The Journey
September 17, 2008 10:30 AM
Episode 1, an hour long, covered the 4 weeks leading up to the Missouri game, mostly at Camp Rantoul. As will be the format for the rest of the 13-week series, episodes 2 and 3 were 30 minutes and cover one week including gameday.
So far I'd rank the episodes (from best to worse): 1, 2, 3.
Episode 1 was great, it flowed, really popped, had that special touch of something. But they also had more material to work with and time to production.
Episodes 2 and 3,... good material but the flow isn't quite there, maybe it's because the production team only has 1 week to get the show ready to air.
Not too happy with how they show the games. Too much of the game play is shown in slow motion. A little bit is okay—once or twice tops—but it's used much too much.
Second thing about the game footage, the games themselves are not behind-the-scenes look at Illinois football. So in essence, the game footage is stealing valuable behind-the-scenes time from a show that is only 30 minutes long. Game play is necessary, not saying it shouldn't be there, but with good rapid cutting and subtitles you can trim down the time and still show all the decent highlights and have more behind-the-scenes time.
Third thing about game footage. If Illinois happens to end up in an epic battle say against Penn St? Okay, go all NFL Films on the game itself, but jam that camera into Lock's face in the press box during Juice's last-minute drive, and mic-up Zook on the sidelines. Behind-the-scenes! And use only 1 slow-motion take.
Finally, you can't go wrong having more Brit Miller.
The Journey Thread Filed under: Big Ten Network, Illini Football, Illinois Football: The Journey
