NFL Films

Former NFL Films logo.

Founder Ed Sabol was a World War II veteran who worked selling topcoats after returning to the United States. In his spare time, he often used a motion picture camera, received as a wedding gift, to record his son Steve’s high school football games. Inspired by his own work, Sabol founded a small film company called Blair Motion Pictures, named after his daughter Blair.[1] Sabol won the bidding for the rights to film the 1962 NFL championship game for $5,000, double the bid for the 1961 championship game.[1] The film of that game impressed NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, who asked the owners of the NFL to agree to buy out Sabol's company. Although the owners rejected Rozelle's proposal in 1964, they agreed a year later and renamed Sabol's company NFL Films. He received $20,000 in seed money from each of the league's 14 owners, and in return would shoot all NFL games and produce an annual highlight film for each team.[2][3] As part of the AFL–NFL merger, NFL Films began covering the American Football League in 1968 under a newly established "AFL Films" division, which was simply the regular NFL Films crew wearing separate jackets to appease AFL loyalists.[4]

On August 6, 2011, Ed Sabol was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a major contributor to the National Football League. Ed Sabol died on Monday, February 9, 2015, at his home in Arizona.

Much has been made of the Films style. Salon.com television critic Matt Zoller Seitz has called NFL Films "the greatest in-house P.R. machine in pro sports history...an outfit that could make even a tedius stalemate seem as momentous as the battle for the Alamo."[5]

NFL Films productions follow certain patterns. Film is mostly used, one camera is dedicated entirely to slow motion shots, microphones are present on the sidelines and near the field to pick up both the sounds of the games as well as the talk on the sidelines, and narrators with deep, powerful, baritone voices are preferred. Narrators have generally been from the Philadelphia metropolitan area, with well-known announcers such as Jefferson Kaye, Harry Kalas, John Facenda, Andy Musser, Jack Whitaker, William Woodson, and current announcer Scott Graham all having narrated NFL Films presentations at various points in time. J.K. Simmons was tapped to narrate the company's one-hour recap of the 16-0 regular season of the 2007 New England Patriots, while actor Burt Lancaster was tabbed for narrations during 1969. Burl Ives narrated the 1971 Washington Redskins highlight film.

Team-specific films such as year-in-review films have occasionally been narrated by broadcasters or personalities involved with the team in question. Examples include the 1985, 2000 and 2001 Oakland Raiders season reviews being narrated by actor and former Raiders player Carl Weathers. Former Giant Frank Gifford periodically narrated New York Giants season reviews (notably the company's throwback-themed 2013 season recap) until his death in 2015, and ex-Giants teammate Pat Summerall narrated highlight films for many teams until his death in 2013. New England Patriots play-by-play announcer Gil Santos narrated the year-in-review films of the 1974, 1976, and 1978 seasons, and New Orleans Saints films from their inception in 1967 through 1979 were narrated by Don Criqui, who called Saints games for the NFL on CBS in the team's early years, and radio announcers Al Wester and Wayne Mack.

The style has been called tight on the spiral, a reference to the frequently-used slow-motion shot of the spinning football as it travels from the quarterback's hand to the receiver. This shot usually consists of showing the quarterback throwing the football, then the camera zooming in to focus on the spinning ball, then, as the ball starts to descend, the camera zooms out, showing the end result of the ball traveling into the receiver's hands. NFL Films also dubs sound bites of local radio broadcasts over key plays, because radio announcers are typically more enthusiastic about their home teams than are network television broadcasters. In addition, NFL Films often uses multiple camera angles (with an emphasis on close-up shots that often exaggerate the speed of the players in real time). The company's films also employ muscular orchestral scores from a wide variety of musicians, notably Sam Spence, Johnny Pearson (whose "Heavy Action" became the theme for Monday Night Football) Frank Rothman, Ralph Dollimore, Udi Harpaz, Malcolm Lockyer, Jan Stoeckart (under his varied stage names such as Jack Trombey), Peter Reno, Paul Lewis, Prameela Tomashek, Dave Robidoux and Tom Hedden. The company's use of KPM Musichouse tracks also notably included Syd Dale; tracks include "Malestrom" for the company's 1968 Minnesota Vikings season highlight reel and also the psychedelic-flavored jazz track "Artful Dodger" on the film recap of Super Bowl V, specifically during the montage which shows Johnny Unitas' 75-yard touchdown pass to John Mackey which was tipped in flight by Eddie Hinton and Mel Renfro before bounding to Mackey.

The company also makes prolific use of footage of players and coaches in the locker room after the game. With these techniques NFL Films turns football games into events that mimic ballet, opera, and epic battle stories. Among the company's most famous creations is the poem and accompanying music cue "The Autumn Wind", which have become official themes for the Las Vegas Raiders.

One of NFL Films' most popular series is Hard Knocks. With production run entirely from the field and the NFL Films facility, NFL Films and HBO follow one NFL team as they go through training camp, leading up to the beginning of the season.

NFL Films produces the Greatest Moments series, which details classic games from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s (decade); the Lost Treasures series, which uses old NFL Films footage which had previously never been shown on television to give a look at football players, coaches, and referees; and NFL Films Presents, an umbrella title for other NFL Films productions that do not neatly fit an existing series (Katie Nolan serves as the current host of NFL Films Presents).

NFL Films also produces the NFL Game of the Week, which showcases a previous-week's game of the current season. ION Television purchased the rights to air Game of the Week during the 2007 season.[6]

Among other television programs NFL Films is credited for producing include NFL Total Access and much of the NFL Network's programming output.[7] NFL Films also has a dedicated channel on free over-the-top service Pluto TV that launched in August 2019.[8]

NFL Films' game highlights were also a staple of HBO's Inside the NFL for its entire run; this will continue on that show's new network Showtime, in addition to having the company produce the show. NFL Films also produced for Showtime the five-part miniseries Full Color Football: The History of the American Football League, which aired in fall 2009 as part of the American Football League 50th anniversary celebration.

NFL Films produces an annual highlight film for each team every season, distributed by home video. If a team had a good year the film often revels in each victory, while breezing through, or skipping altogether, losses during the season. Inversely, if a team suffered through a poor season, the highlights commonly attempt to still show the team in a good light, however difficult that may be. Losses and pitiful play is commonly, and conveniently, edited out, leaving only isolated moments of success, prompting the viewer to not always realize how bad the team might have actually been. Most films conclude by portraying teams optimistically for the upcoming season, whether founded or not.[9]

The Sabols have used NFL Films to showcase their senses of humor, as in the Football Follies series. The Follies used blooper plays, such as fumbles, dropped passes, deflected or bobbled passes, players slipping and falling, mascots, the quarterback lining up behind the guard instead of the center, and disorganization, and outtakes and silly narration.

The presence of NFL Films' cameras allowed for the preservation of video footage from many of the NFL's 1960s era games in an era when sports telecasts were either broadcast live without any recording or whose films and tapes were destroyed and recycled for later use, a practice that did not fully stop until 1978. Without the presence of NFL Films, there would be no surviving footage of several of the early Super Bowls. In comparison, other major leagues that lacked the film resources that the NFL had have archives missing all the way up through the 1970s, with much of the time before that preserved only by Canadian television broadcasters, though the National Hockey League struggled to find a national audience in the United States until after the 2004–05 NHL lockout and the National Basketball Association wasn't considered a major league until the Magic–Bird rivalry and the rise of Michael Jordan brought that league long-term stability in the 1980s. In Major League Baseball, the broadcasts of many World Series games prior to 1975 have been lost, and nearly all broadcasts of League Championship Series from the first series in 1969 to 1978 are gone.

Although NFL Films earns more than $50 million in revenue a year and is expanding at a double digit rate, compared to the $18 billion in revenue that the NFL earns from television alone, most consider this to be minor.[3] The real value of NFL Films is how it packages and sells the game and many credit it as a key reason that the NFL has become the most watched league in the United States.

In addition to covering the National Football League, NFL Films has also ventured into other unrelated documentary films, such as documenting the Munich Olympics massacre for one of NBC's Olympics telecasts, and serving as back-up film photography for other major events, including the Stanley Cup Finals (NHL Original Productions), the NBA Finals (NBA Entertainment) and the World Series (MLB Productions). It also produced the video for Journey's 1983 hit single "Faithfully". NFL Films also has worked with Volkswagen Group in producing Audi's Truth in 24 series about Audi's efforts at the 24 Hours of Le Mans using the signature style to package and sell the marque's efforts in France.

The company has also done films for major college football programs, such as Colorado State University; the company's 1977 film on CSU's football program used John Denver's song "Rocky Mountain High" as well as an instrumental cover of The Beatles' song "Tell Me What You See", and noted alumni of the team who had gone on to NFL careers, such as Bill Larson of the Lions and Bill Kennedy of the Colts, Kevin McClain of the Rams, and Greg Stamrick of the Oilers.

NFL Films' distinctive style has been parodied in numerous commercials, particularly for the NFL's sponsors, including Sprint Nextel and Burger King.

NFL Films has won 112 Sports Emmys.[11]

Sam Spence was long involved in a controversial situation with the NFL regarding the rights to perform or use his music in any media outlets.[12] In an interview, Spence reported he was convinced to sign a contract that relinquished all of the rights to his music to NFL Films under the promise that the League would return the document to him. He also claimed the NFL had previously falsely that his music had been unlawfully used in the porn film Deep Throat to coax him into signing away the rights to his music.

• The Power and the Glory: The Original Music & Voices of NFL Films (1998)
• Autumn Thunder: 40 Years of NFL Films Music (2004)
• NFL Country (1996)
• Music from National Football League Films, LP NFL-1, c. 1970s.

• Truth in 24 (2008)
• Lombardi (2011)

A section of the NFL Films climate-controlled film vault in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey. The vault houses all of the film in NFL Films' possession.

NFL Films operates its own in-house 16mm and 35mm Color Negative Processing Lab. This enables the film that is shot at each game to be rushed back to the Mt. Laurel facility and processed immediately so as to give the production team the maximum amount of time to produce its weekly shows.

The lab is open to the public for development needs. Clients include feature length and short films shot on location in Philadelphia as well as students at local universities.

The current lab is the third incarnation. The original lab was located in a building next to NFL Films original offices at 230 N 13th St in Philadelphia. The second lab was housed in the center of the NFL Films offices at 330 Fellowship Rd in Mt. Laurel, NJ. That entire one-story building has since been razed and replaced with a modern 4 story office building.

The third lab is located at the NFL Films current location in the Bishop's Gate industrial park in Mt. Laurel behind a two-story glass wall. This allows visitors to the offices to see the inner workings of the entire processing lab. Those on morning tours can often watch as employees develop film for use in weekly shows.

NFL Films Lab is also in charge of the archiving and maintenance of the vault. Containing over 100 continuous years of football footage, the vault houses all of the film that NFL Films has shot or acquired from other sources in its entire history. Currently, NFL Films is in the process of re-transferring all of its footage into high-definition format, although the original film will always be kept as it's likely to outlast tape medium in terms of degradation.

DVD titles are available for purchase on iTunes.

• Football Follies
• Sam Spence

• Official website
• NFL official website
• NFL Films at IMDb
• Capturing the Moment - Domenick Satterberg
• The Themes of Fall: Music of Football and Film
• NFL Game of the Week on ION Television
• Brody, Tom C. "C. B. Demille Of The Pros," Sports Illustrated, November 20, 1967.
• Alexander Klein's report on Spence's rights issue with NFL Films