Watching the Match

This blog entry draws on the August 21 FTVMS 200 lecture, which addressed the mediation of sports spectacle through film and television.

When you watch a sporting event on television, the camera angles and camera shots are pre-selected to create a narrative structure for the game. The wide angle shot is for context, the panning shot for suspense, the close-up for drama, etc. Viewers are taken by the hand and led through the dramatic events of sport with the assistance of a pre-fab narrative: the running commentary of experts. Specific responses are encouraged through the depiction of the actions, interactions, and reactions of both athletes and fans. Watching a game live is a very different experience. Rather than being led through the game with the interpretive assistance of television, one must write the story of the game themselves. The live viewer has to follow plays- ‘zooming in’ and ‘panning’- with their own eyes. They narrate the game in their own head or in conversation with the people around them.

On Saturday night I went to the All Blacks v. Australia match at Eden Park. Though I was right there in the stands and the players were right there on the field, I watched a lot of the match through the lens of my digital camera. Sure, as a first time rugby fan I was ignorant to the rules of the game and was thus unable to follow all the action and build a proper understanding of what was going on, but mostly I just wanted documentation. Lots of spectators around me- even the die-hard rugby fans- held digital cameras in front of their faces too. Even as we all paid to see the game live and got ourselves revved up about being there, we chose to watch the game on hand-held screens. Ironically, just in order to prove that we were there to take in the raw, unmediated spectacle of sport, we mediated our live experience with technology.