It is the dusk of autumn. Cold wind chills rush in the farmlands, bringing about their bitter and unsaturated cast, a ghastly blue fading into blackness and wilting green, the predominant colors of the time. This is no sign of despair; it's rather welcoming for the people of Iowa. This is wrestling season.
Iowa Wrestling, a documentary directed by Michael Smith and narrated by Dylan McDermott, is produced by ESPN. It was televised in 2003 on ESPN The Season, a series that reveals the rigidity, torment, and triumph of the nation's highest demanding sport groups. The film primarily focuses on a story about the Hawkeye's Men of The Mat, an élite group of wrestlers from the University of Iowa under the leadership of Jim Zalesky, the head coach and the promising new successor of former legend, Dan Gable. In the story, the team faces multiple obstructions and challenges that continuously attempt to run them down their darkest fear: losing. As seen throughout the film, the team pushes beyond their physical and mental limits in order to avoid meeting that fear. By all means, how they train their minds and bodies are unthinkable. It is quite frightening. For the Hawkeyes, wrestling is not a sport, nor even an intense competitive activity; it is war. Iowa Wrestling is nominated as one of the greatest sport documentaries of all-time because of its insightfulness. It goes in deep depths to analyze truly how intense wrestling can be, especially in the University of Iowa. However, the film is also intentionally persuasive, using means of cinema verité, or persuasive filming, to convey the message efficiently. The film is no jubilant one; it is powerful yet poignant. It appeals to the viewers with ethos, logos, and pathos, and can be shown thro...
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...g for their final tournament in March, 2002. This transition in sound causes a transition in mood. Losing a team member is brutal. Yet, the war must go on. There are to be no mournings and there are to be no weakness. That is the way of the Hawkeyes.
Works Cited
Youtube.com
"Iowa Wrestling." ESPN The Season. EOE Company. Television.
Arrichion Wrestling “What's So Great About Iowa Wrestling?” http://arrichionwrestling.blogspot.com/. Blogspot. Web. 11 Jan 2014.
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Vince McMahon’s WWF is a multi-million dollar corporation and has been wildly successful in capturing the sports entertainment market. “Monday Night Raw,” the weekly soap opera on TNN, is one of the three most watched cable shows each week. In addition, the WWF has weekly wrestling shows on UPN and MTV. Personally, I am caught up in the phenomenon. I set aside my Monday evenings to watch Monday Night Football and professional wrestling. I enjoy attempting to figure out the storylines before they unfold and attempt to guess the action that may happen in the next segment.
To fully understand the relationship between a filmmaker and a composer, it is helpful to take a closer look at the filmmaker’s position towards music in film in general; these can of course differ substantially from one director to another. It seems, one must think, that the complete narrative and emotive potential of film music is not yet fully recognized and appreciated in many film produc...
The silent era in film occurred between 1895 through 1929. It had a a major impact on film history, cinematically and musically. In silent films, the dialogue was seen through muted gestures, mime, and title cards from the beginning of the film to the end. The pioneers of the silent era were directors such as, D. W. Griffith, Robert Wiene and Edwin S. Porter. These groundbreaking directors brought films like first horror movie and the first action and western movie. Due to lack of color, the silent films were either black and white or dyed by various shades and hues to signal a mood or represent a time of day. Now, we begin to enter towards the sound era and opposed to the silent era, synchronized sounds were introduced to movies. The classic movie, The Jazz Singer, which was directed by Alan Crosland, was the first feature length film to have synchronized dialogue. This was not only another major impact in film history, but it also played a major part in film technology and where film is right now.
Tate, Loren, and Jared Gelfond. A century of orange and blue: celebrating 100 years of Fighting Illini basketball. Champaign, IL: Sports Pub. L.L.C., 2004. Print.
Jacobs, Lewis. “Refinements in Technique.” The Rise of the American Film. New York: Teachers College Press, 1974. 433-452. Print.
This memo is to address the current conversation regarding the possible termination of the sport of wrestling in the upcoming Olympic Games. By examining the significant history of wrestling in the Olympics we can comprehend why so many people are passionate about the sport. Wrestling, being a non-revenue sport, does not have the same financial benefits as professional sports. Regardless, the sport still has a substantial fan base and should be continued.
So, with my birth in 1979 in a small town in Kansas, this was the world I stepped into. Naismith, Chamberlain, Winter, and others had been incorporated into a basketball pantheon by the public. They were part of the public consciousness, but only in a supporting role. The game of basketball itself was lifted above them all, the true source of the passion. Before I was ten years old I had seen this passion at its peak. The NCAA Tournament of 1988 turned out to be a great showcase of Kansas and Big 8 basketball. The team I loved, KSU, made an improbable run in the tournament, winning their first three games. This set up a Sunflower State showdown between KSU and KU in the round of eight. The game ended up being a blowout, with KU dominating. KU went on to win the national championship in exciting fashion, beating Big 8 rivals Oklahoma in an exciting championship game. As an impressionable eight-year-old, I soaked up the emotions. The hopes and expectations, the ecstasy and the heartbreak. These feelings stuck with me.
Cinema began as short, silent films, spinning away on cellulose. Audiences would follow the plot through mime and title cards in cramped theaters, projectors clanking loudly. It wasn't until the late 1920's that sound would be introduced to the motion picture experience. With the release of The Jazz Singer in 1927and the new Vitaphone system, “talkies” would replace the silent film. Actors and directors of the Silent Era had to adapt quickly to the new technology but would literally find a voice in their art and use it to speak directly to their audience.
Wrestling is more than just a sport; it is a way of life. And for those who enjoy its opportunities, it is something that takes the mind off of all of life’s troubling times, and puts one man against another to get their hand raised. Competition makes everything evolve, and there is no other sport that epitomizes what competition truly is. Wrestling spans the entire globe, and although it incorporates several different styles and many National and World events, remains overlooked by most.
CLAP, CLAP, CLAP, CLAP, echoes through my head as I walk to the middle of the mat. "At 160lbs Aidan Conner of La Junta vs. Rodney Jones of Hotchkiss." All I can think of is every bead of sweat, every drip of blood, every mile, every push up, every tear. Why? All of this: just to be victorious. All in preparation for one match, six minutes. For some these six minutes may only be a glimpse, and then again for some it may be the biggest six minutes of their life. Many get the chance to experience it more than once. Some may work harder and want it more than others, but they may never get the chance. All they get is a moral victory. Every kid, every man comes into the tournament with a goal. For some is to win, for some is to place, others are just happy to qualify. These six minutes come on a cold frigid night in February at a place called the Pepsi Center. Once a year this gathering takes place when the small and the large, the best of the best, come to compete in front thousands of people. I am at the Colorado State Wrestling Championships.
Elizabeth Weis, John Belton (1985) Theory and Practice Film Sound, New York: Columbia University Press, pp 346.
Thinking Sound. (2011). Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola Talks about the Evolution of Movie Sound. [Online]. Available from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-fNpE9vQJw [Accessed 05 February 2012]
Wrestling has grown to extensive amounts since it’s infancy. It has become one of the most organized and planned out sports in our Olympics, with some of the worlds most committed and die-hard fans to enter a stadium. Wrestling is still practiced almost everywhere in the world, whether it be in one of it’s more traditional forms, or the more modern one.
Sound is what brings movies to life, but, not many viewers really notice. A film can be shot with mediocre quality, but, can be intriguing if it has the most effective foley, sound effects, underscore, etc. Sound in movies band together and unfold the meaning of the scenes. When actors are speaking, the dialogue can bring emotion to the audience, or, it can be used as the ambient sound. Music is one of the main things to have when filmmaking. The use of Claudia Gorbman’s Seven Principles of Composition, Mixing and Editing in Classical Film gives audiences a perspective of sound, and, how it can have an impact on them.