also added to the poetic feel of it. To me it portrayed football being like something so great - it's like a dream to him and it's this precious, special event that happens every week. I guess you think of white being good or God-like and to this man football is everything it is probably like a religion to him.

This is what I found on the production teams blog who made the documentary, I really liked the shots so it's interesting to know what camera they shot on, also they mention capturing special moments which I think is really important and key in documentary, you've always got to be on the lookout for something unexpected.



Very big day for us today. We filmed the main parts of our documentary for Channel 4 which involved an early start getting ready with John before heading into Portsmouth for the pub sequence, Fratton build up and the football match. We shot the doc using the new Canon C300 which was a true dream to use. The image quality off this camera is incredible and it's small and light enough for us to get in the middle of the action.
The filming went really well. We got all the shots we were after including a few certain special moments which I don't think anyone could have predicted! The fans were great and Portsmouth even won the game 3 nil!

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