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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday January 29, 2001 Volume III Number 5 |
FOCUS - Air f/X
Super Bowl Sunday is built into the fabric of our collective national life. And I don’t believe it has much to do with the football game.
The Ravens? Of Baltimore? Where did THEY come from?
Don’t get me wrong. I love football. I can still smell the grass and hear the pops and the grunts and the sound of helmets clashing. I’ve been out there on the gridiron, and I’ve heard the roar of the crowd, and the coaches shouting and frankly, I love the game.
Just about any Sunday, I can get involved in the play action, and measure the validity of the most recent call by the referees.
But if you want to know the current stats and the play-off schedule and the latest trades and the names of the coaches and how long they’ve been there, I’m the wrong guy to ask. I don’t know when I faded out on the names and the record books. But I did. And frankly, it’s hard to admit.
I still feel some sense of American duty to stay on top of these things, but somewhere along the way it got lost.
That confessed, I will be there when the starting whistle blows for the kick off, and I’ll probably stay there, glued to the tube, until the final gun sounds. Yes, for the game. And the stories. The personal profiles and the long hard road to the pinnacle of success – the Super Bowl. It’s as good as football gets.
But understand, it’s the whole event that keeps me coming back. The commercials. The dazzling graphics. The cast of characters. The opening sequence. The National Anthem (I’ll probably feel all emotional when Ray Charles sings “America.”). The size of the crowd, enormous. The fly-by. Both inside the arena and around the globe tuning in, just like me.
I’ve
been around long enough to remember the first Super Bowl couple games.
Back when the AFL and the NFL went head to head.
And everyone knew the NFL outclassed, out muscled and outsmarted the
AFL. The mighty Green Bay Packers
and Vince Lombardi of the NFL dominated the first two Super Bowls.
The AFLs were a bunch of wannabes.
The NFL played real football. The
AFL was a collection of second stringers who couldn’t make the NFL cut.
So when the New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III
in 1969 under the stylish and brash Joe Namath (he made bold “guarantee” of
victory the Thursday before the game while Johnny Unitas nursed a sore elbow),
well, it simply meant one thing –
The Super Bowl was here to stay.
* * * * * *
One of my favorite new effects is the big yellow first down line.
It’s an electronic overlay. A clear yellow stripe across the green surface running parallel with the white gridlines. And you’d think from all appearances that it’s painted right there on the grass. A movable marker crossing the field horizontally, clearly visible to the refs, the players, the coaches and the crowd. But they don’t see it at all. Just us coach potatoes.
On a crucial play, like a third and five (five yards for a first down), you can tell if the ball carrier gets the first by watching that clearly visible yellow line marking the grass. If he crosses it, he’s got his first down. If he falls short, well, time to punt. You hardly need a ref to measure anymore. It’s all right there.
It’s an electronic trick. Only those of us watching TV can see it. It’s an imaginary line, and one of the most expensive special effects ever dreamed up by football technicians.
Three main broadcast cameras are now equipped with encoders that continually record precise information about the field of view – the distance to the surface, the precise angle of the camera, both horizontally and vertically. Computers take the complicated data from the three cameras, and create a virtual three-dimensional model of the playing field. Thirty times per second. A spotter transmits the precise location of the first down marker, and a technician punches in the data. The computer tells the camera which pixels to turn from green to yellow. If the pixels are not a precise shade of green (the playing surface) then the colored pixel remains unchanged. That’s how a player or ref can run across the line, and be unaffected in the view. The line looks like it’s part of the playing surface.
SportsVision calls this technology “1st and 10” and it’s working on more. The football video marker involves miles of cable, computers and technicians, and a hot new video camera technology that creates the 3D modeling. But there are new ideas on the drawing board. One will, by a process of triangulation, measure bat speed. So we will know not only how fast is the pitch, but how fast the bat is moving as it strikes, or misses, the baseball.
A similar technology will also be used to measure the flight of NBA stars. They call it “Air f/X.” For the first time, broadcasters will measure the vertical leap, and airtime of those Philistines with built in coil springs for a whole new set of statistics. That one will require seven radar arrays installed in the great basketball arenas.
But this weekend, I’m looking forward to the debut of a brand new technology that also involves the departure from the two-dimensional replays and the arrival of three. Instant replays in Super Bowl XXXV will no longer depend on the camera angle.
Instant replay was revolutionary when first introduced. (Now, thanks to Jumbotron, those replays are not limited to the television viewing audience. You can see them from every seat in the stadium.) Then came multiple camera replays. That allowed us to see the play from several different angles. It became such an embarrassment to officials who made a bad call that the rules got changed. Officials were permitted to call a time out and go to the nearest TV screen and watch the slo-mo replay before making a final determination on a call.
Now, with a line-up of thirty cameras strategically placed in the stadium, cameras synchronized and controlled by a highly sophisticated computer, replays will be three-dimensional. The action can be stopped at any frame, and the view will pan from left to right around the action. It will be as though the players will become virtual manikins and we will walk around them to inspect the play from any angle to see the illegal motion or the foot out of bounds or whether there really was control of the ball at the catch. The action at Raymond James Stadium in Jackson Florida will resemble Sony’s PlayStation 2 – a virtual reality computer game – as much as live action.
Now all I need is HDTV.
* * * * * *
In the advertising world, Joe Pytka is a living legend.
He’s sixty-two years old, and at the top of his game. His world is intense. He regularly plays pick-up basketball to siphon off the stress. He’s as tough on the court as he is behind a camera. On the set, he’s demanding. Visionary. In control. He’s got a story to tell, and not much time to tell it. Every frame counts.
When advertisers spend $83,000 per second to air their story, that’s $2.3 million for a thirty second spot, they want it to catch the attention of the one hundred and twenty million viewers. They want something with impact. Something memorable. Something entertaining. They want punch. Power. Impression. Good vibes.
And they ask Joe Pytka to deliver it.
Pytka
has tried moviemaking. He’s made at least two feature length films, his second,
"Space Jams" with Michael Jordan, was mildly successful. He says movies are like novels.
Long, tedious, complicated and boring.
He prefers the making of commercials.
He calls his poetry. He
works with virtually limitless budgets. He
aims for your emotions. He wants
you to feel. He creates images
that stir something deep inside, and hooks you emotionally. He builds that short piece into a crescendo, and as you are
drawn in, you explode with laughter, or empathy, or amazement, and just at that
precise moment of receptivity, he introduces his product.
For Super Bowl XXXV, Pytka created a scenario in which World Class Russian Chess Champion Gary Kasparov defeats a super-computer. And then, going on with the rest of his life, he finds that all of the machines he henceforth encounters conspire against him in sweet revenge. It’s a little piece Pytak calls “Man vs. Machine” and as you break into laughter over the irony of it all, you’ll be invited to toss back a Pepsi.
Marketing poetry by Pytka.
So when Nike or Pepsi or MasterCard or FedEx or E-Trade contemplate a multi-million dollar advertising campaign… and they’ve got thirty seconds to make their case… they all turn to Joe Pytka.
The best in the business.
* * * * * * *
So I’ll be tuning in this Sunday (as you read, that would be yesterday) because I guess I really am interested in football.
I will want to see if the Ravens truly have the greatest defense in the history of the game, as claimed by the three hundred fifty pound defensive tackle Tony Siragusa. I’m anxious to see if Trent Dilfer, that third string QB who was overlooked by Tampa Bay and went on to lead the Ravens to a Super Bowl season, has the right stuff. I’m wondering if the soft spoken, cool Giants under the leadership of Kerry Collins and running back force Tiki Barber will teach these newcomer no-names a lesson in big league football.
But mainly I’m there for the event.
Because the pre-game stuff is just talk. The proof is in sixty-minutes of head to head combat. Cameras rolling.
* * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. The morning after. You are a leader.
There’s a lot of talk around football about leadership. Callin’ the right play. Workin’ like a team. Takin’ the hits. Getting up after you’ve been knocked down. Playin’ all four quarters. Preparing body, mind and spirit. Playin’ hurt. Followin’ the play book. Runnin’ your route.
All of those things apply to you today.
I know, the hype, the hoopla, the inflated egos, the showboating, the silly end-zone strutting… may cause you to dismiss the whole thing as little more than quintessential American excess.
But take a lesson from marketeer Joe Pytka. Connect with your people. Build emotional bridges, be aware of feeling. Not to trick them into buying. Not as a crude tool of manipulation.
But to build relationships that will last a lifetime.
You and I will never raise the Vince Lombardi Trophy while a stadium roars its approval. But as leaders, we are in the game of life.
And we’re gunna play to win.
PS - Ravens 34 Giants 7 I guess Dilfer really does have "the right stuff."
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2001
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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