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An NFL Films First: The 1962 NFL Championship Game
The maiden voyage for NFL Films was almost a disaster, dunks to swirl
ing 30 mph winds and numbing 17-degree weather inside Arctic-like Yankee
Scadiiirn. on Dec. 30,1962. The severe conditions froze much of the film shot
by Ed Sabot s crew.
"When I went out on that field with my little crew, I didn’t believe we were
going to make it through the game," recalls Ed of the titanic 16-7 affair claimed
by Vince Lombardi’s young Green Bay Packers over the New York Giants, in
what ore game account called "a savage throwback to the more primitive days
cf football.”
"The crew started telling me diat some of the film was freezing and break
ing. I said, ‘My God, there goes the film I promised Pete Rozelle.' Fortunately,
we shot so much film that we were able to scrape together a 27-minute film.”
The film merited raves from Rozelle, and a year later, Sabol’s little company,
Blair Motion Pictures (named after his daughter, Blair), was purchased by the
NFL and became NFL Rims.
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Courtes/ of NFL F : r ns.
Ed Sabol, founder of NFL Films, examines footage in his film lab in 1967.
(Continued from page 8)
Picassos of pigskin
From the onset, the younger Sabol. a football-playing art major
at Colorado College in the 19605, was a part of his dad’s growing
company, first editing and later filming on the sidelines, before
evolving into the creative force behind NFL Films.
"My dad was the entrepreneurial vision and I guess you could
say I was the artist," Steve says. As a youngster, he was nurtured on
the 1950 s military TV drama series, Victory at Sea, and soon saw the
battleground of professional football as a worthy metaphor for war,
as well as art.
“I was captivated by the Richard Rodgers score, Leonard Graves'
narration," Steve recalls. "That had a huge influence on me. When
we started NFL Films, I said, That Victory at Sea ... I love the way
it was narrated, with die beautifi.il orchestral music.’”
Another serious wartime influence was Steve’s own father. Ed, a
World War II veteran, took part in both the invasion of Normandy
and the Battle of the Bulge. Even in describing his camera staff,
Steve cant resist a military’ metaphor.
“Teddy Roosevelt told the Rough Riders before they stormed
San Juan Hill, ‘Do what you can, with what you have, where you
are.' That’s what I tell our cameramen,” says Steve, whose film
crews shoot an average of 225,(XX) feet of film to cover 16 NFL
games each weekend during the regular season. “They're their own
directors," he says of his 10 full-time cameramen and up to 60
independently contracted shooters. “They’re artists. They don’t have
anybody in their ear saying. ‘Shoot this, shoot that.' Once the game
starts, they go and shoot whatever they want."
Over the years rhar freedom has produced innovation. Hoping
to bring the games to life, the Sabols layered footage with orchestral
music, provided astonishing slow-motion close-ups of spiraling foot
balls falling gracefully into the hands of wide receivers, and included
candid comments from microphone-wearing players and coaches to
take fans behind the scenes. They capped it off with the rumbling
Shakespearean tones of narrator John Facenda, who described “the
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