Footwork

Okay, so I’ve posted twice about how cable networks and the DVR have functioned as catalysts for brilliant programming. And I’ll admit that a lot of my writing has been pretty obvious. What I’m hoping to do is to lay a foundation for future posts so that readers who start with the beginning of the blog and go forward (as if there were any) can have an understanding of where I’m coming from.

It’s the same as sports where the most basic aspect of any given skill is not how you’re holding the ball; rather, you begin with footwork and go from there. To briefly sidetrack myself, I will talk about sports footwork here.

I used to coach volleyball and I feel like I have played almost every sport there is. Whether you’re talking about track, football, baseball, volleyball, hockey, cricket, or bowling, footwork is the basic fundamental above all else. This is for a few reasons:

1. You’re talking about where you come into contact with something else the most. Football is a contact sport but your feet are on the ground a lot more than your shoulder is in a running back’s sternum. Basic physics tells us that the ground is actually giving us resistance, so this is where you are dealing with the most force.
2. You are setting a foundation on which all other actions occur. Think of the lower half of your body as a tripod for a camera. You can get a clean shot with an unsteady tripod but you have to compensate for lots of other things, maybe by using a fast shutter, which then might lead to other dominoes down the line (faster shutter means either wider aperture [focus issues] or faster film [more grain]) that you might not want to deal with.
3. Your legs are the biggest, strongest muscles in your body. Example: much of the force generated by a baseball pitcher is from the lower half in the windup. Proper weight transfer in throwing (baseball, football, shot put) or striking (boxing, baseball, football) is key to a number of sports. As is load and push off in explosive/jumping sports (volleyball, basketball, etc.).
4. Speed/quickness. This is a complicated issue, somewhat related to the next point as there are a few aspects of this. You’ve got your strength and range of motion issues that relate to the speed and quickness. Speed is obvious: the ability to run really fast. This relies on strength, form, and stamina. Quickness is also pretty obvious: the relationship among reflex, reaction, and explosion of a particular physical movement.
5. Rhythm/timing. I could write a whole post on this as it applies to sports and TV, and I probably will someday. But this is one of the things that Bill Walsh preached to guys like Joe Montana. Actually, many of the other points come out of this. Your legs and feet set the foundation for the rhythm of your movement. In order to excel at a sport, you need your body to be in a certain rhythm, a certain flow. Sure, there is a lot of brute force in some sports but an athlete needs to have a certain grace. Perhaps it’s because being in rhythm helps you control your body rather than having to fight it. But each step you take jars your body a little, and if that movement is in a comfortable rhythm then you probably have a better chance at success.
6. Efficiency of movement. You know how getting from A to B is quickest with a straight line? That’s not always the case in sports, due to body positioning. You’ll understand this explicitly if you’re familiar with volleyball and the steps that a middle blocker or a swing hitter has to take to get into position for the various attacks a setter might call. If the setter wants to run a shoot or a slide then you’d damn well better be in position to hit it. It’s not about just running as fast as you can to the spot where you need to take off, you need to take the right steps to a.) get there and b.) have your body in position for the best attack.

Anyway, I got sidetracked by footwork. I love the topic and could go on for days and days. But now I want to bring it all back home to my television emphasis:

The way we ingest TV is the foundation of our experience with TV.

It has many nuances, just like footwork in sports,

but it is the basic aspect of our interaction.

So even if we don’t think about it (indeed, footwork needs to become an unconscious, natural, or instinctive aspect of athletic pursuit) we need to understand its importance.

Think of the movie theater. If I am making the effort to go to another place to interact with visual medium it implies that I have already invested myself in that experience. I’m not going to drive twenty minutes, park, pay $15, buy a giant tub of popcorn, and sit next to a bunch of strangers for a 15-minute event. We want something more substantial because we’re invested in this fashion. Also, we’re probably going to want a standalone installment of whatever we went to see because we’re not going to want to repeat that experience the next week. That’s not to say that we won’t see a sequel but we want to have some kind of a full experience of a story when we go.

If we’re buying a TV at the store they want to show us nature shots and sports shots but no narrative structure at all. That’s what works in that moment.

With television it's important that we don't invest too much effort because then we can keep coming back.

So this discussion has this foundational relevance when considering our interaction with moving picture media. I may dwell on it for quite a long time, we’ll see. I’ll probably jump around topics a little bit but I do find this kind of stuff very interesting.

And damn it, I’m gonna write about it.