The Beautiful Game

The Last of the Friendlies …

Beautiful Game — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 19:11:14 +0000

Ok so I’m sure that what you really want to know is that … England WON

Today’s Friendly vs. Germany was a very different match to the teams norm. The competitive edge made a real difference to how the team played, and everything was faster than normal. There were more collisions, and more injuries than any of the other games we’ve seen. It was a dramatic match that had us fighting to keep focused on our jobs, and not just watching the game unfold. I’m not going to give too much away – you’ll have to watch our film! But I will say this …

There was an audience of around 200 people, who cheered and supplied ‘Ooooooooooos’ and ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhs’, and sat among them was Rich, one of the teams goalies, who has broken his hand and will be stuck in the crowd until it heals.

Gribbo and Clarke were star strikers today, playing hard and fast upfront and scoring themselves a goal each. The defensive team blocked all of Germany’s attempts to score, so it ended up England 2, Germany 0.

We took Dave and Mike, friends from the course, to provide extra camera angles and designated sound recording, so hopefully the game should look pretty good in the end film.

We’ve wrapped shooting now, and are moving into editing and finishing up the piece. (Our Uni hand-in is May 25th – pressure huh!) There’s a lot of work still to come, but it’ll be exciting to see months of work start to come together!

Massive thankyous to everyone at the FA, RNC, Point4 Centre, and to the Team and Coaches.

It’s been amazing to see the skill and professionalism of the team, and I can’t wait to see the end product!

Addy

Morning in Exeter

Beautiful Game — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:52:23 +0000

In a change from filming the players up in Hereford, Addy and I had
decided that we wanted to see some of the players away from the
England sessions. Part of this was achieved just after Easter Monday
as I went to Exeter to film three of the players training for the
upcoming friendly with Germany.

Addy, having a week back home for Easter and birthday celebrations,  
left it to me to go with a couple of fellow students, Chris and
Edwina, to see them train. At first when organising the trip, Addy and
I thought we were in for another intense work out session in the gym.
However, when I arrived, we found out that we were filming the guys
practising ball control, passing and shooting in the sports hall.

The players interviewed were Dan James, one of the sighted goalkeepers
competing for number 1 shirt. Robin Williams, an out field player
blind from birth and who studies at Exeter University. And Keryn Seal,
an attacking forward who became blind and similar to a couple of the
others in the squad, went from the partially blind format of the game
to the B1 classification.

Dan put Robin and Keryn through their paces with tasks to test
different abilities, whilst the two of them fire shoots at every
opportunity towards him in goal. Even though the pitch was different
and the goal wider but short, the amount of shots on target was very
impressive. Some, to Dan’s frustration, unstoppable.

What I really got out of this trip was seeing the trio’s determination
and dedication to not only themselves, but towards the sport and to
the squad. There is a strong bond in the England squad, but they know
they are fighting for their place in the team. As we draw ever close
to the tournament, increasingly more time will be spent by Dan, Robin,
Keryn and the others in the squad in keeping their fitness up and
retain their sharpness.

After our two early starts for Exeter and London where we interviewed
David Clarke, Addy and I are looking forward towards a little lie in
on Saturday the 17th before the big friendly, England v Germany. I
can’t wait!

Andrew

London In a Day

Beautiful Game — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:00:45 +0000

Just to explain myself a little on this one, I was in Cornwall this week celebrating my birthday, and returned to join some friends for drinks on Sunday night.

This morning I had to wake up at 5.30am to get a 6.40 train to Harpenden, via the rush hour tube and two train changes. But, I got to see David Clarke, captain of the British Blind Football Team, at his home for a more intimate interview. We were working on a pretty tight time limit so that he could shoot off to the World Cup Draw at Wembley straight afterward, but it just went brilliantly. We got to ask all the questions that we have wanted to ask for weeks, as well as getting to meet Dave’s lovely wife and one of his sons.

It was great to get this footage, and Andrew and I both entered into our return journey pretty excited about the whole thing.

Two hours of train journey and intermittent napping later, we got to thinking about a new, more powerful title for the piece. “The Beautiful Game” is kind of a cliche I confess, and we are desperately seeking a new title. If anyone can come up with one, let me know, and I’m sure we can figure some kind of reward – we really want a new one!

Right now we’re looking at two possible titles:

An Uncommon Sense

An Answering Call

I’d love feedback on these ideas, and it doesn’t have to be positive – these are our only possible titles from a page of A4 covered in them. We’d love help!

Addy

Transcribed

Beautiful Game — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 18:33:55 +0000

Well my main mission of the last few days has been trying to get everything the players said in their interviews down in writing. In a control freak sort of way I want to be able to pick each sentence that makes it into the final edit, and to do that I need to know each word that was spoken. That’s meant several hours of transcribing, with the longest interview now in nine pages of text. It works out close to 15,000 words all in all, so I sort of feel like my tippy-tappy fingers have earned a little break. Now I’m going to sit and read through them all, and try and persuade someone else to turn the pages for me!

Brightness & Contrast

Beautiful Game — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:48:50 +0000

After being advised that this site might not be the easiest to read for people with visual impairments, we’ve now set up http://beautifulgame2.wordpress.com/

This is an all text version of the site, in high contrast.

The same content will appear on both, and you can expect the same updates at the same times, it’s just a case of picking how you’d like it presented!

http://beautifulgame2.wordpress.com/

Addy

More on the Way

Beautiful Game — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:09:40 +0000

So today I’ve been chatting to some of the players about meeting up and doing some filming outside of the normal training. Exciting stuff, we’ll be heading down to Exeter in the next week or so, and updates will follow shortly I’m sure.

Meanwhile we are in discussion about the title of the project. Should we stick to ‘The Beautiful Game’ or go to something that gives a better idea of what it’s all about? We’re in the process of making the website for the film so we need to get moving on a title pretty sharpish!

Feel free to make some suggestions – I’m struggling to think of alternatives at the moment!

Addy

Incredibly Impressed

Beautiful Game — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:27:50 +0000

So this weekend saw us back in Hereford, and saw the team training and playing just as impressively as the week before.

The first time we went to Hereford I was nervous that I was going to make a big mistake, put my foot in my mouth somehow, and I was definitely really conscious of the fact that the team were blind. Having spent so much more time with them I now have to remind myself that these people powering the ball around the pitch, can’t actually see it. It’s an incredibly impressive thing to watch. I know without doubt that most people couldn’t play like this, even fully sighted. The team are incredible, and the communication and senses that go into the game are completely magic as far as I’m concerned. These guys are working so hard, and that’s why they’re the best. I can’t wait to see them play Germany – trying to focus on filming is going to be the biggest challenge, because already I just want to watch.

This weekend I took my beloved 70-300 lens, and snapped some shots of the team playing – about 250 pics in all – so here are a couple to tide you over.

In the next few weeks we’ll be heading around the country to get to know the team a bit better, and to see the players in a different environment, so, of course, I’ll keep you posted.

Addy

Filming Weekend ONE

Beautiful Game — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:55:13 +0000

Andrew and myself went to Hereford for a three day weekend, and were lucky enough to see the team play, train, smash it in the gym, do some extreme stretching and even got to hang out with the team for some (rather delicious) meals.

After three days we were still blown away everytime, by the skill of the players, the pace of the game, and by how drawn in we were, straight away.

I’m going to confess – I’m not the World’s biggest football fan. I don’t support a team even. But I could watch the blind team play for hours. It’s a spectacular thing to see. And when you consider how hard football is – fully sighted I can barely play – this really is a remarkable talent.

I am so excited to start showing this to people. Showing people how fast and how skilled this game is. It’s different to anything else I’ve seen. Suddenly sighted football is looking pretty dull.

This really is the Beautiful Game, and I can’t wait to go back again.

Recent Reconnaissance

Beautiful Game — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 12:26:39 +0000

January the 4th saw Andrew and myself on an expedition to Hereford. We rose early, triple checked our equipment, double checked our train times, booked a taxi, and arrived on time at the train station. Perfect, right up until our train encountered “an issue on the line” and we had to watch our connecting train steam past us.

Our wonderfully planned morning thankfully left room for error, so we had just enough time to wait for our second train to become delayed, ending in a frantic rush, and resulting in us arriving 25 minutes late.

However in a stroke of luck we jumped into the first taxi we saw, and started chatting about our project, only to find out that the driver knew the England coach, and could give us a bit more background – he used to play for Hereford for starters.

Once we eventually made it to our destination (a mere three hours after setting out), we found Tony and his PA awaiting our arrival, and immediately sat down to talk business. Turns out we’re on the same page about most things – a very positive beginning, to hopefully a bright future. We got shown around the new Point 4 centre, which is equipped with everything you could think of, and Tony talked us round the place, explaining how it all works, and how the team occupy their time there.

We’ve captured some footage of our adventures with Tony on film, and will be locking ourselves in dark rooms to make transcripts of everything he told us, as well as studying the centre so that when we’re hanging out with the team we can at least look like we know where we’re going.

Next month will see Andrew and I on a long weekend with the England boys, and I’ve got til then to learn all the rules of football, and watch all the teams back-catalogue.

Wish us luck!

Meeting Numero Uno

Beautiful Game — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:21:49 +0000

So on January 4th we’ll be talking to the team’s coach, face to face, for the first time.
We’ve cleared out our diaries and we’re racking our brains to think about what we should be asking, what we want to know …

So now we’re aiming to practice our filming skills – filming football is going to be pretty different to anything we’ve done before. Fast movement, the sound of a sports hall, audience noises to contend with. It’s going to be a bit different to the short fiction films we’ve worked on in the past, so now it’s all about practice making perfect before the big day!