Allié: Set the stage for us, Adam. Replay how this project came together. Logistically speaking, there were a lot of obstacles from time to translation. Please share details about the scene and what you overcame as a director to see this through.
Adam: Yes, it was extremely difficult to make this film. As it is with any production, you’re up against time. You’re at the mercy of how much there is to spend, and that dictates the amount of time that you have to do your job. The tighter the schedule, the more stressful the work is, but I’ve always found myself rising to those types of challenges of extreme pressure and tight schedules.
The French Cécifoot team is very special and super impressive and Puma was generous enough to finance this - to showcase these amazing players and their beautiful new jerseys with the braille and the design for the Paralympics where they’re going to be wearing them as they compete in Tokyo. Because blind football is a niche sport, I’m not sure what the size of the audience is, but it’s not big. I had basically less than a day to deliver this, which is an insane ask, but somehow I managed to pull it off. Obviously, there’s the choreography of what I wanted the players to do, and luckily because I play the game and I know the sport very well because it’s my biggest passion outside of film, I was able to basically become a coach for the day and talk them through the different sequences of plays that I’d imaged and choreographed. Then I walked them through each beat of the story that I wanted to shoot. I had my shot list prepared, and I knew what I wanted to capture, but I couldn’t just tell these guys “do this”, “go here”, “do that” because I can’t point around a pitch and have them see where I want them to go and what I want them to do. I had to literally walk them through it - play by play. So, that took half the day. Plus, they don’t speak English. It was all through a translator. So, everything took twice as long because of the language barrier. The next thing you know, we’ve got to be out of the location in a few hours, and we hadn’t even started rolling the camera on the main action yet. By some miracle, I was able to power through 40+ camera set ups in half a day. Luckily, it all came together in the end. We were able to tell the story and show the magic of what these incredible men are able to do.
Photo Credit: Julia Varvara 34 AWARENOW / THE SOURCE EDITION
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