Football Documentary Specialist Study Essay:

This essay will explore football documentaries and the impact they have had on the footballing Social
Media world, also the history of them and how they have shaped future football documentaries to make
them more entertaining. The essay will also help with how to make a documentary for the final project,
while using the codes and conventions, the issues, and debates that a football documentary needs to be
successful. Also, using the key practitioners and the historical context to help with knowing the type of
people to include in the final project, to make it intriguing to the fans.

The narrative for football documentaries follows quite a non-linear narrative. A couple examples of
types of documentaries are reflective documentaries, which are ones where the camera follows a
person around a topic and talk about their journey, it focuses more on the filmmaker and the audience.
An example in football documentaries would be Sir Alex Ferguson Never Give In, in this documentary we
follow the greatest British Manger Sir Alex Ferguson and him reflecting on his career, before, during and
after football. (Watch Sir Alex Ferguson: Never Give In | Prime Video, 2021) Another example is an
Expository Documentary, this type talks about a specific point or argument about a topic. The narrator
usually talks directory to the audience, to differentiate between an expository documentary and other
types. An example in football is Anton Ferdinands, Football, Racism and Me. In this documentary, Anton
Ferdinand talks about racism in football and how to help stop it around the world. (BBC iPlayer - Anton
Ferdinand: Football, Racism and Me, 2020) Persuasive documentaries try and convince the viewer to
agree with the documentaries point of view. The final type of documentary making is Investigative,
which is your typical crime documentaries. They try and expose controversial topics to the public and
are usually made by journalist who are trying to figure out certain murder stores or crime stories. They
are trying to do something that will change the outcome of the point. In documentaries there are two
types of on camera subject in documentaries, these are the experts and the witnesses. Experts are the
people who know everything about your topic, so for example in a football documentary that would be
the manager, directors, owners and potentially the players. The witnesses are the people who don’t get
a behind the scenes look at things but are still involved and can have their own opinion. In football these
would be the fans of the club. In the documentary you would typically have two ways to determine an
outcome, facts and opinions. In documentaries facts are what true and has proof that it is true. So,
showing footage of it being true is a way of showing fact. Opinion is what others think of the topic and
what their thoughts are on it. In football terms it could be something like should there be a wage cap in
the Premier League. You could show, how it has worked in other leagues as the facts and for the opinion
ask managers and players what they think on there being a wage cap.

In documentaries there are a lot of different types of footage, montage, voice over, interviews, actuality
and archival footage. Montage footage in documentaries are not as used as other types of footage
because you do not want to skip over parts of a documentary and when montages are used in
documentaries it usually indicates a change in time. A montage is a bunch of clips which link together in
a video to showcase a specific topic. Voice over footage is used to tell the audience about information,
opinions or to explain something. This is usually done with a shot of what the documentary is about
going on in the background. Interviews are the most common in documentaries so that the audience
can get opinions from people who are involved with both sides of a story. It allows the person to speak
about their experiences and gives the documentary and sense of realism. There are a lot of things to
look at. For interviews they look simple but are a lot more in depth. When setting up for an interview
you must think about the way it is shot, the background, the camera angle and if the place you are
filming is sensible. Research shows that when doing an interview for a football documentary, having
something that is not distracting in the background can make the audience listen to what is going on
more. So, something simple like a wall, fence or even the stadium so they know it is about football.
Matching the background to the colours of the team is always an effective way to make the background
still interesting but not distracting. (Punk Football, 2013) Actuality footage is anything filmed in the real
place at the real time, oppose to photoshopping it or making it up. The final type of footage is Archival
footage which would have been filmed a long time ago and found to be used in the documentary as a
piece of history. When it comes to other shots it is mostly long shots because of the match footage, but
there are several types of shots that are included so any shot type can be used. Although there is not a
lot of camera movement, during most of it, it is used when there is a video of a highlight to track the
ball. (Documentaries - Codes and Conventions | Media Studies, 2021)

In Poste-Production the main thing they add would be subtitles, to help the audience understand what
is being said as the person speaking may not speak the language the audience knows. Another thing the
editor would do is label the interviewee, to show what they do for a living and explain why they are
being interviewed in the documentary.

The main type of audio in a football documentary is narration for most of them, but a lot of
documentaries also has diegetic audio from whoever is speaking in the interviews. The audio is the most
important part of the documentary. Music is not always used in football documentaries because it can
take the audience's attention away from the documentary.

Since the 1990s when football documentaries really started, technology has changed a lot. The
documentaries before then were focused on one major topic, so for example City, which was a
documentary in 1981, was based on the build-up and the final of the FA Cup between Tottenham
Hotspur and Manchester City. It had all the conventions of your regular documentary, so match footage,
voiceovers and actuality footage. This documentary was one of the first football documentaries that
showed behind the scenes. This documentary is an example of an expository documentary. (City! 1981)
Nowadays the documentaries go in so much more in depth behind the scenes of a football club, the city
documentary only went in behind the scenes of the changing rooms and didn’t include interviews which
didn’t explain how the players felt. The documentaries of the 21 st century go into detail about the
finances, staff, players and the managers, which gives off a whole new aspect of football documentaries.
Garrincha: Hero of the Jungle is one of the earliest signs of a football documentary. In the documentary
it still has aspects that we use now like narration, interviews, and footage of the match. It focuses on
one topic which is about one of the greatest Brazilian players and talk about how good he was. The
purpose of this documentary was to let players who played alongside Garrincha talk about what he was
like as a player and the legacy he left behind. (Garrincha: Hero of the Jungle, 1962)

Documentaries are highly influential and powerful in the world nowadays because they can decide how
someone looks at a something in the world, for example if you watch a documentary about cars and
they say that electric cars are bad for the world then people who watch it will start to believe that.
(Blogger, 2016) This has been the same for many years. Not only are they influential and powerful but
they are also informative, which means that since the first documentary people have always gotten new
opinions on topics. A lot more football documentaries have exploded onto the scene and have seen a
boost of love for them. Which had led to more documentaries being made, for example Amazon are
now wanting to make a new one with a different team each year. Homemade documentaries are also
becoming popular on YouTube with fans and smaller clubs starting to make ones. (Once Upon a Time,
JPG Productions, 2020) The difference between these and big budget ones are that they can be more
controversial, they would be allowed to talk about things that companies like Amazon might not have
been allowed to. For example, the finances of the club and talking to fans about their thoughts on the
club. These are seen by the audience as more realistic documentaries because they are made by the
club. The future of documentaries can only improve because they bring the fans around the world closer
to the club and that’s what football clubs want to gain popularity.

In Football Documentaries there is not a director who produces football documentaries, but it is more
big companies such as BBC, ITV, Netflix, SKY and Amazon Prime who make them. What they do is gather
famous football pundits, commentators, players, and managers to talk in documentaries. When these
big companies do bring in these famous names it is mostly for interviews talking about something they
were involved in, if that is a specific match or a historical tragedy. Some companies have advantages
than others for example, BBC can always go to Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, and Ian Wright because they
are contracted to them, while SKY have Jamie Carragher, Gary Neville, and Roy Keane. Amazon Prime
and Netflix have the money to be able to pay for anyone, but their documentaries are usually more
specific based, meaning they go in depth into a certain club. Without these famous players, the
documentaries would not get as much publicity. This is the reason they pay so much to have them
included in the documentary. Lots of fans find it more interesting to listen to their favourite football
player talk about a story than someone just narrating about it, it humanizes them more when they speak
about their troubles of being a footballer.

In the documentary process, there are three roles that are not necessarily in normal film making. The
first one being researchers, their role is to gather all the information that the producer needs to make a
successful documentary. If the producer needs to find out a piece of information so they can go in depth
more in a certain subject, then they can ask the researcher to find it out. The second role is the narrator,
who will be given a script and they must talk over what is going on in the documentary. This role is not in
every documentary because the documentary might not have narration. The narrator is usually any
voice and with the boost of female football over the past 5-10 years, a lot more football documentaries
are being narrated by a women's voice. The company would also bring in a famous person's voice,
because they are recognisable, for example in the Manchester City All or Nothing documentary Sir Ben
Kinglsey was the narrator for it, which made listening to it more exciting. (Watch All or Nothing:
Manchester City - Season 1 | Prime Video, 2022) The final role is the interviewer – who might be the
producer, or a journalist who asks the interviewee all the questions. They are not heard or seen on
camera usually but still have a significant role. In lower budget documentaries or homemade ones, the
interviewer might also be the camera operator. (How To Find The Best Documentary Film Job For You |
Student Resources, 2015)
The industry has recently taken a big hit when it comes to football documentaries, because of COVID.
Although big companies like Amazon Prime were not hit hard because they were allowed to continue,
for example, while Amazon were filming the Tottenham documentary COVID struck, and it halted the
season for a bit and when it resumed Amazon were allowed to continue filming. The ones made by the
football clubs themselves were hit hard. This is due to football being cancelled, for example Dorking FC
from the National League South were top of the league when the first lockdown came around. Their
documentary was stopped after the season was announced null and void, although they did bring a
couple of episodes talking about their experience with the virus so far. (Bunch of Amateurs, 2021) The
major change in the documentary industry so far must be the way they have gone from mostly
interview-based documentaries to getting properly in with the public and seeing what's going on, this
has helped also with football documentaries evolve from interview-based ones to going into the behind
the scenes and finding out the opinions of players and the staff. This has been a positive change because
it shows the fans what goes on in the background. Also, by doing this it has made the players a lot more
interactive on social media and in real life. (The Rise of the Sports Documentary | the TV addict, 2021)

The hardest part about documentaries is always presenting due impartiality, which means trying to
show both sides of a story and both opinions, for example when you want to talk about whether getting
rid of VAR would be beneficial for the Premier League, you must get opinions from both sides of the
coin. Not being biased and respecting and representing both points. (Section five: Due impartiality and
due accuracy, 2021) While also getting professional opinions from referees, players and managers
would also help make your point. The risk of not balancing means you are swaying the audience to a
certain point of view. By balancing it allows the audience to decide for themselves. It not only keeps the
people for it happy, but the people against it happy, which is important when it comes to making a
successful and non-biased documentary.

Documentaries about racism in football are not only opinion based but have a lot of facts involved. The
point in these documentaries is to help spread awareness on a major problem going on in football, while
it has helped a little bit, the number of cases of racism in stadiums is still high. Ways to try and help it
more big companies have tried to get famous Black footballers to speak about their experiences. Due to
the Kick It Out campaign, Sky Sports pundit and former player Micha Richards has released a
documentary on tackling racism in football. He talks about how the Black Lives Matter message has
slightly started to move away, and the real reason footballers take the knee before kicking off. He also
talks about how much punishment must be given to those who are racist, this was a significant reason
why the FA started handing out punishments such as being banned from attending any match for that
club and potentially in your country for 10+ years. His documentary doesn’t consider impartiality
because he is heavily on one side of the point, which means he doesn’t talk about the white
supremacist's opinion. Over time racism documentaries have become a lot larger than ever before
because of how society has evolved into taking things like that more important. (Micah Richards:
Talking Racism, Sky Sports, 2021)
The Hillsborough disaster in 1989 was one of the biggest football disasters in history where 97 people
were killed after being crushed. Since then, two documentaries have been made explaining what really
happened on that day. The first one was aired in the US in 2014 and in the UK in 2016. The reason for it
not coming out in the UK was because the high court had not come up with a final verdict. This one had
interviews with a bunch of the victims' families, Police officers and investigators. It was quite an
emotional documentary but was not really completed because the incident had not reached the end of
legal proceedings, until 2016 when the courts ruled it to be the police’s fault. (Hillsborough, 2014-2016)
In 2022 the second one came out following a woman called Anne and her journey through

trying to get justice for her son who did not come home that day. The four-part series was a lot harder
hitting than the first one because it felt more in depth and personal due to following one person through
their experiences. She speaks about the 27 years in which justice was not served and everything she
tried to make sure she got closure. In the end it shows the court case and her reaction to getting the
decision she needed. This documentary is an example of a reflective documentary. (Anne Series, 2022)

COVID was a good thing and a terrible thing for football Documentary making, although it halted the
progress of making other documentaries. It also helped with the popularity of them, when the
Tottenham Hotspur documentary came out in 2020, it was something for people to watch and enjoy
while they were in lockdown. This has also meant that people went back to watch the Manchester City
documentary and Sunderland till I Die on Netflix. Their popularity has spiked because of how good and
entertaining it was, this has meant that Amazon Prime is going to create one with Arsenal for the 21/22
season. (Arsenal: All or Nothing, Prime Video, 2022) Which has been one of the most anticipated
documentaries to come out in 2022.

In conclusion, football documentaries have made a massive jump in terms of popularity in the last 10
years, while also adding some of the codes and conventions that are used in regular documentaries. The
introduction of the behind-the-scenes type of football documentaries has been the biggest revelation
for them because it has given it a whole new aspect to entertainment in football documentaries.
Although COVID did not help the world with progress, it helped football documentaries by boosting their
popularity to new heights. The boost in popularity has also helped with having more former footballers,
pundits and managers getting involved and talking about their experiences in football. The industry has
boosted the football clubs who get involved with the big companies of Netflix and Amazon Prime, paying
clubs who get involved around £10m just to have cameras behind the scenes. (Man City sign £10m-plus
TV series deal, 2022) It is not just financially the industry has grown, but also the opportunity for more
jobs for people wanting to get into documentary making has become more available than ever.

This essay has given me plenty of different ideas for when I create my documentary for the final project
and after researching this, I have decided I am going to do a documentary on the history of the club and
the struggles of non-league. I will include interviews with the manager, staff, players, and directors while
also having footage of a match to add a sense of entertainment and not make it full of just talking. I have
also learnt how to shape the look of a football interview, making sure that I do not have anything too
interesting in the back, including subtitles and what type of shot it should be in.
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