UEFA Euro 2008 Final: Imagining an Accelerating Television Spectacle
Derek Patulny
A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by research
March 2014 PLEASE TYPE THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Dissertation Sheet
Surname or Family name: Patulny
First name: Derek Other name/s: Anthony
Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: MA
School: School of the Arts and Media Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Title: UEFA Euro 2008 Final: Imagining an Accelerating Television Spectacle
Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)
This thesis demonstrates the ways in which the broadcast of the UEFA European Championship Final in 2008 represents a transition point into a new, fully digital age of television. The official broadcast of the match was carried into Australia by free-to-air provider, SBS Television, whose viewers rose early on 29 June to witness Spain defeat Germany by one goal to nil. The victory secured the second major trophy in Spain's history, to which it has since added the World Cup in 2010 and a consecutive UEFA European Championship in 2012. Thus, the 2008 Final represents the beginning of dominance for a generation of Spanish soccer players which continues to the present day.lndeed, fans now await the 2014 World Cup in anticipation of a Spain victory that would confirm them as the best side in the game's history. At the centre of this success is a group of players who came of age in the 2008 tournament. Thus, the subject of this inquiry is a match of historical importance in the sport of soccer. However, I argue that it is also an important media object, displaying many characteristics of the digital age. The first of these relates to the construction of perspective, which digital technology has enriched by giving production teams choice of a wide variety of camera types and locations. This leads to experimentation with how broadcasts are composed, with the availability of new shots and angles. In short, this broadcast shows that the availability of technology has caused an alteration in production practices which reflects a new age in sports broadcasting. The thesis fits into larger fields of inquiry, the first of which springs from culture theorist, Paul Virilio. The second is the research area of event liveness and mediatisation.ln its contribution to these, the thesis assumes the concept of acceleration, present in Virilio's work, devolving It into key components speed and direction, and then developing the latter. This enables the thesis to identify acceleration with mediatisation. Analysis then shows that neither is inexorable. Indeed, both can be controlled at various stages of production.
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Table of Contents Page Acknowledgements ii List of Pictures iii List of Diagrams iv Abstract v Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 The Growing Presence of Sport in Television Studies 7 1.2 Paul Virilio: Origin of a Relationship between Television and the 11 Concept of Acceleration 1.3 Resisting the Vector in Communication Studies 43 1.4 Three Minutes of the UEFA European Championship 48 Chapter 2 A Survey of Literature 60 2.1 Studies of Soccer and the Importance of Buscombe (1975) 65 2.2 Identifying Acceleration and Mediatisation through the Large 73 Screen Video Display Chapter 3 ANALYSIS: Large Screen Video Display 90 3.1 Gaining Acceleration by Rotating the Vector 91 3.2 Acceleration Expressed as a Unit Value of Rotation 99 3.3 Developing the Broadcast Normals 109 Chapter 4 ANALYSIS: Camera Cuts & Action Replay 115 4.1 Acceleration Produced by the Internal Rotation of Camera Shots 117 against Broadcast Normals 4.2 Acceleration Produced by Camera-to-Camera Switching 129 4.3 Acceleration Produced by the Interpolation of Action Replays 137 Chapter 5 Conclusion 153 Bibliography 165 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge and give sincere thanks to my family who supported and encouraged me on a long path towards completing this thesis. To my wife, Christie, who has been a wonderful source of strength and love, words cannot express the depth of my gratitude. I am fortunate to share my life with you. To my children, Cleo and Gaius, both of whom arrived in medias res, I have found joy and happiness in your presence in my life. I look forward to many years of loving you unconditionally. To my parents, Neil and Janis, your love and willingness to offer honest advice is limitless. Your support has provided motivation at vital stages in my life and during the course of this thesis. Finally, to my supervisor, Greg, whose patience I often tested, I give thanks for the quality of your feedback which was always sage and delivered considerately. ii List of Pictures Picture Page Picture 1 Shot Establishing Mise en Scene 92 Picture 2 Shot Establishing Match Action 93 Picture 3 Setting of the LSVD 93 Picture 4 Shot from Ground Level Containing LSVD 95 Picture 5 Shot from Hothead Containing LSVD 95 Picture 6 Shot Displaying Slight Time Lag 96 Picture 7 Disorientation of Perspective 103 Picture 8 Shot from Mobile Camera at Ground Level 104 Picture 9 Shot from Central Camera Position 104 Picture 10 Shot from Mobile Camera at Ground Level 105 Picture 11 Overhead Camera Shot 120 Picture 12 Overhead Camera Shot Tilted Away from the 121 Perpendicular Picture 13 Horizontal Grass Shot with Elevation 123 Picture 14 Hothead Shot with Slight Elevation, Goal Netting Visible 123 Picture 15 Camera in Inside Netting Displaying High Rotation from 128 Horizontal Normal Picture 16 Cut to Conventional Angle, Breaking Replay Sequence 128 Picture 17 Replay Sequence Highlighting Loss of Information 141 Picture 18 Replay Sequence Highlighting Loss of Information 142 Picture 19 Replay Sequence Highlighting Loss of Information 142 Picture 20 Replay Sequence Highlighting Loss of Information 143 Picture 21 Replay Sequence Highlighting Loss of Information 143 Picture 22 Replay Sequence Highlighting Loss of Information 144 Picture 23 Replay Sequence Highlighting Loss of Information 144 iii List of Diagrams Diagram Page Diagram 1 Small Map of Camera Emplacements 51 Diagram 2 Large Map of Camera Emplacements 133 iv ABSTRACT This thesis demonstrates the ways in which the broadcast of the UEFA European Championship Final in 2008 represents a transition point into a new, fully digital age of television. The official broadcast of the match was carried into Australia by free-to-air provider SBS Television, whose viewers rose early on Monday, 30 June, to witness Spain defeat Germany by one goal to nil. The victory secured the second major trophy in Spain’s history, to which it has since added the World Cup in 2010 and a consecutive UEFA European Championship in 2012. Thus, the 2008 Final represents the beginning of dominance for a generation of Spanish soccer players which continues to the present day. Indeed, fans now await the 2014 World Cup in anticipation of a Spain victory that would confirm them as the best side in the game’s history. At the centre of this success is a group of players who came of age in the 2008 tournament. Thus, the subject of this inquiry is a match of historical importance in the sport of soccer. However, I argue that it is also an important media object, displaying many characteristics of the digital age. The first of these relates to the construction of perspective which digital technology has enriched by giving production teams choice of a wide variety of camera types and locations. This leads to v experimentation with how broadcasts are composed, with the availability of new shots and angles. In short, this broadcast shows that the availability of technology has caused an alteration in production practices which reflects a new age in sports broadcasting. The thesis fits into larger fields of inquiry, the first of which springs from culture theorist, Paul Virilio. The second is the research area of event liveness and mediatisation. In its contribution to these, the thesis assumes the concept of acceleration, present in Virilio’s work, devolving it into key components speed and direction, and then developing the latter. This enables the thesis to identify acceleration with mediatisation. My analysis shows that neither is inevitable in a technological society, indeed that they are subject to technological control. Key terms: television, soccer, acceleration, vectors, mediatisation, speed, velocity vi CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION The argument presented here is in support of valuing the concept of acceleration in media studies, which I argue has become necessary since the work of Paul Virilio. I propose that acceptance of the term ‘acceleration’ since Virilio has been incomplete, that any conclusion resting on that term is susceptible to the faults of its acceptance. I use the live broadcast of a sporting event to illustrate how this term can be preserved meaningfully and add value to the discipline. In particular, I study the live broadcast of the UEFA European Championship 2008 Final (2008), a contest between Spain and Germany, which Spain won one goal to nil. This broadcast was carried by SBS Television in Australia, shown at 4:00am on Monday, 30 June 2008. It was syndicated to more than 70 other countries around the world. The actual venue for the event was the Ernst Happel Stadium in Vienna, Austria. From the point of view of the sport of soccer, this match marks the beginning of a new era in the history of the game, in which Spain achieved undisputed dominance. This era continues into 2014 amid anticipation of the forthcoming World Cup in Brazil, opening in June. Ultimate success in this tournament would make the Spain side statistically the best in history, as holders of the 1 World Cup and the European Championship for two consecutive periods. If they don’t win, Spain will remain the only country to have won consecutive European Championships with the World Cup in between. As the very beginning of a long and current period of dominance, the object of the present study is of historical relevance. It is also an important media object, revealing in some of its technical aspects which emerge as good markers for the transition into a wholly digital environment. This is evident in employment of new camera angles made possible by improved technology. I set out to demonstrate in this thesis that the concept of acceleration is productive in how to understand this transition better. By the conclusion of the thesis, I intend to have demonstrated the context that makes acceleration relevant to digital media in general. The thesis develops through four stages, with each stage presented as a chapter of the argument. The present chapter focuses on the work of Paul Virilio (2000, 2005, 2008a, 2008b). It reveals Virilio as a strong advocate for the importance of television as a contributor to modern digital culture, and that he argued for it as a principal source of acceleration within it (Virilio, 2008a, 2008b). He also regarded the live broadcast of sporting events as demanding a revolution in the way we think about television (Virilio, 2008b:121-2). I show 2 that, in this, he has been well supported by others, notably Steve Redhead (2004, 2007). In order to forge a connection between Virilio’s references to acceleration and this study of a sports telecast, I begin this chapter by making a brief overview of the changing status of sport within studies of television. This places my argument within the company of a growing number who now recognise its value as a media object, with much to add to wide ranging debates on the medium. Once the place of sport in studies of television has been established, I proceed to an introduction of Virilio’s work. In particular, I strive to connect him directly to television and then to open up the question of how he uses acceleration to theorise television. Naturally, this is a complex task involving treatment of several of his key themes. In order to facilitate this, I have added more steps to the argument in that section of the chapter which culminates in a charge to assume discussion of vectors. For, during this discussion, I posit that the critical element to understanding how these two relate is indeed the vector and its role in representing values which change with respect to one another. A further step is required to establish the role of the vector in this chapter and it involves making a separation from communication studies, whose use of the arrow in graphical representations of information systems is a strong 3 conditioning factor in how the notion of direction is understood in systems of exchange. This occurs under the subheading ‘Resisting the Arrow in Communication Studies’ on page 45, where I articulate the basis for diverging from this large body of work. The final step in this chapter is to begin the analysis of the match in question. This is done by taking the first three minutes of the television broadcast of the match. The purpose of this is to gain a sense of its particular style and production characteristic. Over the duration of the match, 1006 shots are made, whilst the sequence introduced in this chapter is composed of 33 shots. The selection has been limited to this because, at three minutes and three seconds, the first insertion of a replay occurs. As I show in Chapter 4, the employment of action replays has a measurable effect on the accelerative quality of the broadcast, meaning there is no advantage to considering a sequence that contains a replay at this stage. Another reason for electing to take this point as a limit for initial analysis is that, being the opening three minutes of the match, production decisions have not been influenced by previous events in the match or patterns in play. In turn, this guarantees presence in the broadcast of a wide variety of camera shots and angles. The sequence also includes two shots of the opposing coaches from the far side of the field. As discussed in Chapter 2, cross-cutting between cameras on 4 opposite sides of the pitch was unconventional in the time of Buscombe. Indeed, even into the new millennium, production theories advised against this because of the unsettling effect on spectators (Siegel, 2002:55). Evidence for this also appears in the next chapter. On the other hand, it is exactly this practice in this match that indicates a change in thinking about cross-cutting, and this stands as a mark of transition into a new era of broadcasting technique. Thus, the steps taken in this introductory chapter develop through the following steps: 1.1 The Growing Presence of Sport in Television Studies 1.2 Paul Virilio: Origin of a Relationship Between Television and the Concept of Acceleration 1.3 Resisting the Arrow in Communication Studies 1.4 Three Minutes of the UEFA European Championship Final 2008 In Chapter 2, I align strongly with Edward Buscombe (1975) who produced a study of television broadcast styles based on matches televised in the 1974 World Cup. It compares British broadcasts to German ones in a quest to assess common and differing practices. It is the only dedicated study of broadcast style of televised soccer matches. Therefore, it is critical as a leader of this study. In Chapter 2, I also focus on the large screen video display, a ubiquitous 5 structure in sporting stadia of the new millennium, with the intention of proposing it as a source of acceleration within the vision of the 2008 UEFA European Championship Final. Identifying the large screen as an object of interest begins in the work of Virilio (2008b:121-2) and is continued in Redhead (2007). But it also appears in another strand of literature, namely in a study of live performance by Philip Auslander (1999). Here it is positioned as a key mediatising factor. Redhead (1997), Siegel (2002), and Turner (2012) are also important proponents of this, but they are much more focused on the live soccer match than Auslander, who mounts his investigation with a preference for music and other types of performance. The conclusions of Chapter 2 are that the large screen video display accelerates and mediatises the viewing experience of spectators, bringing those two important terms into synonymy. Also, via the path taken through Buscombe and some others, I conclude that the basic elements of broadcast style including, and in particular, camera cutting and the use of replay sequences similarly impart an accelerative influence on the broadcast. Chapters 3 and 4 are stages of analysis. The subject of their focus is derived in Chapter 2 as the large screen display and the production choices made about camera perspective on the match. These chapters are demonstrations of what 6 can be gained by maintaining strict adherence to the defining properties of acceleration. These are introduced and developed in the present chapter. 1.1 The Growing Presence of Sport in Television Studies On the whole, investigations of sport are not common among early generations of television studies, especially those before the advent of digital possibilities. Traditionally they overlooked the presence of sport on television, causing its status to be somewhat lower within the field than other types of broadcasts, such as news, documentaries, series, and quiz and game shows. This is clear, for instance, in Cassata and Skill (1985) where sports broadcasts have no presence in a broad ranging survey of literature on television. In their guide to this literature, Cassata and Skill include discussion of the historical development of television and, particularly, television genres with the aim of “reenforcing (sic) the notion that television is not a single monolithic entity but instead is made up of a number of distinctive program types or genres and should be understood as such” (16). They then survey the literature on television series, including children’s serials, ‘private eye’ series, westerns, documentaries, ‘television vaudeville’, and game shows (21-2). Whilst valuable for providing an array of sources on these genres, and for much else related to the study of television, this work supplies no leads into the literature on sport, suggesting that, traditionally, sport has not been considered one of television’s 7 ‘distinctive program types or genres’. Goldsmith (2009) recognises this to be the case even until very recently: “sports media has not to date attracted the kind of critical and scholarly attention that has been paid to other forms such as news, drama, soap operas, or reality television”. As a result, new generations of writers have emerged, who formulate a variety of responses to redress what is clearly regarded as an inadequacy in the discipline. Goldsmith, for example, studies the range of alternative televisual forms encouraged by sport as its profile on television increased. Goldsmith identifies what he calls “Sportv”, which he begins to define by stating: “‘Sportv’ includes but is by no means restricted to event coverage” (2009). It is important that he includes the event’s broadcast itself in this definition, as well as the other forms it supports. Goldsmith characterises the rest of its contents as “a variety of original and hybrid program types” (2009). These include a list made up of: actuality sportv, wraparound sportv, newsportv, panel sportv, sportvariety, reality sportv, and telesportv. These programs involve quizzes, comment, analysis, celebrity involvement, as well as news and variety entertainment all structured around an event or taking its foundation in a particular sport (2009). Goldsmith develops these new programming and entertainment options by commenting on the burgeoning business in sports programming, which is, 8 fundamentally and increasingly important in contemporary television markets around the world, as evidenced by the announcement in September 2008 [less than three months after the European Championship] that one of the most successful format producers, Endemol, was establishing a sports division, and by the fact that IMG Sports Media is the second largest television distributor in the UK and a leading exporter of sports programming (2009). This is a strong articulation of the influence of sport on the formal aspects of television, and Goldsmith’s work on sportv is part of closer attention to these. However, while giving the event broadcast itself a place within sportv, Goldsmith is explicitly looking “beyond the event” in his study, meaning that he affords no attention to the form taken by sports broadcasts themselves in that study. There are other writers who engage with the economy of television and sport, tracking capital flows between the two, and a good number who choose soccer to do so. Some examples are Whannel (1990), and Crisell (2006) who recognise sport as a critical form of television. In the words of Crisell: 9 Sport illustrates more vividly than most kinds of content the unique and overlapping strengths that television possesses: spectacle, the primary source of its ability to provide entertainment; and liveness, the presentation of something which is happening now and will have an unknown outcome, and which thus makes an important contribution to its power as a news medium. (99) Other questions involving soccer have been asked by Rowe (1996) and Baimbridge, Cameron, and Dawson (1996) who discern alternating hierarchies in the relationship between sport and television; Buraimo et al. (2010), who continue this by asking how television has affected match attendances; and, Rowe and Gilmour (2009) who express an Australian perspective on the role of live televised soccer in society and how it contributes to a newly digital culture. These generations of writers are all part of the landscape in which the present argument operates. They define a field in which the presence of soccer on television is at the fore, and are all intrigued by the interplay between the two. But none of them actually studies the televisual style of a broadcast of soccer. Of these, there is one, a volume edited by Buscombe (1975). While the writers I have mentioned commonly make reference to camera shots and angles, replays and editing in the course of investigation, none is sustained in the way 10 of Buscombe. For this reason, it is by far the strongest reference point for the study conducted in this thesis which seeks to include accelerative properties to style. 1.2 Paul Virilio: Origin of a Relationship between Television and the Concept of Acceleration In the first subsection of this chapter, called ‘The Problem of Acceleration’, I define the major issue in literature surrounding use of the term acceleration. Over the remainder of the chapter, I attempt to characterise Virilio’s writings as they take a path towards a theory of television. The television screen occupies a central place in the framework of Virilio’s work, where it exists in the complicated form of hendiadys, finding expression in the phrase ‘square horizon’ (Virilio, 2008b:26). I demonstrate in this thesis that acceleration is a key to tracking the evolution of the square horizon in Virilio. I demonstrate in the second part of this section that the square horizon is indeed a product of acceleration. This takes place under the subheading, ‘Evolution of the Audiovisual Vector’ where the production of the hendiadys is addressed. ‘Audiovisual vector’ is the phrase Virilio gives to the transportation of information by electromagnetic means (2008b:122). Characterising the audiovisual vector continues subsequently in ‘Images in the Audiovisual Vector’, where I identify the transport vector with the meanings it 11 communicates. Here it is shown that, in Virilio, images possess the same vectorial properties as the electromagnetic wave which carries. This leads into a discussion of perspective, leading from the subsection called ‘Terminating the Audiovisual Vector at the Square Horizon’ into the final subsection of the chapter, ‘Television: Revolution in Perspective’, which establishes Virilio’s attitude to television as a revolution in perspective. At the core of this is that the act of seeing for Virilio is essentially an experience of the geometry of lines of sight, which he calls a “geometrization of our vision of the world” (2008b:45). This opens the way to an analysis of a television broadcast whose composition is entirely of alternative points of view. I conclude the section having argued that Virilio regards television as perhaps the most important agent of acceleration in all digital culture. I begin by demonstrating the problem of acceleration as it emerges in Redhead (2004) and Turner (2012). 1.2.1 The Problem of Acceleration The problem of acceleration presents itself in Redhead (2004) and Turner (2012) explicitly, and in insidious form. Sokal and Bricmont (2003) partially attribute this to errors in translations from Virilio’s French into English. In particular, in their opinion, the word ‘vitesse’ has frequently been wrongly translated as ‘speed’ rather than ‘velocity’ (161). Sokal and Bricmont argue that 12 Virilio also misunderstood the difference between speed and velocity (160). That view is not taken in this thesis, for reasons that emerge later in the chapter. Once the difficulties caused by using the word acceleration imprecisely are exposed, I begin to argue that not only was Virilio aware of the pitfalls of the term, but that in the evolution and construction of the square horizon hendiadys there are tacit solutions which draw directly and indirectly upon the concept of direction, an idea which receives much attention throughout this argument. Redhead (2004) uses the term acceleration in connection with Virilio’s concept of polar inertia (234). The context is as follows: A spectator at a Premiership match today … watches, from an inert, sedentary position in a seat, an accelerated, and accelerating [my italics] spectacle flash by in a blur… (234) He adds: …the way the spectator at the games actually sees the speeding [my italics] spectacle is conditioned by decades of watching such matches live on television, sofa surfing in the sedentary comfort of his or her armchair … (234) 13 Clearly evident in these two quotations is the interchange between describing the spectacle as ‘accelerating’ on the one hand and ‘speeding’ on the other. It indicates the confusion that can attend translation, as noted by Sokal and Bricmont. This notion of polar inertia provides, incidentally, a useful introduction to the concept of mediatisation in Chapter 2. They are similar expressions for understanding the forces that condition voyeurism. Nevertheless, the problem of acceleration is clearly on display. To compound the problem, nowhere does Redhead develop the detail of acceleration as it appears in the first quotation. As an ardent student of Virilio, Redhead’s omission is costly to those who follow. I argue that uncritical co-option of this term from Virilio threatens to destabilise those studies which rely on it. One of these is Turner (2012). The reason for mentioning Turner at this point in the argument is that his remarks on the big screen display at sports venues are very relevant to my later discussion. The risk is that, without proper consideration of what acceleration is, his conclusions appear unsurely grounded. Turner uses the phrase “accelerated mediatisation” in his abstract (1) and it becomes central to an inquiry into the nature of liveness in broadcasting. Whereas I began to raise the problem of acceleration through Redhead, I show in Turner how confusion can spread without clarifying the term in the way that 14 I argue for here. Having demonstrated one origin for this confusion in Redhead and considered the risks it poses in Turner, I turn to the geometrised perspective of Virilio in order to buttress the conclusions of Turner, which assume significance in subsequent chapters. At this stage, I argue that Turner commits the logical fallacy of begging the question without a proper importation of acceleration into his phrase “accelerated mediatisation”. That is, neither of the two terms in this expression is properly or adequately defined, threatening both it and its findings. Turner uses ‘acceleration’, ‘accelerating’, or ‘accelerated’ 22 times, and ‘mediatised’ 25 times. I attend more closely to the term ‘mediatised’ in Chapter 2 than at this juncture of the argument. For the moment, I indicate that Turner makes a strong association between acceleration and mediatisation as follows: The mediatised ‘live’ event … attempts to reproduce the ‘realism’ of the ‘live’ event itself in simulated form, before the actual ‘live’ event can materialise. This acceleration of ‘live’ modernity takes on a virtual life where the entire ‘live’ experience of the event is 15 reformulated and simulated by multiple camera angles. (2012:5) In this statement, Turner has a clearly co-ordinated relationship between acceleration and mediatisation in which the “mediatised ‘live’ event” is in grammatical apposition to “acceleration of ‘live’ modernity” meaning that, syntactically, the second identifies the first as the subject of the next main verb. Thus, we understand that accelerated modernity must be the attempt of the mediatised form to reproduce. The conclusion Turner reaches by taking this as premise is that, “the experience of the ‘real’, ‘live’ event at the stadium and the ‘hyperreal’ mediatized ‘live’ have become so mixed up and intertwined that in many ways they now cannot be understood independent of each other” (7). The difficulty is that there is no indication as to why modernity should be said to be accelerated because it is identified with mediatisation. Rather than providing a way of understanding modernity, Turner’s article succeeds at raising a simpler question, which is, is it possible to associate acceleration with mediatisation in the first place? Without having fully devolved concepts to work with, Turner cannot hope to answer this. In this thesis, I strive to strengthen the connection between mediatisation and acceleration by demonstrating how mediatising agents – like the large screen display, as well 16 as stylistic features of the production, including camera positions and the interpolation of shots into the flow of the broadcast – change the direction of viewer perspective and so effect an acceleration on point-of-view. It is for this reason that I emphasise the need to devolve the concept of acceleration into direction as well as speed. In contrast to his successors, I argue that Virilio does in fact present a devolved idea of acceleration and that this emerges both explicitly as will be shown, and implicitly in some of his geometrical expressions which involve lengths, angles, areas and volumes. Mostly, these are conceptual, but they grow determinedly out of a physical appreciation of the planet Earth. This is the subject of the next part of this chapter. 1.2.2 Evolution of the Audiovisual Vector In order to arrive at a detailed picture of the role and function of television in digital culture, Virilio evolves a complex entity which he calls the audiovisual vector. This is the end product of a process of abstraction which has a strong basis in the concept of acceleration, which I intend to trace out in this part of the argument. From this there also develops a close relationship between the audiovisual vector and the figure of the square horizon. In short, the audiovisual vector in electromagnetic communication takes the place of the automobile in the evolution of technology. Virilio states: 17 We are … in the presence of an unsuspected dimensional production that is identified with an integral cinematic projection. ‘Automobile’, the means of rapid transmission, appears therefore equally to be ‘audiovisual’, since its passengers are the prey of gnosis, both visual and auditory. (2008b:145-6) The editor’s note on the word gnosis here states that Virilio is alluding to “some sense of the conceptual experience or cognition that arises from perception” (200). The audiovisual vector shares a deep relationship with perception and, as ‘an integral cinematic projection’, is equally associated with perspective. Below, I demonstrate that the audiovisual vector is a descendent of accelerating vehicles in the race for land speed records in the twentieth century, and that the square horizon is a descendent of the desert surfaces of those attempts. I argue that the product, television, in Virilio, is a composition of the information vector, made up of audiovisual material, which is accelerated from literally slower means of communication to the speed of light, and the square horizon, one form of which displays the accelerated material. I also show in this thesis not only that the audiovisual vector is 18 accelerated, but also that it is accelerating, and that the television screen is the site where this is legible. Clearly, an essential part of this discussion is the definition of vector. In Virilio this is more complicated than in strictly scientific contexts. However, despite criticism by some, including Sokal and Bricmont (2003:160-1), Virilio retained all the conventional elements of the definition of the vector, and was well aware of the quantities which support vector representations. In short, the vector is conventionally used to represent quantities which change in respect to one another. Motion is the classic site of vector analysis, where an object’s position varies with respect to time. Crucially, there are two possible ways for those values to vary. One is in the order of magnitude, the other in the order of direction. Virilio was quite conscious of this: “As a quantity speed possesses both a magnitude, the number of kilometres covered per hour, and a direction” (2008b:144). Notwithstanding Virilio’s clear awareness of the dual properties of vector quantities, ‘magnitude’ and ‘direction’, the quotation testifies to the problem caused by translational error. Clearly, in the above quotation, the word ‘speed’ is incorrect. This is due to the fact that speed is the expression for magnitude in vectors representing motion. The correct word must be velocity. This is clearly an example of the problem identified by Sokal and Bricmont. It lies at 19 the heart of the problem of acceleration in those who write in English after Virilio. Virilio is deliberately analytical in his treatment of all types of vectors, and from his analytic springs his complex structure of television and televisuality, for the completion of which “it looks as if we need to reconsider the importance of the notions of acceleration and deceleration (vector quantities with positive or negative velocities according to physicists)” (2008a:12). With the direction and magnitude components of the vector acknowledged, and a clear focus on acceleration, Virilio develops a fine-grained cultural value based on the communication of messages by vectors: “[speed (sic)] is also, therefore, a vector, and, just as the automobile industry produces the vector-vehicle, so also does it manufacture vector-speed … Thus, the automobile vehicle (car, boat, plane) is composed of two vectors: both the mobile force-vector as well as the speed-vector of movement, which is a consequence and direct product of the first, but also of the ambient milieu and the particular element (earth, water, air) of travel” (144). 20 Thus, the force-vector and the speed-vector come into existence. Virilio makes a critical identification of these two types of vector in the information they carry. Henceforth, a defining element of the argument offered in this thesis is that “The vehicle transfers its vectorial properties to the objects that run along its route” (Virilio, 2008b:132). In a subsection below, I explore what this means when those objects are images and, more specifically, when those images represent different points of view on a soccer match. I propose that the product of this exploration yields a meaningful way of retaining acceleration in the discourse around digital media objects, including a method of measuring and representing it. Inquiry into the nature of the images transported can contribute to understanding the audiovisual vector. But, the audiovisual vector cannot be complete without some concept of the square horizon. This is particularly so when the square horizon is identified with the television screen, at which point it becomes the terminal surface of the vector (Virilio, 2000:47). The interplay between the television screen and the vector of which it is the terminus originates in the land speed trials of the twentieth century. The beginnings of a logic for this is expressed as follows: “Contrary to their precursors who ardently wished to soar to high altitude, those seeking to break records today attempt to attain the greatest acceleration on the surface of the 21 earth. The horizon once again defines the ideal of conquest, the desert is desire, desire for a body of absolute speed” (131). Here is a reference to the surface of the earth as a site of acceleration. It develops into the other part of the hendiadys of the square horizon. That of the screen has been introduced, but at this stage in his reasoning, Virilio is addressing geographical extent, and the physical plane on which acceleration takes place. The geographical origins of Virilio’s theory on television are unmistakable as he develops them with descriptions such as, “desert plateaus, salt lakes, ice surfaces, endless beaches, sensitive panes for the recording of record speeds like the impressive Bonneville Desert, west of Salt Lake City, fossilised site of an evaporated inland sea, a layer of salt and sand for speed trials where for nearly half a century short-lived records of horizontal acceleration succeeded one another” (131). The desert or salt lake surface of land speed trials are the basis for a symbolic treatment of acceleration and the surface on which it occurs. It is the first step towards a theory of the television screen which continues: “Devoid of accidents, of relief, the ground becomes the mirror of acceleration…After having caused the linear and planar rectification of routes, acceleration imposes the perfect interface” (132). 22 Evident here is the belief that acceleration has necessitated the elimination of the Earth’s geography which is abstracted into what he terms the ‘transapparent horizon’: The optical density of the landscape is rapidly evaporating, producing confusion between the apparent horizon, which is the backdrop of all action, and the deep horizon of our collective imagination; and so one last horizon of visibility comes into view, the transapparent horizon, a product of the optical (optoelectronic and acoustic magnification of man’s natural domain (Virilio, 2008a:22). This quotation and the coinage of the new horizon is evidence of a first extrapolation of the phenomena of speed and acceleration of automobile vehicles to the televisual domain of the audiovisual vector. It is summary of a complicated derivation of a theory of the television screen from the phenomenon of accelerating a vehicle to top speed. Virilio also provides an explanation of how the transapparent horizon comes into view: The illumination of the horizon serves to transform non- polished surfaces into reflective surfaces, as we see verified with dromoscopic illumination: the accelerated 23 perspective acts like a luminous source, the anamorphosis of the trajectory produces an effect of accentuated depth, followed by an optical rectification similar to that of light on the horizon (2008b:132). The above quotation raises the question of ‘accelerated perspective’. It also expresses the idea that it is via the acceleration of perspective that the audiovisual vector can be abstracted from the speed challenges conducted on the surface of the earth. If this is the case, then it bears investigating the question of accelerated perspective. The first stage in this question has been covered, which was to note that the direction of increasing speed on earth is toward the transapparent horizon. This surface marks exit from the physical limitations of geography and translation into an idealised form of seeing. This is developed later in this chapter where Virilio’s call for a revolution in perspective is heard. I demonstrate there that, according to Virilio, the necessity for that revolution arrives in the form of television. In the context above, ‘accelerated perspective’ seems to refer to the view through a vehicle’s windscreen as it accelerates to top speed. Alternatively, it could be a description of the sunlight reflecting off the windscreen as it accelerates toward a distant observer. In any case, Virilio is clearly referring to 24 the phenomenon of sight, making an attempt to deconstruct the action of witnessing acceleration from either within or without the vehicle. He continues by alluding to the Pultrich effect, “we only see the third dimension when one of our eyes receives an image temporised through its relationship to the other” (2008b:132). He continues, “For the object in accelerated movement, this temporisation is further reinforced by the artifice of the horizontal illumination of speed interfering with the nearby or distant surfaces of the environment” (132). Clearly in view here is the optical experience of witnessing a vehicle making an attempt at a land speed record in a desert or salt lake setting. However, he makes his abstraction: “A forced cinematic reference, the line of the horizon is the necessary condition of acceleration. Visible on the level of the surface, speed appears thus like an optical phenomenon of reflection of the ground. A surface effect in constant (advancing) ‘telescopic’ and (accelerated) ‘dromoscopic’ transformation, acceleration is in fact only a form of hallucination” (132-3). In this way Virilio reinforces the links he has made between acceleration and sight. Indeed, he offers acceleration as the cause of an alteration in the way we see. These quotations track Virilio’s use of perspective to extrapolate from the experience of watching acceleration in the desert to a new way of seeing inside the square horizon. The interplay of light and the distant horizon, as well as 25 optical illusions caused by reflections of the sky on the surface of the desert, causing a mirror effect, allow him to link acceleration very specifically to a type of viewing which he terms ‘hallucination’. The transapparent horizon marks the surface through which the ‘telescopic’ and accelerated perspective advances into the geometrically idealised space of the audiovisual vector. The accelerated perspective has been identified in Virilio’s work as key to understanding the evolution of the audiovisual vector. When perspective is accelerated to the speed of light it passes through, or into, the transapparent horizon, transforming into the audiovisual vector. This is the realm of images, which is the subject of the next part of the argument, and brings us closer to a specific understanding of the SBS broadcast. 1.2.3. Images in the Audiovisual Vector Earlier in this chapter, I alluded to Virilio’s comment that the objects that travel along the vectors of communication take on those vectorial properties. In the following quotation appears a reiteration of the analytic which separates the two types of vector in Virilio’s discourse: …there are two sorts of ‘means of mass communication’: audiovisual (press, radio, TV, computer, telephone…) and 26 automobile (the means of terrestrial, air and maritime transportation and movement…) (2008b:148) Moreover, there is a strengthening of the influence of those vectors on the information they communicate: Each of these conveys what amounts to a specific informational content, a type of information linked to its own nature [my italics]. Vector of transmission or vehicle of transformation, both possess the property of modifying the intrinsic content [my italics] of the ‘messages’: transmitted messages … or the transmission of the trip … The course (travelling) is a discourse (message), since it is always a question, in both cases, of conveying sense, in the one direction (going) as in the other (returning)… All technological innovation involving vectors or vehicles must … return to ‘informational logic’… (2008b:148-9) This quotation is critical to forming the bridge between the accelerated perspective above and the argument I develop as this thesis progresses. In particular, I have highlighted the parts in the statement where Virilio 27 recognises that the information conveyed by the vector is intrinsically linked to it by virtue of the signature alterations it forces upon it. This is important on both sides of the transapparent horizon, but I pursue interest in the nature of information on the idealised side, in the audiovisual vector. In this section of the chapter, I take up what Virilio says about the presence of images in information as he prosecutes his conclusions on perspective. The reason for this is that the substance of my analysis in following chapters is made up of an investigation into the nature of images in the object of my inquiry and how they can be considered to be accelerating. Having established the role of images in Virilio as objects carried in the message along the audiovisual vector, a closer inspection can be mounted into the role of the television screen as one half of the square horizon hendiadys. Adopting a general approach to images, Virilio says, “In reality, most [of them], whether mobile or immobile, arise from that capture of the visible domain by a process that puts into play the interaction of light with the surfaces of reflection or of recording” (2008b:132). Reference to the ‘surfaces of reflection’ clearly puts this statement in context with the section above. The extrapolation is made from the square polished surface of the earth to the barrier of the transapparent horizon, here symbolised in the surfaces of reflection or recording. The transapparent 28 horizon is present here in the interaction of light with those surfaces which causes remarkable optical illusions including, and especially, the production of images through the recording and display interfaces in a digital information system. As we have seen, images travelling at the speed of light take on the properties of the audiovisual vector, which becomes the messages it transmits. Images become the audiovisual vector and the audiovisual vector becomes the images it transmits on the other side of the transapparent horizon. It is clear that the audiovisual vector only exists on the far, or non-geophysical, side of the transapparent horizon. On the near, or geographical, side are the massive vehicles of communication, remembering Sokal and Bricmont’s stricture that any object with a non-zero mass “cannot move at the speed of light, precisely because of the theory of relativity of which Virilio seems so fond” (2003:162). Thus, the transapparent horizon also marks the transition into masslessness of the vehicle and the message it conveys. In this thesis, images are taken to be the critical link between acceleration and television. This is because, in its images, television carries the perspective of another at the speed of light to a recipient – called a telespectator (Virilio, 2008b:122). Therefore, it is within images that I have searched for signs or marks of acceleration. The European Final comprises 1006 camera shots, or 29 points of view, and the question becomes whether and in what form these marks are present. At this point in the argument, there is a need to distinguish between parts of speech. In particular, up to this point, in the section relating to Virilio, only the past participle of the verb ‘to accelerate’ has been attended, specifically in the expression ‘accelerated perspective’. On the other hand, I have already indicated that both Redhead (2007) and Turner (2012) employ the present participle, ‘accelerating’. The argument I have conducted so far clearly identifies the transapparent horizon as the limit of acceleration. It is attained after a process of increasing the speed of the vehicle-vector. This makes it possible to say that the audiovisual vector is indeed an accelerated one – it has been accelerated to the speed of light. But, this in no way makes it clear how it can be said to be accelerating. This is more than a trivial point and pursuing it reveals the self- consistency I have argued for in the works of Virilio which have been cited. Accordingly, it opens up a huge, new area of investigation which attends to the directional component of acceleration. Unfortunately, though, it also exposes others who have not dealt with the potential for confusion of speed with velocity, and the ensuing silence over the directions of information. I argued above that Redhead (2007) and Turner (2012) are examples of this. 30 In the final section of this chapter, titled ‘Three Minutes of the UEFA European Championship Final 2008’, I provide a brief shot analysis of the game between Spain and Germany to show that there are indeed ways in which the present participle can be rescued, keeping it alive in the discourse surrounding live sports broadcasts. This is further supported in Chapters 3 and 4. The next part in the present stage of the argument is to indicate how the images carried by the audiovisual vector affect how we think about the television screen. Following this is a discussion of how, taken together, the audiovisual vector and the square horizon of the television screen represent, for Virilio, a revolution in perspective. 1.2.4 Terminating the Audiovisual Vector at the Square Horizon Friedberg (2004:183) says, “In Virilio’s writing the screen serves as the locus of lost dimensions of space and technological transformations of time”. As such the television screen is the terminus of the television vector and at the same time the surface upon which acceleration is identifiable. In connection with the latter of these two functions “the screen remains in a metaphoric register, a virtual surface which overrides any specificities of its media formation” (184). This can be taken as equal to the disjunction Virilio makes, indicated above, where he says that the objects which move along the vehicle vector take on those vectorial properties. With the movement toward a theory of the screen, 31 Virilio consummates the processes of abstraction from the vehicular acceleration on the desert surface to the spaceless geometry of information. Friedberg confirms this when she states that Virilio “casts the screen as the site of ‘the passage from something material to something that is not’” (185). That this involves a transformation of perspective is clear when the screen is read as “the site of architectonic disappearance” (187). Friedberg explains, quoting Virilio: ‘The contour of daily living and the framing of viewpoint in an architectonic constructed of doors and doorways, windows and mirrors are replaced by a cathode framework, an indirect opening in which the electronic false day functions like a camera lens, reversing the order of appearances to the benefit of an imperceptible transparence, and submitting the supremacy of certain constructive elements to that cathode window that rejects both the portal and the light of day’. (187) Thus, after the door and the window, the television screen assumes the status of third window (188). Clear in the above, is emphasis on the ‘framing of viewpoint’ as well as the argument for an evolution of viewpoint effected by light-speed communication. 32 In support of the spaceless geometry of information, Friedberg tracks the gradual loss of dimensions as technology takes over the conveyance of data around the globe. She quotes Virilio on “the dimensional transfer performed as ‘three dimensions of constructed space are translated into the two dimensions of a screen’” (187). Further, “The screen is an ‘interface’ which relies on a visibility ‘devoid of spatial dimension’” (187). This kind of visibility is now dimensionless. In fact, this is in keeping with engineering viewpoints on the character of digital information (Shannon and Weaver, 1949). In the age of the square horizon, what displays on the television screen is a translation of code written in ones and zeros. The data is point-like as it traverses geographical space, flattening out the earth’s curves and angles, taking away its volume in a straight-line passage, rendering the sphere of the globe a plane, flat surface, to appear on a similar, though vertical, television square horizon. And, if this point of light is reminiscent of the image of the luminous source of the accelerated perspective introduced above, seen also as the glinting windscreen of the land- speed vehicle, it is because there is a reliance of Virilio on the growth of one from the other, and the production of hendiadys. The play of light on the windscreen of a vehicle in the desert, and the reflection of the sky in the flat surface of the earth leads to invention of the transapparent horizon, which brings into view the terminal surface of the 33 television screen. The square horizon of the desert morphs into the square horizon of the television screen, completing the hendiadys through the interface of the transapparent horizon. The speed, or much more precisely, the acceleration of information is responsible for this. In connection with the case of the European Championship Final, I argue that the contents of the information are themselves accelerating and the chief element of the contents is the camera perspective. The view taken is that switching between these perspectives, which occurs in camera-cutting, causes it to accelerate. In the next section, I look at the how this can be regarded as a demand for a revolution in the way perspective is understood in the digital age. 1.2.5 Television: Revolution in Perspective For Virilio, the view offered through the square horizon of the television screen amounts to the replacement of old ways of seeing with new ways, expressed as “a perspective in which the old line of the horizon curls itself inside the frame of the screen, opto-electronics supplanting the optics of our telescopes” (Virilio, 2008a:3). The result, he asserts, is that at the end of the twentieth century, “Everything is being turned on its head … not only geopolitical boundaries but those of perspective geometry” (2008b:3). He continues, “It is easy to imagine the 34 havoc wreaked by this new ‘conception of the world’, its effects on the very nature of perspective and so on the orientation of human activities” (4). The overarching question emerges: “if time is matter, what is space?”(4). The question put to perspective throughout these remarks is insistent, and a key to understanding Virilio’s employment of acceleration to theorise television. Virilio opposes traditional Renaissance perspective with a new way of seeing which refers to the subsumption of space by light, that is, space which is eliminated because the speed of light irradiates it instantaneously with information. He expresses this rather imaginatively as follows: These days it is not the ‘geographic’ space of the golden hills of Tuscany under the Italian Renaissance sun, a ‘geometric’ space that once shaped a durable vision of the near world through the window of perspective. It is now the space over the seas and beyond the sky, this so- called ‘cosmic space’ whose obscurity is no longer so much as a lack of sun as of the night of a spaceless time without measurable extent apart from seasonless ‘light- years’, since alternation of night and day is now saddled with an alternation of terrestrial space and its extraterrestrial absence. (4) 35 The frame of perspective here becomes synonymous with the figure of the horizon and the polished mirror introduced above. The result is the overwriting of geographical space with a more abstract type of space perceived ‘opto- electronically’. The result is an elimination of global depth, a flattening of volume by the vector of light. He says more about this new type of perspective: “after the line of the visible horizon, the original skyline of the landscape of the world, the square horizon of the screen (third horizon of visibility) will emerge as a bug in the memory of the second horizon – that deep horizon of our memory of places responsible for our orientation of the world – causing confusion of near and far, of inside and outside, disorders in common perception that will gravely affect the way we think” (26). From these quotations it can be seen how Virilio offers a view on the evolution of geometrical perspective due to changes in perceptions of space caused by the televisual. He questions the original Renaissance perspective by wondering whether it might “be an early form of vertigo arising from the visible horizon, a horizontal vertigo caused by a time-freeze in the intersection of vanishing lines?” (27). Disappearance of lines into the vanishing point in Renaissance painters serves as a useful symbol for the effect on perspective of light- technology, which removes the very space those vanishing lines helped to render in Renaissance painting. 36 Virilio identifies his own as the first generation to “witness the conquest of space” (44) by a new form of energy, “‘image’ energy” or “’information’ energy” (45). The revolution of this is likened to the Renaissance revolution in perspective in being geometric, and distinguished from it by being digital: This third form of energy allows not only the geometrization of our vision of the world, along the lines of that of the Italian Renaissance perspectivists, but also its digitization, with the craft of appearances, elaborated by the proponents of the ‘passive’ optics of the space of matter, bowing out before the industry of the ‘active’ (optoelectronic) optics of the time of light (45). Thus, there is an overtaking of our three dimensional perspective, to which we are accustomed through the windows of our buildings, by new perspective which displays on our screens where all depth is flattened. The demise of the geographic is expressed: “all the architectonics are literally collapsing, right up to that natural lighting provided by the sun which we can now conduct, via sensors and optical fibres, from the front-garden of the apartment block into the inside of the apartment, the fibrous space of the cable taking over from the opening windows in the façade of the home” (54). 37 Elsewhere he states, “The Earth, that phantom limb, no longer extends as far as the eye can see; it presents all aspects of itself for inspection in the strange little window. The sudden multiplication of ‘points of view’ merely heralds the latest globalisation: the globalisation of the gaze … that ‘black box’ which increasingly poorly conceals the great culminating moment of history” (Virilio, 2005: 18). The complex structure of these ideas is built on the physical reality that light travels in a straight line at a constant speed. Their dependence on geometrical expression leads to the double duty of a geometrically formed, square, hendiadys, which represents both the extent which is physically irradiated by light from a single source, and the very frame of perspective, which now includes the squareness of a television screen. The square horizon, therefore, exists simultaneously in physical and non- physical states. The importance of television in the genesis of the square horizon is undoubted in Virilio (2000:44): “What can we say today about the deceit of the live television image except that it does possess that ‘real hue’, thanks to the speed of light of physical optics?” Also, “thanks to the technologies of live broadcasting, television does possess…that sudden credibility that neither painting nor photography nor even cinema had … Whence the emergence of a last horizon of visibility, from the moment you 38 reduce the optical thickness of the human environment” (44). These statements put television at the centre of the opto-electronics mentioned above. It is via a process of geometrical reasoning, that Virilio arrives at it as a figure for quintessential expression for a culture built on velocity. His efforts then turn to understanding, “The problem of the televisual horizon” (45). Under the possibility that “there is no apparent speed without a horizon, a terminus” (47), the question evolves: “Has the frame of the cathode screen become for us a real horizon, a square horizon?” (47). Geometric logic returns with the search for new intervals and dimensions to capture and measure the effects of light speed, in order to characterise television further, “This square which is no more than a cube hiding within the two dimensions of the reductive and fragmentary image of the televised sequence?” (47). What follows leads from this clear articulation of a formula for understanding television directly into a discussion of the television screen which displays a live soccer match. It is by this route that attention is focused on the image displaying on the television screen, and where Buscombe enters the frame. The profit that derives when sport comprises these images is clearly acknowledged by Virilio, who states: 39 …after having assisted in the training of the athlete, television now influences the game, the (atmospheric) pressure of live broadcasting is exerted not only upon the athletes and the referee (whose calls are often discredited when his angle of view is inferior to that of the telespectators), but also the crowd of those who assemble to witness the event in person. (Virilio, 2008b:121-2) Here, Virilio identifies the perspective of ‘telespectators’, arguing that this point of view on the match dominates all others, including those who are part of the match itself. Most important, the television viewpoint has predominance over the ‘live’ spectator’s. He asserts that, “The thousands of spectators actually present lose their value in the face of the millions of absent telespectators, each alone in their own homes” (122). He nominates this phenomenon, “audiovisual pressure” (121). With reference particularly to the broadcasting of soccer, Redhead develops the link between sports broadcasts and accelerated culture by referring to the English Premier League, singling out soccer playing societies and more than implying that their television coverage of the sport influences the degree of acceleration felt generally by their society: “The example we have cited of 40 Premiership soccer in England would thus far fit the notion of an accelerated culture found in very different language and different instances in the work of Paul Virilio” (2008a:5). With this, Redhead directly connects Virilio to the study of sports on television and confirms perhaps the importance of sports in studying digital media, due to the fact that it takes digital technology to broadcast ‘live’ so effectively, and that there is now so much demand for ‘live’ experiences. Still, Redhead admonishes: … this is a cautionary tale too, because there is in fact no inexorability about the process we have described. For instance, top league professional soccer in other countries – say Argentina, Japan, Italy or Spain – is not necessarily as fast as the Premiership in England. Soccer style, culture, tradition and tactics in these other countries determine a slower pace of the spectacle even though the same technological changes we have mentioned persist. Moreover, the ‘live’ televising of English Premiership soccer matches around the globe is often subject to delay, not only by the slight ‘digital delay’, which means a fractional time of delay in the 41 arrival of a signal or a message, but the organisational delay of broadcasters in other countries showing ‘live’ matches delayed by a few minutes, hours or even days to fit in with domestic television schedules. (5) The problem of liveness, indicated here with the use of inverted commas, leads Redhead to state that it serves “as a warning that all might not be what it seems in this supposed accelerated culture of the instant present” (5). Redhead identifies ‘soccer style, culture and tactics’ as factors which influence how the game itself is played, that is, its characteristics on the field. I argue that broadcast style is an essential addition to this list. However, I also show complete agreement with Redhead’s comment that the acceleration that occurs as a result of televising soccer matches certainly does not impart an acceleration on the match which is inexorable. Indeed, I find that the acceleration of the UEFA Euro Final in 2008 was very far from uncontrollable as a result of the march of technology in the digital age. It is evident that the above represents a path in the work of Virilio that leads from the concept of acceleration to the medium of television. It positions television as a product and agent of acceleration. More specifically, it does so best when it conveys a live sports broadcast. Redhead and Turner both 42 extrapolate the broadcast into the sport of soccer. This provides a firm footing for the argument that unfolds in this thesis. 1.3 Resisting the Arrow in Communication Studies Clearly in the preceding section, the question of the vector and its appearance in the work of Paul Virilio was addressed. It was shown that he is very conscious of it as possessed of two properties – magnitude and direction. Also, it was pointed out that Sokal and Bricmont cautioned us to beware of translations of Virilio’s term ‘vitesse’, which subjects the idea of the vector to misunderstanding if rendered as ‘speed’. This is because, in the context of physical motion, speed is the term used for the magnitude of the vector, doing nothing in service of the property of direction. I also demonstrated how Virilio connects his idea of vectors to acceleration, yielding the final expression for the audiovisual vector. In this section, I show preference for the physical and scientific definition of the vector, with both these properties. It is clear from what has been said so far that this is consistent with Virilio’s use of the vector to develop a theory of television out of the concept of acceleration. It is also clear that had others preserved an understanding of the vector when they imported acceleration into their work, confusion may not have spread. However, in following through on this preference a necessary break is made from a strong body of work in 43 media studies often called communication studies. Part of this section is devoted to showing the key points of separation of my argument here and that field of research. As already remarked, vectors are used to represent change in one quantity against another. The most basic application of a vector description is to the phenomenon of motion. Motion is a relationship between something’s position and time. An object’s position is its distance from another point on a scale. When the object moves, its position changes over a period of time. It is useful to know how fast it travels, that is, how much distance it travels relative to the time allocated, and the direction in which it travels. Both of these properties are captured in the vector diagram, which takes the form of an arrow, the length which is the magnitude of the change, representing the speed of motion in velocity, and whose head indicates the direction of change. Thus a vector describing velocity has a magnitude given in distance and time units (eg, kilometres/hour) with a direction figured in where the arrow points. In the case of motion, it is customary to provide direction in terms of cardinal points of a compass. This indicates a two dimensional scale, or a scale of two dimensions, north/south and east/west, each representing an axis. However, a change in distance can also be in reference to its starting and ending points. This is better known as displacement. The displacement of a body in motion 44 can be given against a single scale which measures the distance from where it began to where it ends up. A body which ends up exactly where it began is said to have zero displacement. For the purposes of the present argument, if the object finishes to the left of where it started, it is said to have negative displacement, if it finishes to the right, positive. This is relevant in Chapter 4 where I demonstrate that in the opening sequence of shots in the match broadcast there is a positive displacement of the spectator’s perspective. Acceleration, on the other hand, is a more complex vector because it represents the change in a change. In the study of motion, it describes the change in velocity. That is, the rate at which the object’s velocity is changing. It is measured in units of distance and time, but the time dimension is squared. In other words, the rate of change of distance against time is itself measured against time. This yields a value in the units of distance per time squared, kilometres per second per second, for example, often written kmsec-2 (kms/sec/sec) to render the squaring of the time dimension. A vector representing acceleration is written with a certain length indicating by how much the velocity is changing and the vector points in the direction in which velocity is changing. The problem identified at the beginning of this argument was that with the speed of light attained there can be no change to the length of the vector. Thus, for the term to hold true, it must somehow be shown to 45 change direction, this was the inherent problem of acceleration, implicit in rendering vitesse as speed, not velocity, and it occupies the focus of this thesis. However, difficulty arises because the concept of direction has already been claimed by an important field of endeavour, namely that which goes by the title communication studies. From the outset, it is important to note that the title is one of convenience and belies the fact that those works within its range are very diverse and that there is much contested terrain among them. Below, I give a brief snapshot of some of the communication models that help to define the field and detail the points of difference with the way Virilio requires direction to be understood in media contexts. Fiske (1990) provides a useful survey of the field of communication studies. He begins by dividing it into two. He calls one the process school, which “is concerned with how senders and receivers encode and decode, with how transmitters use the channels and media of communication. It is concerned with matters like efficiency and accuracy. It sees communication as a process by which one person affects the behaviour or state of mind of another” (2). The other is called the semiotic, or meaning-based, school because it “sees communication as the production and exchange of meanings. It is concerned with how messages, or texts, interact with people in order to produce meanings; that is, it is concerned with the role of texts in our culture” (2). 46 Referring to the contrast between meaning-based models and process models, Fiske makes explicit reference to the role of the arrows in their representation: … [semiotic] models will differ from the [process] ones … in that they are not linear: they do not contain arrows indicating the flow of the message. They are structural models, and any arrows indicate relationships between elements in this creation of meaning. (39) He is forthright about the fact that the arrow indicates the direction of flow of information. That is, who/what sends and who/what receives. In effect, systems are defined by the arrows used to represent them. Indeed, inasmuch as defining exchange between entities, the arrows also define relationships within the system, that is, differences between points or components. Fiske adduces Gerbner’s Model, Newcombe’s Model, Westley and MacLean and C.S Peirce among others to illustrate the frequent reliance in communication studies on graphical models to make theories clear (1990:20- 60). Also, Fiske demonstrates that the arrow is a basic tool of construction. It is the fact that the arrow so successfully indicates a relationship and flow between a transmitter and responder that makes it difficult to discuss direction in a manner free from those associations. 47 Yet, I argue that that is what is necessary to keep acceleration in play in media studies. So, I try to separate the role of the arrow from the role of the vector. In the next section, I hope to demonstrate what can be gained by focusing precisely on the images conveyed by the light-vehicle. The models above, it could be argued, are much more dedicated to the direction of the vehicle itself. It was established above that this is validly said to be accelerated. However, I propose that in order for the present participle to be suitable, it is necessary to show how the images within the broadcast are changing direction. I also show in Chapters 3 and 4 that the vector, with its dual- property expression, excels the arrow as used in the communications models analysed by Fiske in its ability to allow information to be derived about the message in particular, not just the path it takes. At this point, it is fitting to give a demonstration of why this is profitable, showing where this excellence lies in study of the images contained within a sports broadcast. Therefore, I introduce a short shot analysis of an excerpt of the match with a view to illustrating how the spectator’s perspective changes direction and to illustrate how rotation is relevant to the discussion. 1.4 Three Minutes of the UEFA European Championship Final 2008 In this section of the introductory chapter I seek to provide a glimpse of what the camera captured on June 29, 2008, when it recorded the European 48 Championship Final between Spain and Germany. This description is conducted in order also to lead into the analysis chapters in which extensive reference to camera shots and angles is made. As such, it is also a means to usher in investigation of the dedicated study of broadcast style, already mentioned, by Buscombe (1975) in the next chapter. In the second minute of the match, SBS commentator, Martin Tyler, describes the 2008 Final as a contest between the “graft of Germany” and “the craft of Spain”. These descriptions derive from both the form of the teams during the tournament, and what we have come to expect from their playing styles over time. Traditionally, Spain’s style of football has been distinguished by the technical ability of its players, their ‘craft’. During the match, Martin Tyler reminds us that Spain has won the European Championships only once before, and that was when they hosted the event in 1964. On the other hand, Germany is renowned for its habit of winning tough matches at important stages of major competitions. Their style is based on players who are physically powerful, and Martin Tyler often talks about Germany and its players “imposing” themselves on Spain during this match. The picture below shows the layout of a soccer pitch released by UEFA before the 2008 tournament. It displays general information about the position of cameras during the tournament. I have added detail which is designed to assist 49 the analysis both here and in Chapter 4. For current purposes it serves to supply a context for the shot description which follows in this section. It should be recognised that this is a representation which generalises all venues in the tournament, so cannot be called an exact diagram for the camera positions in the Final. For a start, as the climax of the championship, more cameras are employed in the Final than many of the other matches, a total of 30. This diagram clearly does not indicate 30 camera positions. This is because, with new compact digital technology, cameras can be added to the inside of each goal netting as well as the beginnings of use of an overhead camera which can make shots from above the playing surface, offering unprecedented views of play from a perspective above the players. None of these viewpoints are referred to in this chapter but they do have a presence in Chapter 4. Nevertheless, the diagram acts as a good guide for understanding the sequence of shots below and helps with the addition of a visual element to a discursive description. 50 Diagram 1 Small Map of Camera Emplacements Principally, this diagram indicates that there is a central camera position. It is marked Position A here and that is carried into Chapter 4. Nearly all camera cuts are through this position. The diagram also shows that there are camera placements at equal distances to the left and right of A. However, there are some important omissions from the diagram in addition to those mentioned above and these must be remarked. First, the picture contains no reference to mobile cameras at ground level on the near side of the field. These are in use often throughout the Final and their presence must be noted. For instance, in the sequence below, seven shots are from ground level. Also not marked on the diagram are two camera emplacements on the far side of the pitch. Two shots below come from here. 51 These positions are entirely absent from Buscombe’s study, and other writers argue strongly for preservation of the “180 degree rule” (Siegel, 2002:56) which demands that all angles on the match are from one side of the pitch. I argue that the beginnings of the end of this practice are evident in the Final and this is one reason for giving it attention. With these details established, it is possible to make a description of the first three minutes with the goal of beginning a study of its shifting of perspective, or its acceleration through time. This corresponds to a more thorough treatment of the same period in the match in Chapter 4. As stated above, the first three minutes of the match contain 33 shots. As expected they are dominated by shots from Position A. 16 shots originate from this camera. The remaining shots are made up of mid- or close-range shots of individual players. The number of shots from the left hand side of Position A totals five, to the right nine shots were made. This indicates a flow of perspective from left to right through the central position. Of the 16 shots from Position A, the lens was panned and/or zoomed to the right of the centre line on the field for a total of 83 seconds, nearly half the duration of the sequence. On the other hand, it was panned and/or zoomed to the left for 53 seconds. This means that the camera angle was turned to the right or left of the centre line for 136 seconds, or two minutes and 16 seconds. 52 Combining Position A with the other shots, the camera view is turned to the left hand side of the field in 12 shots and to the right in 22 shots. The discrepancy between this and the total number of shots is that in four shots the camera angle pans through the centre line of the field, rotated, thus, to the right and to the left. If the telespectators’ (to adopt Virilio’s term) point of view is identified with the lens of the camera, it is possible to say that their perspective turns through these angles in accordance with the panning or zooming of the lens, or the cutting from Position A to the left or the right. These are some of the details I assume in Chapter 4. For example, if we focus on the cuts between the camera at Position A to cameras to the right of it, it is clear that this occurs nine times. Cuts to the left occur five times. I demonstrate in Chapter 4 that it is possible to measure the distances between these cameras, and hence the distance the telespectators’ point of view has ‘travelled’. This can then be represented with a vector. In accordance with what was said above, the length of this vector gives the total distance travelled. Also, over the course of three minutes we can say that the distance travelled to the right is further than to the left because the cuts occur more often in that direction. Therefore, the total displacement is to the right. This is bearing in mind that displacement differs from distance in that distance 53 measures the total course of travel whether the start and end points are the same or not. Displacement measures the distance between the start and end points. In order to get a final displacement, the vector representing the distance travelled to the left of Position A is added to the vector representing the distance to the right. If they are equal, displacement is zero. In this case, the vector representing the displacement of the telespectators’ perspective over the course of the first three minutes of the broadcast points to the right, with a length equal to the difference between the distances accumulated by cutting. As an example, applying the figures on the diagram, and assuming a cut to the left or right equals a distance covered of five metres, and that each cut to a camera is followed with a cut back to Position A, making the total distance covered in the cut to and from Position A ten metres, the distance covered by cuts to the left is twice five times five, or 50 metres. Cuts to the right equal a distance of twice nine times five, or 90 metres. Clearly, the viewers’ gaze travels 40 metres further in the right direction. Reducing every ten metres to a unit value yields a vector of length four, pointing in the right direction. Admittedly, these figures are rather arbitrary, but with exact measurements available, a precise length could be established for the vector. 54 When camera positions are added to the other side of the field, there is a sense in which point of view circulates through the volume of the stadium. In the analysis provided above, the movement of the viewing perspective was solely to left or right, that is, along a two dimensional scale. However, a third dimension is added when the camera angle switches to the other side of the field. In fact, that occurs twice in the sequence presented here. The cut from shot number ten to eleven is a cut from Position A to the other side of the field. It contains the Germany coach, Joachim Low, and its duration is five seconds, before the cut back to A. Thus, the cuts from shot ten to eleven to twelve in this sequence constitutes a rotation of the viewer’s gaze across to the far side of field and back to the near. An identical action takes place in the cuts from shot 24 to 25 to 26. This contains a shot of Spain coach, Luis Aragones, and also lasts for five seconds. In both these cases, there has been a complete change of direction in the perspective offered by the camera lens. Indeed, the angle has moved through 180 degrees. Finally, and rather unusually, shot 26 is not from Position A. That is, the cut from the other side of the pitch does not make a complete return to its starting point. In Chapter 4, I pursue this in more detail, but here it is worth noting that this action can influence the value for the total distance covered in cutting and 55 alter the length of the vector representing the change. Indeed, it can be the difference between a zero displacement, which requires no vector at all, and a non-zero one. In any case, this example serves to demonstrate that it is possible to consider that viewer perspective changes direction as a product of cutting. These changes occur over the duration of the match, a total of 1006 times in this case. I argue that this is a form of acceleration which can be measured and represented in the manner indicated. In contrast, focusing just on shots from Position A, and not involving cutting, it is seen that the camera lens is turned to the right for 30 seconds longer than to the left. This means there is an overall rotation of the camera’s point of view in that direction for that length of time. In Chapter 4, I develop the importance of the angle of point of view. Throughout the broadcast there are many shots which represent a point of view which is turned away from a centre line. Above I have indicated that the centre line on the field provides a useful midline. I retain this in Chapter 4 and develop two others. I argue that the rotation of the camera away from these lines constitutes both a stable change in direction, that is, a change that doesn’t change, and also a change in direction over time – an acceleration. The summary of this is that any camera shot which is turned, or rotated, away from its midlines can first be said to be accelerated in that direction. However, being accelerated in that direction over the duration of the 56 shot means that there is constant change in the change of direction of the perspective, and this enables it to be said that it is also accelerating over its duration. Thus, the past and present participles are applicable. This is much more difficult to measure than the previous case, but possible in theory. In this section of the chapter, I have tried to indicate the manner in which I approach acceleration in the broadcast of the 2008 Final. The examples I have provided are in anticipation of the analysis conducted in Chapter 4. They both rely on the power of the camera to effect changes in the direction of perspective, and they establish it as a prime force of acceleration in media culture. In Chapters 2 and 3, I associate its power to accelerate with its success as a mediatising agent. 1.5 Conclusion In this chapter, I have attempted to enunciate the changing status of sports broadcasts in the study of television. I have indicated Paul Virilio as a key theorist who believes strongly in the agency of television in the age of digital communication. I have also demonstrated the place he affords live sports broadcasts in his work. Similarly, I have endeavoured to highlight references to acceleration in his writings. These led to a specific problem in using the term which arose when the possibility of increases in speed was no longer present, and the directional component of velocity ignored. 57 Nevertheless, in locating references to acceleration, it was clear that the link between television and acceleration was vital. Indeed, Virilio is arguably of the opinion that television is one of the products of accelerated communication, and the key to this was the notion of the vector. I identified where Virilio stated the difference between the vector-vehicle and vector-speed. Of particular interest was the transference of the vector properties of the vehicle to the objects it carried. As far as television was concerned, this made the information it communicated a vector quantity. For information to be accelerating it must somehow be changing direction, due to the limit of light speed. At the end of this chapter, I gave a brief demonstration of how I intend to use the vector properties of information, namely the television broadcast of the UEFA European Championship Final of 2008, to elucidate, describe, and measure the way in which it changes direction over the course of its duration. This began by taking that which the vector-vehicle transports as the image. As wholly composed of camera shots from a wide variety of angles, I argue that these images represent a certain perspective which undergoes changes in direction. I propose that this is a sense in which it can be said to be both accelerated and accelerating. It possibly also adds value to Virilio’s ‘accelerated perspective’ of the driver as he or she looks out the windscreen of their vehicle 58 as it speeds up, and it certainly separated me from the field under the umbrella term ‘communication studies’. In the next chapter, I try to connect this view of acceleration with the concept of mediatisation so that by the conclusion of this thesis they can be understood as implicating one another. 59 CHAPTER 2 – A SURVEY OF LITERATURE The aim of Chapter 1 was to explain the purpose of this thesis. I indicated my intention to offer support to the usage of the term acceleration in digital media studies. I proposed to use a live sporting event to do this because it is composed of a long sequence of camera shots from different angles, each one giving an alternative point of view on a single event. I also argued that, although the role of sport in studying television was very limited in the late twentieth century, since the advent of the new millennium, it has become more and more common for writers to turn their attention to sports broadcasts. In addition to this, I positioned the work of Paul Virilio at the origin of my argument. It was from among his writings that usage of the term acceleration sprang, to be adopted by others as a key term in cultural studies. The excursion into Virilio and the focus on acceleration also brought the vector into discussion. I attempted to define what is meant in a scientific or mathematical context as clearly as possible. The reason for undertaking that was due to the value put on the term by Virilio which is also demonstrably mathematical or scientific. 60 I described towards the end of Chapter 1 that with the adoption of the vector, with its dual properties, my argument encountered the challenge of answering an already firmly established presence of the concept of direction in the broad and diverse region of communication studies. Thus, by determining to engage in an investigation into acceleration I elected a course that would lead to divergence from this classical body of work on the characteristics of information systems. I tried to give the basis for this divergence, which is due to the essential need for vector diagrams to represent acceleration. The result of this is a different application of the term ‘direction’ with a quite distinct set of associations. The shot analysis was included as an introduction to how I address the directional properties of vectors in Chapters 3 and 4. This chapter is a continuation of the task of connecting the argument presented here to literature. I discuss some inquiries into sports other than soccer, but the prime focus is on the detailed examination of broadcast style conducted by Buscombe after the 1974 World Cup in Germany. The shot analysis last chapter was undertaken in anticipation of Buscombe, assisting to build up a picture of the match as it appeared on television. I carry into Chapter 4 the fact that this picture is defined by the frame of the camera shot and the 61 style achieved in the sequencing of these shots. At the close of Chapter 1, I detailed how this style can be connected to the notion of acceleration. The focus on Buscombe early in the chapter leads into further discussion of viewing experiences of spectators. It was established in the previous chapter that acceleration is key in Virilio’s deconstruction of the experience of seeing or watching. This thread is continued in the present chapter by following Buscombe and taking the lead offered by others into the omnipresence of big screens and their essential influence on viewer experiences both at the venue and in their homes. There is clear evidence in Virilio of the fact that he was thinking of the relevance of sport on television to understanding how acts of viewing are under change in the age of information. This was introduced in Chapter 1 (Virilio, 2008b:121-2). Here it was indicated that Virilio identified the perspective of ‘telespectators’, arguing that this point of view of the match dominates all others, including those who are part of the match. Most important, the television viewpoint has predominance over the ‘live’ spectator’s. In this example, Virilio patently gave the home viewer perspective on sport precedence over the stadium viewer. Also clear is that he stopped just short of making reference to the infiltration of the television perspective into the 62 stadium via the big screens, now ubiquitous in global sporting arenas. However, Redhead makes up the gap bringing the “giant screens” within the compass of Virilio’s framework (Redhead, 2007:234). In particular, he incorporates it into the framework of “polar inertia” as described on pages 13 and 14 of this thesis, where extensive quotations reinforced the central importance of live broadcasts of soccer to Virilio’s cultural theories, especially through the notion of polar inertia. Crucially, they were also evidence of the confusion that surrounds the concept of acceleration. Finally, Virilio and Redhead, with their references to the big screen and ‘polar inertia’, are placed in strong communication with the seminal work on liveness and mediatisation conducted by Auslander (1999). It is via this connection that the concepts of acceleration and mediatisation meet. I propose that this is a critical recognition because it enables a more layered understanding of what a mediatised culture or society can be. Furthermore, I establish in Chapters 3 and 4 that acceleration of a broadcast can be measured. Making an association between acceleration and mediatisation also means that measurements can be taken to gauge mediatisation. This possibility is a key product of the remainder of this argument and is one of its strongest contributions to the field of media studies. 63 The path taken in this chapter to help realise these goals is as follows. First, I identify some other close studies of sport in the field and I draw from them as much as possible relating to broadcast styles and production choices. Prime among these is the study by Buscombe, whose statement that “Television creates worlds, it does not record them” (1975:65) is emblematic of the spirit of the investigation undertaken here. In other words, the broadcast vision of the European Championship Final of 2008 is an entity distinct from the event itself and is regarded as a constructed product of choices and selections made by the production team. The lessons learned from Buscombe’s study of broadcast style are applied directly to the analysis of Chapter 4. With the significance of Buscombe established, I proceed to an acknowledgement of Auslander’s study of performance, where the phenomenon of mediatisation is thoroughly investigated. Auslander’s own references to sport are few, but one occurs in his identification of the large screen at entertainment venues (1999:25) which has provoked a range of responses. Included are some which specifically target sports venues, where the big screen has become an essential feature, and among those are a number who concentrate specifically on soccer stadia. It emerges coincidently that those in this category have strong alignment with Virilio. From this group, strength is gained for the association of mediatisation with acceleration, the 64 hinge of which is the large screen video display in stadia. Therefore, in Chapter 3, I embark on a detailed analysis of the presence and role of the large screen video display in the 2008 European Championship Final. 2.1 Studies of Soccer and the Importance of Buscombe (1975) As far as the sport of soccer goes, there are three outstanding explorations, one of them filmic. Buscombe (1975) and Nowell-Smith (1978) are two conventionally academic studies. The third is a film by Gordon and Parreno (2006) Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. Nowell-Smith says that “sport has been radically changed, in all its aspects, by the advent of television” (1978:45). He talks about camera perspectives in the 1978 World Cup and how they have been used to standardise television representation by eliminating contextual differences (51-2). He states that “it is a matter not of questioning the ‘construction’ and ‘reality’ separately (the former thus inevitably emerging as a distortion of the latter) but together” (50). Also, regarding some of the ways this identity is constructed: “Broadcasting indifferently to supporters of both side and of neither, television adjudicates from the half-way line, using the end cameras mostly for replays. Additionally, by using camera positions down one side of the ground, television preserves ‘flow’ according to the classic rules inherited from cinema, in 65 particular the 180 degree rule. The impartial and voiceless flow of images is enough to contain and neutralise any effect of interruption produced by the pauses for replays” (51-2). As mention of the indifference and impartiality of the camera suggests, comments on the construction of broadcasts feature in a larger set of goals relating to the politics of fandom. As such, the study is situated amid a field of studies looking at how television has changed football supporters and the ways they form and express their loyalties. Sandvoss (2003) is exemplary of fandom studies. Due to the large scale aims of Nowell-Smith, which are social and political, I do not engage further than is relevant for information about broadcast conventions, that is, in his reference to production techniques. Exploring the sport from the perspective of the player, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait tests the celluloid layer which refracts the real player into the television celebrity. This has attracted a certain amount of scholarly attention. For example, Dauncey (2008:302) examines “how this innovative and unusual portrait of a sporting hero … interrogates and reveals the inherent receptive opacity of Zidane’s celebrity persona”. The way football broadcasts are packaged together and watched receives some attention through this, first via the commentary the film makes upon it, and second through the study of this commentary by academics. The film’s 66 “original 35mm footage of Zidane is frequently edited together with the television footage, most commonly when Zidane is actually in possession with the ball. Thus, as Zidane receives the football, the film cuts to show the television broadcast of the action, but, when Zidane passes, and the action moves upfield, the film cuts back to the 35mm image of Zidane left alone” (309-10). Dauncey interprets as follows: In this way, a distinction is set up between television and film: where the image follows the ball, the film follows Zidane. As Charles Tesson has commented, in televised football, the ball legitimises the editing: it is the movement of the ball that motivates changes in angle and focal length as well as camera movement. Liberated from this constraint by its exclusive focus on Zidane, Gordon and Parreno’s film is thus in a better position to offer privileged access to a more intimate knowledge of the player. (309-10) There is also commentary on the role of scripts in sports broadcasting. For example, “football is at its most boring when the advance script matches perfectly to the game that is played...a match becomes truly interesting when this advance script is disrupted by another” (313). This film and the work it has 67 inspired is an important pillar in understanding how football is displayed on television. But it remains one step removed from being work done on a fully integrated and unified television perspective. It is rather focused on contributing to a greater consciousness of the way games are shown and consumed by trying “to adopt Zidane’s point of view in the film, to make their portrait less a factual record of a match than a subjective experience of the event’s protagonist” (310). In addition, Dauncey says that “the film has something of an uncertain status, situated somewhere between a feature- length documentary, a contemporary art exhibit and an experimental broadcast of a football match” (309). The inscrutability of the film, reflected in this comment, and the uncertainty surrounding how to identify it or make a solid classification means it is difficult to employ as a stable guide for how to treat the SBS broadcast. But, it is certainly worthy of mention in its connection, as they are similar interrogations of a mode of watching football we see developing in the twenty-first century under the influence of digital technology. On the other hand, Buscombe’s study is entirely devoted to soccer in a succinct comparison between the styles of German and British football coverage during the 1974 FIFA World Cup. It identifies basic camera shots, which are not very different from Williams’ (2006) work in the field of sports fandom, and 68 Hesling’s (1986) study of the pictorial representation of soccer on television. However, Buscombe is more interested than either of these two in how camera shots are employed to engender narrative. His study measures shot durations, using them to analyse the rhythm of montages, and discusses how camera placements contribute to the type and structure of meanings present in the broadcast. It also looks at the use of replays and accounts for what they add to narrative development and aesthetic appeal of the vision. The lead provided to my thesis by this publication is strong, making it an invaluable resource when making a similar assessment of the UEFA Euro Final. Its focus is similar and the goals of its analysis comparable. As such, Buscombe’s work is probably the best fitting previous study conducted into football on television. It represents the type of study produced by belief in a constructed unified identification of television and sport. Buscombe fits comfortably within the class of investigations containing Nowell-Smith (1978), Siegel (2002), and Turner (2012) in this respect. A position summed up in the statement about television creating worlds, rather than recording them (Buscombe, 1975:65). Thus, we understand Buscombe’s attention to be directed at a created entity. In the same way, this is a study of the created identity of the UEFA European Championship Final 2008. The details of the broadcast structures in Buscombe are influence the analysis in Chapter 4, where they can be used to judge how 69 conventions have been challenged or reviewed by producers and directors. At this point I establish some of the motivations behind the Buscombe study which shapes the way it is conducted. Buscombe is single-mindedly focused on “questions about television aesthetics” (1). By studying these aesthetics the investigation aims to discover how television “can reconstitute the football world by erecting a superstructure through which the football itself may be viewed” (60). Terms like ‘aesthetics’ and ‘superstructures’ imply form and it is a subscription of this thesis that aesthetics are products of form. Therefore, any study pretending to the aesthetics of an object also refers to its form. Buscombe uses phrases like “organisational structures” (6) of television, which may be made up of ‘codes’ of “lighting, colour, speed, definition, framing, camera movement and placement, editing” (23). In other words, the way an event is “transferred to the screen by means of various technical processes of television” (23). The way a viewer reads the match is dependent upon this transference, “since part of that meaning is contained in the choices that are made from the range of possibilities that each code affords” (5). ‘Transference by means of various processes’, ‘Choice’ and ‘possibility’ clearly indicate changes within the production values of a broadcast, made by producers and directors, and may constitute “the superfluities of style” (5) Buscombe also mentions. In using the 70 word ‘superfluities’ Buscombe implies awareness of the effects on meaning of changes inside the vision, since flux is an essential descriptor of change. Buscombe also mentions speed and movement when discussing editing in respect of other ‘codes’, harking in some way back to the influence of the semiotic school of communication studies, as discussed in Chapter 1: “All the codes discussed so far have been concerned with what happens within the image, though codes of speed and camera movement can in practice only apply over a number of frames” (33). Indeed, taken all together, these comments indicate the availability of ‘visual style’ to definition in terms of changes within the codes of which it is composed. The majority of these changes cannot be addressed in a single study of any length. But, these remarks by Buscombe open a practically limitless number of circuits within the television picture only requiring definition before investigation of acceleration can begin. These are the integrated elements of the audiovisual effect. Also, in analysing cutting, editing and framing of production, Buscombe recognises changes in point of view on the match. This puts Buscombe in alignment with Siegel, as I show below. Although, in contrast, where Siegel provides some useful general rules for telecasting, Buscombe provides 71 explication in detail of particular uses of the camera in broadcasts of matches in the 1974 World Cup in Germany. In addition to these works on the sport of soccer, there are others not focused on soccer which are of importance to this study. For instance, there is a wealth of literature with an interest in American sports. These can add to Buscombe’s study in what they say about production technique. Indeed, Siegel’s study of the large screen video display begins at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, a baseball venue. Also, Williams (1977) analyses the content of six gridiron games in 1975, coming up with ten definitions of shots used in productions: extreme close-up; close-up; medium shot; near full shot; tight full shot; long shot where the player’s body fills about half the height of the image; long shot where the player’s body fills about a third of the height of the image; extreme wide shot capturing one-third to one-half of the field; extreme wide shot showing the field, stands, or both from within the stadium; extreme wide shot from above (134). Hesling (1986) has a similar, if less exhaustive list for the sport of soccer (182). These are excellent guides for coverage of a sports match in the new millennium. These shots are all present in the broadcast of the European Final of 2008. However, there have been some important new additions resulting from the existence of smaller cameras. I alluded to these in Chapter 1 and, in 72 Chapter 4, I show these new positions to have a measurable effect on the direction of information in the broadcast deriving mostly from the angles through which they turn the camera’s point of view. As Nowell-Smith says, “The television picture always presents an angle” (1978:47). In the next section of this chapter, I survey some who are interested in the television perspective and the angle it presents, but in a special way. They examine the action by which it is funnelled back into the stadium through the medium of the giant video display. 2.2 Identifying Acceleration and Mediatisation through the Large Screen Video Display The literature to which I refer in this section of the chapter indicates that the concepts of acceleration and mediatisation share an association, which is sometimes very close. Just how close in Turner (2012) was explained on page18, where I indicated that the association between acceleration and mediatisation builds out of understanding accelerated modernity to be the attempt of the mediatised form to reproduce. At that point in the argument, I used an extract from Turner (20012:5) to indicate a problem in using the term acceleration. I spent a large part of the remainder of Chapter 1 describing a way in which the concept could be supported in media studies. 73 This co-ordination is an important end point for Turner’s argument. It separates Turner from a large body of writing which treats the live event distinct from the televised event. Authors unlike Turner in this respect include Spigel (2005) and Marriott (2007). Buraimo’s conclusion that there is no consensus among them on the impact of broadcasting in sport is also telling (2010:467). On the other hand, it is also a conclusion about which it is difficult to feel that it is established on reliable foundations. The explanation for this is that it rests on the phrase, “accelerated mediatisation”, and develops an argument with the two terms in apposition, as described. Mediatisation is twice used in connection with television but, aside from a single reference to “camera angles” (2012:5), there is no commitment to unfolding what the link between television and mediatisation might be. Nevertheless, it is a felicitous reference which invites prosecution. My analysis shows that acceleration can be comprehended in detail if the action of the camera at live venues is examined. It shows that the camera can be the cause of acceleration in television broadcasts. If the camera can be established at the heart of both mediatisation and acceleration, a basis for claiming a relationship between them can exist, and Turner’s phrase is validated. For this, I refer to the point where Auslander (1999), Siegel (2002) and Turner (2012) intersect. This is the presence of big 74 screens at live venues. I demonstrate in Chapter 3 that this medium is a link between acceleration and mediatisation. It is a goal of the present chapter to forge this link through connections present in literature. Siegel is similar to Turner in that he centres his study around reference in Auslander to the large screen video display at live performance venues (1999:25). Auslander’s work is a major impetus to other studies of sports, in the mould of Turner and Siegel, whose work is constrained to visions of reality as opposed to the nexus between reality and the image of it. Auslander introduces the big screen as a strong mediatising force and he uses it to oppose concepts of liveness. The question of the liveness of the UEFA Euro 2008 Final is not entered into here. Rather, referring to the LSVD in order to understand mediatisation is the goal. Schultz (2004) helps by providing an initial definition of mediatisation: The technological, semiotic and economic characteristics of mass communication result in dependencies, constraints and exaggerations that constitute the core meaning of mediatisation. (5) Schultz also identifies three functions of media leading to effects associated with mediatisation (7): 75 (1) The relay function, grounded in the media’s technological capacities, serving to bridge spatial and temporal distances; (2) The semiotic function, making messages suitable for human information processing through encoding and formatting; (3) The economic function, highlighting the standardisation of media products as an outcome of mass production processes. This offers a view on what drives mediatisation. Certainly in the present case all three of the functions of media associated with mediatisation are relevant. The first relatable to television and the images displayed on the LSVD. The second to the way those images are patterned. The third to how much those patterns are worth in the global market. But, still we are wanting an explanation of what causes mediatisation. Even in Auslander’s text there is no treatment of the camera that takes the images that displays on those big screens. In fact, locating any piece of writing that links the camera to mediatisation is difficult. The big screen is the first concrete link between a study of a sports broadcast and Auslander’s seminal piece on mediatised culture. The reward in pursuing 76 this link is to prove finally that a mediatised culture is also an accelerated culture. Turner maintains this, of course, but my analysis in Chapters 3 and 4 shows that this need no longer be taken on an a priori basis. Moreover, I provide a picture for what the camera does to mediatise the event. As stated, whereas Turner (2012) is more closely aligned with Auslander in a study of viewing experience, Siegel (2002) is directed more at remediation, a phenomenon defined by Bolter and Grusin as relating to a medium “which appropriates the techniques, forms, and social significance of other media and attempts to refashion them in the name of the real” (2000:65). Lessage interprets this as follows: “Remediation is a concept that deals with how one media relates with other media” (2011:103). One of the differences between the concepts of mediatisation and remediation is that the latter is more analytic than the former, yielding itself up to breakdown into a double- logic of hypermediacy and immediacy. A similar step in the analysis of mediatisation has not occurred. Siegel’s work leads him to replace the logic of immediacy with the idea of narrativisation. He explains some of the features of television broadcasts which have been co-opted by the LSVD in a way that is clearly relatable to Bolter and Grusin’s definition of remediation: 77 There can be little doubt that television’s narrativized construction of the sporting event provides “a privileged cognitive and aesthetic experience”, insofar as the medium’s formal elements (mise-en-scène, videography, editing, sound) are manipulated and mobilized to accentuate, even hyperbolize, the game’s supposedly intrinsic capacity for drama and spectacle. The facial close- up, for example, is repeatedly used to signify what are believed to be the intense psychological states of the participants (concentration, elation, anguish, frustration, etc.), while the slow-motion replay, at once oneiric and scientific, “allows the analysis and appreciation of body movements which are normally inaccessible to view”. The fact that much of LSVD programming copies or closely approximates the “language” of sports television can be seen as a solution to a particular problem, namely the problem of how to recreate, within the confines of the stadium itself, the experience of televised sports for the generation(s) of fans accustomed to its sensorially 78 aggrandized and affectively intensified construction of the game. (55) Here Siegel summarises some of the conventions of sports television broadcasting which he says is in the convention of “Hollywood-style continuity editing, which is designed ‘to create a smooth flow from shot to shot’” (2002:56). Continuity of broadcast is achieved by following several basic rules of production. First, the establishment of “an imaginary ‘180-degree line” or “axis of action” or “centre line”, which works to ensure immediate legibility of spatial relations across edits, or in the case of live television, across camera-to-camera “switches” (56). He also says that most of the cameras used to capture the event are located on one side of this axis, “As long as the director does not switch to a camera on the other side of the 180-degree line, the constancy of screen direction will be ensured” (56). My analysis shows that these types of switches, or cuts, are occurring rather more frequently in the new millennium and actually cause acceleration in the broadcast. Therefore, a director has control over the amount, as it were, of acceleration contained by his or her televised product. Siegel argues that the LSVD has potential to add to viewer disorientation by reversing the image produced by television cameras: 79 Say that Team A appears on the left side of the LSVD screen and advances right, while Team B appears on the right side of the LSVD screen and advances left. Now imagine, as a stadium spectator, that one’s orientation vis-à-vis the field/rink/court is such that Team A is positioned to one’s right and advances left, while Team B is positioned to one’s left and advances right. The result is that the LSVD image reverses, as though in a mirror, the spatial relationships obtaining in one’s immediate view of the game. Every time one glances at the LSVD screen and then back at the playing surface (or vice versa), one has, in effect, crossed the center line and violated the 180-degree rule, flip- flopping the directionality of vectorial motion, breaching the coherent contiguity of perceptual space and disrupting the clear continuity of the unfolding action. (56) I argue that Siegel’s expression for the effect of this, “bouts of perceptual disorientation” (55), could be replaced by a more positive one: bouts of perceptual acceleration. 80 One of the findings of my analysis in Chapter 4 is that the camera-switches and cuts, especially when they break the 180-degree rule, cause a measurable displacement of viewer perspective, and that over a course of time this can result in a final vector value for the acceleration of the viewer’s gaze during that time. The phrase, ‘the directionality of vectorial motion’, is encouragement for seeking to make a measurement based on the direction of movement. Of course, it also engages with all that Virilio was reported to have said in Chapter 1, as well as Turner’s reference to the mediatising effects of certain camera angles. In Chapter 3, I elaborate on some of Siegel’s ideas to establish how the LSVD causes the broadcast to accelerate. Already, I have offered the notion that in this sense acceleration refers to circulation of some sort, or rotation of something through a circuit of some kind. As has already been shown, Siegel draws upon the notions of direction and motion. He also incorporates the concept of changes in direction of motion when he says about the LSVD: “By repeatedly threatening to seize the spectator’s sightline and redirect the intensities of his/her gaze, LSVD interferes with the spectator’s immediate apprehension of the game” (2002:53). 81 This quotation helps answer one of the questions that emerges in a study such as this, where the concepts of movement and direction are operating, namely the question of what is moving. Here it is clearly stated that what is moving is the viewers’ perspective. In my analysis across Chapters 3 and 4, I show that there are ways in which the vision of the broadcast is rotated through space and time. The vision is in a sense ‘spun’. That is, directed away from some important midlines, which are discussed in the analysis. The angle through which the vision is turned away from these midlines becomes a measure of the change in direction of the broadcast through time. Similarly, in the analysis chapters it is shown that both the LSVD, because it remediates the conventions of television, as Siegel says repeatedly, and the television broadcast itself, contains displacement of the spectator’s gaze, causing it to circulate through the space of the stadium over the course of the match. This total displacement can be measured, and a final value obtained both in absolute terms of how far the view point has ‘travelled’, and in relative terms, yielding an overall net value for displacement and for how for how fast the velocity of the viewpoint is changing. Siegel says that “over the course of a game, every spectator who uses LSVD must perform countless mental reorientations, as he/she switches back and forth from a fixed and immediate vantage point to a mobilised and mediated 82 one. At any given moment, LSVD offers the spectator an alternate (ie mediated) perspective of the game at hand, conferring on him/her an ocular option unavailable to the pre-LSVD stadium-goer. But for those spectators for whom the LSVD image is effectively inverted, these mental reorientations are even more involved, in that they entail a constant succession of specular reversals” (56-7). Mention of ‘ocular options’ connotes perspective as being the direction of gaze. This reinforces a term used earlier in the article, and used above, “sightline”, which does the same. Bolter and Grusin had already noted that in television point of view was in motion and that the director controlled it (1999:323). Siegel extends this to indicate that the LSVD causes movement in the point of view. This is an effect of the LSVD’s remediation of the television broadcast, which I argue is an acceleration of the spectator’s point of view on the match. Siegel goes on to call this the “distracted glance” of the match attendant (2002:60). If the distraction causes disorientation, as he states, I argue that, after my analysis, it can be said that it is due in some part to acceleration. The other thing that these extensive quotations make clear is that, at this point, Siegel is talking only of the effect of the big screen on stadium audiences. This is in accord with his aim to revise the logic of remediation by arguing that the 83 role of the LSVD is evidence that ‘narrativisation’ of the event has replaced the logic of the immediate because the viewer can use the big screen to access other viewpoints, different information by exploiting its ability to “screen in” or “screen out” aspects of the game (52). This is closely related to where the viewer directs his or her glance. However, there is a pressing question on whether and how the LSVD affects the television viewer’s experience. Siegel does not answer at length, but he does address the question. To do so, he approaches the same idea of a blended identity evident in Turner, calling the LSVD “a medium event in its own right” (61). The LSVD, as a medium in its own right performs the action of framing, according to Siegel, in a complicated way. It frames the “stadium event and the game event directly”, but in its role as remediator, “it also frames part of the TV event, to the extent that it appropriates the broadcast television signal to supplement its programming” (61). This yields “the LSVD event”, and provokes the question of whether it belongs “inside or alongside the game event” (61). This is not resolved easily. But, an attempt is made starting from the understanding that “both the stadium spectator and the television viewer experience the overall event as framed by television” (62). This echoes Auslander’s comment that television colonised liveness (1999:13), and it can be seen that as Siegel’s study progresses into 84 territory in which the game and the television is unified, where Turner is also situated, it links back into the concept of mediatisation. Clearly, by selecting the LSVD for study, in a much more comprehensive manner than Turner, Siegel starts out in debt to Auslander. But, he returns there when he addresses the framing capacity of the LSVD. In order to make this return, Siegel consults the ideas of Bolter and Grusin. In a culminating and defining part of the relationship between Auslander and Bolter and Grusin, Siegel uses the idea that the television camera begins the process of mediatisation at sporting events as a lever to shift the internal logic of the concept of remediation, causing the logic of immediacy to evolve into that of “screening out the stadium spectator’s immediate view of the game, and as a narrativised objectivity, screening in the game in/as a serial flow of conventionalised images” (52). It is a goal of my analysis to highlight some of these serial flows, demonstrating how they contribute to the screening processes involved in the LSVD. Siegel conducts a general discussion of television conventions. These were introduced above where it was shown that they are closely centred on the 180- degree rule. These comments were constructed in response to the call for an answer to “the way LSVD iconographics appropriate and adapt the formal ‘objectivity’ and rhetorical conventions of televised sport”, since “Television, of 85 course, does not simply transmit a sporting event; it carefully constructs it, and does so ‘in the form of a coherent narrative or story’” (54). The LSVD, according to Siegel, solves “the problem of how to recreate, within the confines of the stadium itself, the experience of televised sports for the generation(s) of fans accustomed to its sensorially aggrandised and affectively intensified construction of the game” (56). Established as an agent both of mediatisation and remediation, television is credited with the power to create. In fact, since both Turner and Siegel are shown to devolve television down to “camera angles” (Turner, 2012:4), and “camera-to-camera ‘switches’” (Siegel, 2002:56), among other production techniques. It may now be possible to say that television’s creative powers are limited only by how the camera shot is employed as a basic unit within the new, unified, televisual identity. In my analysis of the LSVD in Chapter 3, I assume the conclusions reached by Turner and Siegel regarding the unified identity and the role of television in creating it. Siegel is especially instructive in what might constitute the language of televised sport. However, what Turner lacks, and what Siegel generalises (Siegel, 2002:60-2), is clear recognition of the twin framing effect that occurs when the televised camera shot contains the image of the LSVD. 86 In Chapter 3, I identify 28 occasions in the Euro 2008 broadcast in which this occurs. As such, the shot contains an image of itself remediated by the LSVD, which also contributes to the erosion of the live effect by drawing attention to the mediatising effect of television. Siegel refers to this as the multiplying of “embedded layers to the point that they resemble nothing so much as a set of Chinese boxes” (61). He then offers four diagrams to illustrate the combinations of these boxes without explicitly mentioning the case I raise here, where the camera sees itself on the big screen. Finally, Siegel attempts to theorise the LSVD “through the prism of postmodernist theory” (64). Here perhaps, the ‘Chinese boxes’ problem might be unravelled somewhat. One way would be to treat the phenomenon as having the structures of mise en abyme. The work deriving from Dallenbach (1989), of which there is a great deal such as Jefferson (1983) and Ron (1987), would be informative on the problem of the structures generated by the LSVD. Rather than pursue this particular line, I seek to establish the acceleration caused to the broadcast vision by the LSVD. As stated, success in this requires finding the ways in which it causes information to alter the direction of its motion. 87 First, the motion of a televised broadcast is always at least through the dimension of time. In 2008, the Euro Final extended through 93 minutes of time, from first whistle to last. So, whether a broadcast accelerates with respect to time can be measured by whether it speeds up or slows down in time, which is evident in analysis of replays, but also in direction. This can be investigated by asking about the rhythmical patterns within and among chapters of the broadcast, where the chapters are passages of play captured in sequences of camera shots. This becomes clear by the end of Chapter 4. Alternatively, the question could be asked through what channels the broadcast vision is deflected in space. The LSVD represents such a channel. It is unique among media in that rather than being a portal connecting a point of departure to a destination, such as cinema, television, and the World Wide Web, it connects a point of destination to itself: “LSVD’s sphere of reception equals its sphere of production equals its sphere of transmission, forming a kind of self-reflexive closed circuit or … a ‘strange loop’” (Siegel, 2002:51). The picture of a closed circuit certainly connotes motion in a circular path. Anything that moves in a circular path is accelerating even if it is moving at a constant speed, since its direction is always changing. In his study of the large screen video display, Siegel discovers the importance of the directionality of 88 information flow, specifically in his use of the circuit and ‘strange loop’ as an aid to understanding. I propose that self-reflection of the spectator’s sightline through a closed circuit is equal to a rotation of perspective through a loop of 180 degrees. Simply, this rotation is a redirection of broadcast back upon itself, causing acceleration or, in Siegel’s terms, a dis-orientation. I argue in Chapter 3 that this assumes a value of one. In addition, I show in Chapter 4 that every camera angle imparts a natural acceleration to the broadcast. This is compounded when the shot contains itself on the LSVD. This is presented as a combination of internal rotations of perspective with an explanation of how it can be measured. I proceed now to develop this through analysis. 89 CHAPTER 3 – ANALYSIS: Large Screen Video Display The previous stage of this argument was given to developing a range of connections to literature. It was focused mainly on establishing Buscombe as a leader in the analysis of broadcast style. This lead is followed in Chapter 4. On the other hand, it also identified the large screen video display as a subject of keen interest among those following both Virilio and Auslander. There it was shown how Siegel, in particular, established it as possessing a mediatising power. The present chapter assumes the LSVD to be a force of mediatisation and then demonstrates that it is also an accelerating factor. The result is that, by the end of this chapter, the two concepts, mediatisation and acceleration, will be completely identified. Below, I include some of the images in the Spain versus Germany match in which the LSVD is visible. I use them to mount a discussion of the LSVD as a medium which reflects the broadcast back upon the match, producing the ‘audiovisual pressure’ remarked upon by Virilio. Analysis of the large screen video display develops in this chapter through the following structure. The first section is titled ‘Gaining Acceleration by Rotating the Vector’. Here I develop the work done in previous chapters on defining the vector and positioning it as a tool of measurement in sports broadcasting. In 90 the subsequent section, ‘Acceleration Expressed as a Unit Value of Rotation’ I demonstrate that a value can be gained for the type of acceleration that occurs due to rotation of the vector. This concludes with statement of the proposition that the identification of mediatisation acceleration comes through, and by the action of, the large screen video display. The final section of this chapter is called, ‘Developing Broadcast Normals’. This acts as a bridge into Chapter 4 by introducing the type of acceleration that occurs due to the rotation which is natural or intrinsic to the camera shot. The broadcast normals are the imaginary axes which divide up the volume of the Ernst Happel Stadium. They help define acceleration in terms of the angle of the camera and the orientation of the frame it produces. In the final stages of this chapter, I apply these normals to a shot which contains the LSVD. This helps to characterise the LSVD for the completion of this chapter and establishes the importance of broadcast normals in shots in which there is no presence of the LSVD. I assume these in a detailed inquiry in Chapter 4. 3.1 Gaining Acceleration by Rotating the Vector In the Ernst Happel Stadium there were two large screen video displays, one at each end of the stadium, mounted at the level of the stadium roof. No single shot captures both screens, although several come close as they tilt and pan 91 through almost the entire 180 degree range. There are, in total, 28 shots over the course of the match containing an image of the LSVD. Pictures 1-3 are examples from which can be gained a sense of the general type of image containing the LSVD. However, they also help to establish where in the stadium the large screen is with respect to playing surface, crowd, and the larger structure of the stadium. Picture 1 is taken before the beginning of play, in wide angle. This is used to define a mise en scene for the event following. Pictures 2 and 3 are images taken after the game has started. Picture 1 – Shot Establishing Mise en Scene 92 Picture 2 – Shot Establishing Match Action Picture 3 – Setting of the LSVD It is arguable whether the camera used for Picture 1 is the one used for Picture 2 with the angle narrowed. The blue covering on the running track to the right of the image in both pictures supports that Pictures 1 and 2 are taken from the 93 same end of the stadium. Several other shots in the 28 drawn from for this chapter confirm that there is a second LSVD in exactly the same position at the other end of the stadium. As seen in Pictures 1 and 2, this position is directly behind and above the frame of the goal. Picture 3 suggests, and Picture 4 below confirms, that the stadium is lit around the rim of the roof, but not at either end. It seems logical that this is to protect the image on the LSVD from light pollution. Picture 4 shows that this increases its presence in the television image. With the exception of the two shots establishing the mise en scene, the television images which contain the LSVD are exclusively from two positions. One is from the mobile camera at ground level. An example of this is given in Picture 4. The other, shown in Picture 5, is from the mobile camera behind each goal mouth. 94 Picture 4 – Shot from Ground Level Containing LSVD Picture 5 – Shot from Hothead Containing LSVD It is noticeable in the images introduced so far that the image on the big screen is identical to the one taking that very shot. In this way the camera seems to 95 look through itself, each image containing an image of itself, the frame of each image regressing infinitely. Picture 6 is an example of this. Picture 6 – Shot Displaying Slight Time Lag In the majority of pictures included in discussion here, the shot containing the LSVD is identical to the shot displayed on the LSVD within it. However, Picture 6 above indicates that this is not always the case. In fact, close inspection of the frame above reveals a slight time lag. In the main image, it is clear that Arne Friedrich has released the ball in his throw-in. In the image on the LSVD in the top right hand corner of the image, Friedrich still has the ball in his hands as they are raised above and behind his head prior to release. Thus, although difficult to detect in real time, here is evidence of a misalignment in the television image and the LSVD. This is 96 obviously temporal because the LSVD displays the same camera shot as the television, but the two images are not at the same point in their duration. This adds complexity, which can be used for a more effective demonstration how the LSVD causes the broadcast to accelerate. Picture 7 is much stronger evidence for the disjunction between the television shot and the image visible on the LSVD. Analysis of Picture 7 is kept in mind in Chapter 4, where I look closely at the natural rotation of individual camera shots against the midlines of the broadcast. I introduce and define these midlines later in this chapter. I argue that, in Picture 7, the LSVD and the television broadcast are orientated away from one another. I argue that this can be expressed as two intersecting lines of sight which are separated by an angle of rotation. In other words, the line of sight of the LSVD is rotated through a certain angle against the line of sight afforded by the television broadcast itself. In the language of Virilio, two audiovisual vectors intersect at a certain angle. Pictures 1-5 represent the complete alignment of perspectives, the audiovisual vectors are completely identified with one another. As remarked, Picture 6 represents an incomplete identification, due to the slight time delay expressed in the shot on the LSVD, though the origin and the destination of the shot are the same. I propose this as a complete return of the television viewer’s 97 perspective back into the stadium via the big screen. That is, the audiovisual vector marking the home viewer’s line of sight is sent outward from the stadium to be received in homes. The LSVD effectively rotates this vector so that it points in exactly the opposite direction, back into the stadium. This can be defined as the result of the rotated vector pointing exactly back at its place of origin at the same instant. For example, the cameras capturing Pictures 1-5 are origins of individual vectors which point directly at the television screen. The LSVD redirects the vector and points it right back at the camera which captured the image, and at the exact moment it captured it. Picture 6 is the result of the image arriving back at its orientation slightly later than when it was sent. Picture 7 shows a complete disjunction, where the vector returning into the stadium does not return even to the same camera. The case of perfect alignment can be represented by two parallel vectors of exactly the same length with arrowheads at opposite ends. They are then easily conceived as a single line with an arrowhead at each end. Another way to think about it is that the original vector is rotated through an angle of 180 degrees. A graph of this is a semi-circle, the point of the vector describing an arc in its motion back to its origin. Thus, the LSVD rotates the home viewer’s perspective, changing its direction by 180 degrees. 98 At every point on the circumference of the semicircle, the arrow head of the vector is changing its direction. In this way, I argue that the force causing the change – in this case the LSVD interface – is a force causing acceleration. This is in line with everything that was said in Chapter 1 about vectors, direction, and acceleration. The result is my proposal that, the telespectator’s perspective which arrives through the television screen is accelerated, in the manner described previously, but when it contains the LSVD, which is pointing directly back into the camera which generated the original perspective, it is also accelerating. This is due to the fact that the LSVD is rotating the perspective over the duration of the shot. It is a continuous rotation of perspective. 3.2 Acceleration Expressed as a Unit Value of Rotation The possibility exists of giving a value to the acceleration due to rotation of perspective by the LSVD. When a vector is used to represent rotation, its value is highest when the angle through which it turns is greatest. This where the difference between and absolute overall change and a relative overall change becomes relevant. An example of this was introduced in the concluding section of Chapter 1, on page 47, where the difference between displacement and distance was discussed. In the present instance, rather than distance being measured in units of length, eg metres, it is measured in angular units, in this case, degrees. 99 To begin with, when a vector is rotated through 360 degrees it becomes the radius of a circle. The point of the arrowhead on the vector has traversed a path which returns it to its original starting position. An absolute change occurs when the number of rotations matters, so the number of times the point passes through its origin in its circulation of the path is counted. For instance, the change of angle in making two revolutions is twice 360, 720 degrees. Ten revolutions represent a change of 3600 degrees. A relative change can be calculated when the only thing that matters is how far apart the destination is from the starting point, measured as the angle that separates them. Thus a revolution of 3600 degrees leaves the point at a location unchanged from a rotation of 720 degrees and 360 degrees. In relative terms, no change has occurred. In other words, the number of times the rotation is made is irrelevant, only the degree of difference between the origin and destination matters. A rotation of 90 degrees yields the same degree of change as a rotation of 450 degrees, or 810 degrees. Putting a numerical value on relative change starts with assigning the value of zero to the point’s origin and when the point returns to its origin. This is at 360 degrees. The point furthest away from any given point on a circle is that which is diametrically opposed to it. The angle separating these points is 180 degrees. The point farthest away from the zero point is then given unit value. 100 This brings the direction of circulation into consideration. This is because a point circulated along the circumference of a circle in the clockwise direction through an angle of, say, 300 degrees actually ends up closer to its origin than that circulated through 180 degrees, even though the size of the angle is greater. This is because, although it has rotated through 300 degrees, it actually ends up only 60 degrees removed from its origin, if the circulation were in the opposite direction. Thus, a point accelerated through an angle of 300 degrees clockwise is equally removed from its origin as if it were rotated 60 degrees in the anti-clockwise direction. Due to this fact, it is possible to have rotation in the positive and negative directions, up to a maximum of 180 degrees in either direction. A rotation through 180 degrees in the anticlockwise direction is conventionally positive, and negative in the clockwise direction. This explanation is necessary to establish the assertion that the LSVD produces unit acceleration, that is, acceleration with a value 1. The critical requirement, though, is that unit acceleration only occurs when the image on the LSVD is identical to the camera shot producing that image. Thus, Pictures 1-6 represent an images with an acceleration value of 1 caused by the LSVD. I argued in Chapter 2 that Auslander and Siegel have suggested that the LSVD is a mediatising influence on the viewer experience of the match. Though each 101 study was restricted to live audience spectators, they both contended that the LSVD was a key to mediatisation. My study shows that it is also a key force of acceleration on a television broadcast. Turner argues that the way spectators watch the television image is also shaped by mediatising forces. They are still “aware of the hyperreality and simulation of the mediatised ‘live’ on the large screen” (Turner, 2012:7). There is convergence in the space provided by this thesis, where it becomes clear that the television and stadium-goer perspectives are both mediatised and adopt the form of the telespectator’s perspective. Auslander and Siegel regard the LSVD as the chief force of this at the stadium. My study suggests that it is also responsible for causing acceleration to the television broadcast, and that this is a major element in the mediatisation that Turner asserts. Thus, my analysis proves that acceleration, as I have proposed it, is essential to mediatisation, especially in the way it conditions the television image of a live sporting event. 102 Picture 7 – Disorientation of Perspective In contrast to Pictures 1-6, Picture 7 offers an alternative to the exact alignment of vectors where the value for acceleration is 1. It is clear that the camera taking the shot behind Spain coach Luis Aragones is not the same as the one returned back to the stadium on the LSVD. In context with what has been said above, this represents two vectors separated from one another by an angle of rotation. If the vectors in Pictures 1-6 are orientated, those in Picture 7 are disorientated. Examining the sequence containing this shot reveals a clear point of disjunction at which it can be thought that rotation occurs. Pictures 8-10 are part of this sequence. Picture 8 begins the sequence. It was taken from the mobile camera at ground level. Careful inspection of Picture 7 reveals that it contains Picture 8 on the LSVD. The shot in which Picture 8 occurs lasts for 103 eight seconds, before a cut to Picture 9. Picture 9 is captured by the central camera position. Its duration is three seconds before it cuts to the camera that shot Picture 10. Ostensibly, Pictures 8 and 10 are taken by the same ground level mobile camera. Picture 8 Picture 9 104 Picture 10 I propose, rather, that they are taken by two mobile cameras side by side. That can be the only explanation for the different angles in Pictures 8, 9, and 10. This would be conceivable given that the match has entered its final ten minutes of regular time, with the score at one-nil. It is reasonable that the director would assemble as many viewpoints as possible at the end of the match, and around the goalmouth at the climax of the narrative. I also suggest that the shot containing Picture 9 is part only of the television broadcast and does not appear on the LSVD, and that as the television viewer sees the shot of Picture 9, the LSVD continues to play the shot of Picture 8. The television producer then cuts to the camera shooting Picture 10. That would mean Picture 7 contains the shots from two mobile cameras at almost the 105 same position at ground level. Of course, there is no way to test this, except that the difference in the angles between the LSVD image in Picture 7 and the main camera shot is consistent with the difference between the angles of Picture 8 and Picture 10. If this is so, it is evidence of how acceleration can occur when the vector returning to the stadium via the big screen does not point to the camera of its origin. The relative change here is not a unit-valued acceleration. It is a positive or negative change of less than one. Perhaps unexpectedly, the disorientation that occurs when non-integer-valued acceleration is at work is more pronounced than the integer values, zero and one. I suggest that this is because the integer values represent straight-line changes, whereas awkwardness arises in the images where the angle of separation is less than 180 degrees. The acceleration that has come under discussion using Pictures 1-10 has been made possible by adopting Virilio’s audiovisual vector and treating it in the way of any conventional vector used to describe motion. This is appropriate due to the discussion in Chapter 1, where it was overwhelmingly clear that motion is key to his theories. Pictures 1-7 reveal acceleration due to the relationship between two audiovisual vectors, in particular that between their lengths and the angle 106 between them. Admittedly, these values are hard to put a number on, but not impossible with enough scope to develop the method. This acceleration occurs as a result of lines of sight being rotated through a certain angle by the action of some agent. In the case in point, the agent is the large screen video display. In Pictures 1-7 the acceleration is perceptible in the tension that results when one image is rotated at an angle to another containing it. I argue that in Picture 7 both audiences, home and stadium, are witness to the acceleration that occurs when the two vectors of their line of sight intersect at a certain angle. By looking at Pictures 8-10, I have inquired into how this might happen at a production level and offered a suggestion which is extremely difficult to measure without more information about where the cameras were exactly in relation to one another as well as some of their specifications. I start the lead into Chapter 4 at this point, concluding a discussion of how two camera shots relate when one is inside the other. The key point of concern has been whether they are identical or not. Naturally, if they are identical it can be assumed that both shots originate from the same camera. The result is the impression of an infinite regression into the frames of the image. I have proposed that these images have undergone acceleration with a value of one. On the other hand, I have also indicated an instance in the match where the 107 two images are clearly taken from different cameras. I have suggested that these two cameras are at the same level and very close to one another – but not identical. Thus, Picture 7 emerged as a focal point for the analysis of the large screen video display, but it also provides a bridge into the next chapter where the acceleration caused by individual camera angles is put to the test. Picture 7 helps with this when attention is paid to each individual shot. That is, the main image and the one of the LSVD inside the main image. I have argued that each of these is turned against the other causing an awkward rotation of perspective, and I have referred to this as acceleration. I have also said that, when identical the acceleration is one. The integer value limits viewer disorientation to the eye-catching effect of the line of sight seeming to disappear into the abyss of the frame. I suggested that Picture 7 displays a non-integer value for acceleration and argued that it was in fact more disorientating to the viewer than the zero- or one-valued shots. Now, I argue that the reason for this lies in the camera angles of the two shots in Picture 7. These have not been considered in this chapter and played no role in deriving acceleration values for the LSVD. However, I show below and at the beginning of Chapter 4 that the very angle of the camera shot makes a difference to how its point of view changes over time. On page 58, I referred to the importance 108 of centre lines, against which the pan or zoom of the camera could be considered. From that point, I have made several references to midlines. At this stage of the argument it is necessary to develop the significance of these. I begin this by introducing broadcast normals into the argument. 3.3 Developing the Broadcast Normals In order to discuss individual viewpoints rendered by discrete camera shots, it is necessary to be able to define certain angles maintained in the shot over its duration. In previous stages of argument, the centre line and midline of shots were mentioned. Presently, it is necessary to develop these so that discussion and analysis of the internal rotation of camera shots is possible. The need for this extends into the subsequent chapter also. For the purposes of analysis in the remainder of Chapter 3 and the entirety of Chapter 4, I divide the television broadcast of the UEFA Final into eight regions. I do this by drawing three imaginary axes through the centre circle of the pitch, separating the volume of the pitch into eight spaces. I refer to these axes as normal lines in keeping with standard terminology for lines which are perpendicular to each other, or to a given surface. It is convenient to draw attention to the five points that represent the zero angle of deflection and zero internal rotation. They will be referred to as the zero points of the broadcast. 109 They are the four horizontal zero points and the single vertical one. As stated at the beginning of Chapter, these are rarely present in the broadcast. I imagine the line of each axis is the line of a camera’s sight. For instance, Picture 11 represents the vertical line of sight. The camera angle from directly behind the goals, and the angle at exactly halfway, looking across to the far side of the pitch, represent the two remaining, horizontal, axes. These capture the width and depth of the field of play. Exact camera shot representations of these lines, like that for the vertical one in Picture 11, are difficult to achieve, as I describe in the next chapter, but useful approximations are possible. At any rate, it is not necessary that these lines be more than products of the imagination. It is only required that that they be established as the axis against which each camera angle is measured. With precise information about the exact placement of the cameras, a real value could be given for this angle. In Picture 7, it can be seen how an image containing the LSVD can bring two different camera angles together at once. The camera of the main outer shot has a particular angle to the axes described, as does the camera shooting the image on the LSVD. In Picture 6, for example, where the images are shot by the same camera, there is no difference in the angles to the normal lines. In Picture 6, the lines of sight do not intersect within the image, because there is no intersection when the vector has unit-valued acceleration. 110 In Picture 7, on the other hand, there is an intersection of the line of sight from the camera of the LSVD and the camera of the main outside frame. This intersection causes tension within the main frame because, being the products of two cameras relatively close to one another, it exists within the image itself. I propose that the point of that intersection is at the player wearing number 20 as he is the best guide as to where the second camera is. Player number 20 is clearly in the main image, Player 20 is also the figure in the image on the LSVD. However, he is out of stride with himself, so to speak. Spain coach Aragones is in the main image but not on the LSVD. That alone is perhaps enough to assume that we are looking at the same action from two different angles. The difference between the angles is a difference in direction of perspective or, to put it another way, a difference in the location of the origin of perspective. This difference in origin is inscribed in the image of Picture 7 causing a disorientation of perspective, the source of which is the maintenance of the angle of difference through eight seconds of time. The wider the angle of separation in such a case, and the longer it is maintained, the stronger the sense of disorientation. In Chapter 4, I demonstrate how this turn in the angle of the camera against one or more of the broadcast normals constitutes acceleration. At that point in the thesis, it 111 emerges why the intersection of two different viewpoints in the image of the broadcast can be regarded as acceleration. Indeed, the argument has been leading up to the point where more specific demonstrations are possible. I began the thesis by identifying what I thought was a problem in the language used by some media students. That problem was the risk of logical fallacy in using the term acceleration in connection with ideas of modernity and culture. I also singled out the phrase “accelerated mediatisation” used by Turner. I have addressed this directly in the current chapter, beginning with the platform, constructed in Chapter 2, that the large screen video display in sporting stadia has a mediatising influence on spectators present at the ground. I also referred to Turner to suggest that it has a mediatising influence on television spectators. I began the current chapter intending to demonstrate that that if the LSVD is a force of mediatisation, it is also a force of acceleration. This invites the conclusion that mediatisation and acceleration are not separate phenomena. More work could be done to determine a stronger understanding of what the relationship between the two is. However, my analysis proves, at least, that a relationship is there. Based on this, the proposition exists that mediatisation occurs partly due to the acceleration of information. My argument also indicates that any 112 ingredient causing a change in the direction of an identified element of a sports telecast is simultaneously performing the work of mediatisation. It follows from this that a producer/director team can control the degree to which their broadcast is mediatised by how they select to include the LSVD in the camera shots it contains. Minimal acceleration would occur if the LSVD was excluded from all camera shots. On the other hand, this type of acceleration would be maximised by frequently including the LSVD and ensuring that the image on the big screen is very different from the one in the main television image. In turn, this can be maximised by ensuring that the lines of sight created by the camera on the big screen and the main image are as divergent as possible. This can be achieved according to the way cutting occurs between cameras. I outlined this in Chapter 1, and it is the subject of analysis in the next chapter. What is also clear from analysis of the LSVD is that there are several types of acceleration to which a sports broadcast might be subject. First, there is the way the audiovisual vector itself it rotated. That is the most obvious way the LSVD causes acceleration. The big screen returns the television viewer’s line of sight back to the stadium where, as Virilio says, it “pressures” (2008b:121) the stadium viewer’s experience of the match. Without a significant lag in time between images or a difference in camera angle this causes a maximum 113 relative change in direction of the telespectator’s line of sight. As such, is it denoted with a unit value for acceleration. In contrast, there are minor accelerations within the picture containing the LSVD. These are most pronounced, causing disorientation in perspective, when there are two different lines of sight within the image. This is due to the natural acceleration of the camera angle with respect to the broadcast normals, and the results of combining these differences when one shot is the product of two, as is the case when the LSVD is present in the image. The argument now addresses the way nearly every camera causes a change of direction of perspective through time. 114 CHAPTER 4 – ANALYSIS: Camera Cuts & Action Replay The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate three types of acceleration outside that provided by the LSVD. They are as follows: 1. Acceleration produced by the internal rotation of camera shots against broadcast normals. 2. Acceleration produced by camera-to-camera switching. 3. Acceleration produced by the interpolation of action replays. The result of analysing these types of acceleration is realisation that the acceleration characteristic of any live broadcast of soccer, or sport in general, is under the control of stadium designers and builders, the program production company and, finally, the broadcast production team. The analysis of internal shot rotation indicates that the selection of the camera type to capture the event is of importance, particularly in regard to the technical specifications of the lens. The analysis of camera cutting demonstrates a standard for measuring the acceleration of perspective throughout the volume of the stadium, and explicates a method for graphical representation of it. The analysis of the interpolation of action replays demonstrates a way of 115 understanding how a broadcast can accelerate in time, throughout the duration of the game. An important result of this is that my demonstration below indicates that acceleration of a broadcast through time can lead to serious information loss. An additional result of analysing the third kind of acceleration is that, following on from Chapter 3 and the close association shown there between acceleration and mediatisation, whenever the term mediatisation is used, loss of information to acceleration can automatically be understood. In other words, information loss due to acceleration is inscribed within the idea of mediatisation. Examination of these three aspects of the broadcast, including the ability to generate actual measurement figures and a picture representation of the acceleration in the second and third types, offers the possibility of one day having the technique to compare broadcasts and to make judgements about style through the values and representations of various acceleration types. The possibility of this is opened up by putting into practice a process of vector addition and using standard notation for vector representation. In order to begin the application of vectors to the 2008 Final, I give a short description of the field of view. I have tried to describe the geometry of the field because, as indicated throughout this thesis, the vector is essentially a geometrical figure of representation. It was also seen quite clearly in Chapter 1 116 that Paul Virilio’s adoption of the vector both preserved and produced the geometrical nature of the vector. The plane of the pitch on which the match is played is 63m wide 110 metres long is divided into two rectangular halves. Two rectangles, 18 yards wide, are measured from each end. A semi-circle is described, 10 yards from the penalty spot, on the outer side of the longest side which is not the line marking the end of the pitch. A circle of 20 yards diameter is drawn around the centre point of the line dividing the pitch into halves. The players and officials number 25. All players and officials are contained within the space defined unless play is officially stopped by the referee – half time, injuries, or the ball goes out of play. The ball is the 26th element in motion. This begins analysis of the first type of acceleration – that due to the intrinsic internal rotation of the camera shot with respect to broadcast normals. 4.1 Acceleration Produced by the Internal Rotation of Camera Shots Against Broadcast Normals This section refers to broadcast normals in the terms in which they were introduced in the final section of the previous chapter. To see the entire pitch on television from above, a camera must be suspended a great distance vertically above the centre of the pitch. Anywhere other than directly above this point adds an angle to the shot, measured against the vertical broadcast 117 normal. In the pictures before the game starts, there are a number of shots from a great distance aerially, presumably from a helicopter or airship. They offer the kind of vertical distance that can reduce this angle to zero, but these pictures are not taken during the match. Every shot from within the stadium is taken from a height in which this angle is accentuated. There is an overhead camera suspended on wires above the pitch which tracks in any direction. Picture 11 below is an example of a direct overhead shot. On first examination, it is almost completely two dimensional, or flat, showing only sections of the width and length of the pitch. The shot is 12 seconds in duration and zooms in on the two figures at the centre of the image shown. Closer examination shows that there is a very slight angle in the shot, evident in the representation of the players’ heights. This indicates that this shot is not exactly vertical above the centre spot. But, for the producers’ purposes, and those in this study, the angle of the shot is negligible and the shot is offered as the best, and only, representation of the pitch in two dimensions from above. Picture 12, taken in the 53rd minute, shows the result of opening up the angle. It clearly adds height to the representation of the pitch. As a result volume is created. From this camera, the angle of variation from the vertical normal is a measure of the angle through which the shot is turned. As may be assumed, other than the one producing Picture 11, every shot from the camera is turned 118 to greater or lesser extent, and more generally, every shot in which the contents are represented in an identifiable volume is turned or rotated. Pictures 11 and 12 receive closer scrutiny below. Showing the shot as a static image, as on the page here, is misleading as to the change in the image that would constitute acceleration, because the change in time over the course of the shot is unable to be rendered. In its proper context, each shot has duration. So in Picture 12, for example, the shot is turned through an angle to the vertical for a total of six seconds. Relatively speaking, this is a minor rotation and so a minor acceleration. But, when it is put together with the zoom and pan that also occurs there is a substantial aggregate change in direction and an appreciable acceleration of the broadcast. Moreover, the shot occurs in an action replay, and it will be shown that this is also a general form of acceleration within the broadcast. Taken all in all, shots like this have potential to help describe and characterise acceleration to a large extent, and indeed become symbols for acceleration in general. To gain the precision necessary for this occur, vastly more information is required than available to this study. In the case of internal rotation exact measurement is impossible without some knowledge of the specifications of the camera and the lens making the shot. However, with this data, accurate 119 judgements could be made about the degree of variation of the shot from any one of the broadcast normals. Similarly, in the analysis of camera switching, I am limited to working from a map of camera emplacements released by UEFA in its tournament regulations. This map supplies some horizontal measurements for the distances between fixed camera emplacements. Unfortunately, there is no information about the heights of camera positions, nor does the map contain any information about the overhead camera which, with scales for horizontal and vertical movement, could produce the most valuable shot type in future studies of acceleration. Picture 11 – Overhead Camera Shot 120 Picture 12 – Overhead Camera Shot Tilted Away from the Perpendicular As I have discussed, in the case of internal rotation, angle is relevant to the tilt or pan away from the horizontal and/or vertical normals in combination with the duration of the shot. Zooming can also affect angle in complex ways, especially if employed while the camera is in motion. Pictures 11 and 12 are views of the pitch from above. Picture 11 is as close as possible to the perfect two dimensional shot from this point. With the camera directly overhead it defines the vertical normal line of the broadcast, where rotation through tilt is zero degrees. Picture 12 is a rotated shot, or a shot which has been turned through a certain angle from the vertical. The line of the vertical is used because it defines the standard flat shot from the overhead 121 position. This is the un-rotated, un-accelerated shot from this position. As such, it is taken as the default shot from that camera. In principle, there are two alternative flat shots to the vertical one. These are the horizontal shots from the side and the end of the pitch. These are in- principle shots because they do not appear in the broadcast, and probably never occur in any broadcast. This is because to capture the same type of image, the one equal to the overhead in producing an image of two- dimensions, is of little value as a fixed emplacement. It is of some use to a mobile camera which can begin a shot at exactly ground level before moving up and back or forward. The closest shot to this from the side of the pitch is shown as Picture 13. Clearly, it contains all three dimensions. As such it is turned. A similar situation obtains at the end of the pitch. Picture 14 shows a shot from the so-called hot-head, a mobile camera acting directly behind the goal netting, controlled remotely. It can begin its movement right at ground level. Picture 14 shows again that three dimensions are present in the best example of this. 122 Picture 13 – Shot from Far Side of Pitch from Horizontal Normal Picture 14 – Hothead Shot with Slight Elevation, Goal Netting Visible The point of this discussion is two-fold. First, it illustrates that the analogues of the vertical default shot are possible from ground level and so acceleration from the horizontal is equally possible as from the vertical. Second, it serves to 123 reinforce that, almost without exception in this match, every single shot is accelerated when it is rotated away from one or more of the broadcast normals. Indeed, most shots are accelerating away from a horizontal and the vertical normals simultaneously. Thus, the definition of acceleration is linked to the presence of three dimensions in the shot. This is because a third dimension indicates acceleration either away from either the vertical or horizontal normal line, or both. The points made above also show that choice of camera placement can yield a natural acceleration, and in all but four cases does. In addition, it shows that the greater the distance a camera position from the halfway mark at ground level and the middle of the pitch at either end at ground level, the greater the natural acceleration inherent in the shot. Also, it will come to light in the analysis that follows that cuts between two cameras which are not stationed at halfway have a noticeable effect on the overall displacement and acceleration that occurs with camera cutting. This was intimated at the conclusion of Chapter 3 when it was suggested that cutting between two cameras far away from each other has an impact on the acceleration caused by the LSVD. The purpose of the preceding discussion was to highlight the way in which nearly all shots are naturally turned through an angle of deflection from one or more normals. This was set up using the overhead shot, the only truly un- 124 accelerated shot in the entire broadcast. Moreover, it shows that decisions about where the cameras are placed can influence the broadcast’s acceleration value. The following analysis of a sequence of shots reinforces this but with reference to the displacement of the viewer’s perspective. From the analysis above, however, we can see that internal rotation also occurs and that when a cut takes place the total change in the angle from the normals can result in greater or lesser aggregate turn, hence greater or lesser acceleration. Thus, in a sequence of shots there are clearly two types of acceleration present. The first is due to the internal rotation of each shot. The second type is demonstrated below. As seen in the sequence analysis below producers almost never conduct a sequence of cuts without using the centre camera position, called Position A in this thesis. The effect of this is, arguably, to lessen the aggregate angle of rotation and the disorientation caused by acceleration. It was perhaps known already that production choices about the broadcast affect its continuity. I argue that they also influence acceleration. With reference to camera positions, it is clear that these choices are made in a much broader context than the television production of a single match. For example, determining the fixed camera emplacements could be a factor in stadium 125 design and construction. I have suggested, for instance, that the further away the cameras from the zero points, the more naturally acceleration will occur. Thus, large stadia produce more accelerated broadcasts naturally. It is a modern tendency to build stadia of larger capacity for big events like the World Cup and the Olympics. In this sense, it is accurate to remark that broadcasts are accelerating as larger stadia are built. This might support broader statements to the effect that culture and modernity are also accelerating. Improvements in camera technology will also guarantee that broadcasts accelerate. In this broadcast, shots from the far side of the field number six. By standards in 2014, this is restrictive. The rules outlined by Buscombe’s and other studies are changed. Cutting between shots on the near and far side of the field have significant impact on the broadcast, and I show in the following part of the argument that these kinds of cuts add to the acceleration of perspective. Picture 15 is a shot taken from a camera inside the goal netting. It is not able to tilt or pan but can zoom. I introduce it here to illustrate a shot of rather large rotation from the horizontal normal. Picture 16 shows the shot next in the sequence. It represents a cut from Picture 15. Also, Picture 15 is part of a replay sequence. Picture 16 is not, being a cut back to live play. This is an example of how internal acceleration and the acceleration of perspective can 126 combine in a sequence of shots. It also shows that accelerations can occur across the boundary between live action and replay. On the other hand, almost by definition, acceleration through time must be limited by this boundary. As evident in the following section on action replays, this kind of acceleration is directly linked to the number and duration of replays as well as the number of shots in the sequence. We find in this broadcast that the frequency of replays increases as the match continues. The logic which guarantees this also makes it logical to infer that this is a pattern typical in sports broadcasts. Namely, more has happened to reflect upon. The purpose of paying attention to the shots as has been done above is to show how new technology is adding to aggregate rotation in the angle of broadcasts. Again, this is to argue that in a world in which cameras are being made smaller and can be fixed in more places, yielding new perspectives, there is acceleration occurring in broadcasts. It is in this way that we might understand “accelerated modernity” (Redhead, 2007:230), at least in television. 127 Picture 15 – Camera in Inside Netting Displaying High Rotation from Horizontal Normal Picture 16 – Cut to Conventional Angle, Breaking Replay Sequence The discussion above relates to rotation within the frame’s interior. This is an internal acceleration as a change in the direction of the vision over time as 128 measured against the vertical and horizontal normals. There is also acceleration among shots and this is the focus for the remainder of this chapter. Acceleration among shots is also divisible into two types: acceleration through space and acceleration through time. First, I pursue acceleration through space through a pattern of camera cutting in the broadcast. I alluded in Chapter 1 to the fact that cuts between camera emplacements equates to the displacement of the viewer’s perspective through the space in between. Above, I argued how the total angle of broadcast’s internal acceleration is also influenced by camera cutting. Using Diagram 2, I demonstrate how cuts between cameras add up to acceleration of perspective. 4.2 Acceleration Produced by Camera-To-Camera Switching Diagram 2 is a generalised schema for camera positions in all matches of the 2008 Championships. I introduced this as part of the initial shot analysis in the introductory chapter. It has four clearly marked areas where cameras can be set up. They are behind each goal and on the near side of the pitch. They are in fixed and mobile positions. Both types of positions are included in the sequence analysed. However, the mobile positions, at ground level, are assumed to be fixed according to the labels on the diagram. That is, a 129 horizontal distance of five metres each to the right and left of the centre position, A. Due to the fact that I am working off a two dimensional plan, no change in height between stadium positions and ground positions can be taken into account. Provision of data about camera heights above ground level would afford this. Finally, in all the emplacements, fixed and mobile, movement of the frame occurs either through panning or zooming. None of this is factored into the analysis which is restricted to the displacement of the camera position and rotation of point of view. In the Final, thirty cameras were in use. Not all of them are shown on the map above. Any position used in the broadcast which does not correspond to one represented in the diagram cannot be referred to in the analysis, except in the special case introduced below. This is because I have no information about differences in distance between these and the ones marked on the diagram, or there is not enough information to make a deduction. Care has been taken to select a sequence of shots in which the problems listed above are minimised. This leads me to select the opening sequence of shots up until the first replay. Also, a sequence free of replays was preferred because their insertion causes a complication to the analysis of rates of change. More often than not replays also reset the telecast back to central position. When 130 this resetting occurs, the displacement is always zero, since the camera view ends up where it started. This is similar to the absolute and relative change in LSVD acceleration raised in Chapter 3. Whilst the number of cuts, and thus the total distance travelled, might vary, the sum total of displacement is zero, and likewise the total velocity and acceleration. This can be imagined as a cancelling out of cuts to the left and to the right of Position A. So, cuts to the positions left of A are signed negative, those to the right, positive. Position A is the origin of all vision. When the final whistle blows at 93 minutes 29 seconds the point of view is through Position A indicating a total change in perspective for the match of zero. This does not mean that there is no acceleration of the match, just that to achieve a balanced view producers have sought an equal value for the acceleration to the left of the origin and to the right. Individually, these values are not zero. Any chosen sequence of shots is likely to yield a total value of acceleration to the right or left which is not zero, provided it doesn’t begin and end at the same camera position, and this is any position, not just A. Below, I continue analysis of the first three minutes of the match. During this time, 33 shots are made with an average duration of 5 seconds. As remarked in Chapter 1, the 11th and 26th shots are of the coaches of the teams. This is done 131 for the purposes of building a narrative for the match with all its characters in place. Examination reveals that they were taken from camera positions on the far side of the field, such as are not marked on the map. However, it can be deduced that they are in similar relation to the centre line of the field as the ones marked B and C. Therefore, I make the assumption that they are taken from the mirror images of B and C, called B’ and C’. The width of the pitch itself is 63 metres. Reading off the map, the distance between B’ and B, C’ and C is 63 metres plus 8 metres: 71 metres. The distance between B’ and A, and C’ and A is also about 71 metres by Pythagoras’ Theorem. A cut from A to B’, which is the 12th is then a change in displacement of -71 metres. The final displacement is the sum of all distances in between made by cutting. This sequence is also advantageous because it does not terminate at A, where it began. A summary of the shot sequence is as follows. Each letter represents the camera position as marked on the diagram: ABALALALABAB’ACARARACA RACAC’LARACAR. I have marked in the diagram below the sequence of shots surrounding the highlighted section here. The yellow lines represent those lines along which the cut takes the viewer’s gaze, the audiovisual vectors. Point D is the notional destination of the point of view. Notable is that this does not coincide with any 132 of the actual camera emplacements. The point O is marked at the centre of the playing field as the origin of the match, the single point of intersection of all broadcast normals. The rotation of the camera view, the acceleration of vision, is gauged as the overall difference in the angle of spectatorship. This is represented as the overall angle through which the point of view turns. This value is determined trigonometrically from the point O. As indicated in the diagram, this angle is 18.2 degrees. Diagram 2 – Large Map of Camera Emplacements for Euro 2008 133 Clearly evident here is the return of each cut back to Position A. Every appearance of B, L, or B’ is a cut to the left from A, every appearance of C, R, or C’ is to the right. I have highlighted the cut from the 26th to the 27th shot because, alone in the sequence, it does not cut through A. It crosses the midline of the pitch meaning that it is a cut from positive displacement from A to negative. This is extremely unusual throughout the match. It is the longest distance of any cut in the sequence here, surpassing the cut from B’ to A by two metres. But, more than half of that distance is to the right of A, making it a positive cut overall, by a small margin. This is of interest because it indicates the skill in managing replay sequences on the part of the producer. It is highly unusual in this broadcast to see a camera cut from the right of the field to the left of the field without being mediated through Position A. On the one hand it could be suggested that it is a sign of inexperience in the producer with the cross-field cameras. This is because not only is the camera which took the 26th shot to the right of the halfway line, it is on the other side of the field. In the immediate context this matters because it increases the displacement of the viewer’s perspective and causes acceleration. However, later in the chapter it is relevant because it is evidence of the pressure that incorporating replays into a broadcast puts on the production team. This is due to the 134 necessity of keeping live play always in focus. The problem arises in a fast flowing match of few stoppages of where to interpolate action replays. I show this below when the question of whether one player uses his head against another arises. In this case, the cut from C’ to L shown on the diagram is evidence of how the pressures of live broadcasting, and the audience of the broadcast, can inadvertently cause a producer to impart an acceleration to his or her broadcast. The total distance covered by the shots in combination is 343 metres. The overall displacement value is +12 metres. That is, the point of view of the home viewer has travelled 343 metres over three minutes. And its final position is 12 metres to the right of Position A. This can be represented graphically through vector notation. The path travelled by the point of view as a result of the cutting is represented as a line with an arrowhead pointing in the direction of the destination. So a cut from A to C is represented as “”, with length 10. The arrows can be summed to give a final vector starting at the point of origin and ending at the location of the final shot. The length of the arrow indicates total displacement and the direction of the arrow indicates overall acceleration. It is in this way that a broadcast can be said to be accelerating as it is being watched. 135 I acknowledge that major qualifications are needed to protect the validity of this method. Most of the threat comes from the fact of being restricted to the two dimensions of the map provided by UEFA. A three-co-ordinate (length, breadth, depth) system makes available a third axis, against which the television viewer’s perspective can be displaced allowing a picture of the rotation of perspective up and down as well as side to side. The other problem is of the distances given and the real ones inside the stadium. The plan provides numerical values for how far apart cameras are stationed and no attempt could be made at addressing the question of acceleration in this manner without this. However, these values almost certainly do not match the ones at the Ernst Happel Stadium. This leaves what is offered here as a small glimpse of what could be possible with more information. As such, this analysis is best thought of as a model for future ones. Limits to the immediate use of this method of analysis are also in the form of common conventions in television production of sporting events. As seen in Chapter 2, it has been common practice to shoot the match from only one side of the field. This is to avoid disorientation of the viewer. However, as this match shows, adherence to this practice is waning and the sequence selected for this analysis is valuable because of the use of Positions B’ and C’. Cuts 136 between these cameras and those on the near side of the field equate to a 180-degree rotation of the television point of view. This opens up the exciting prospect of the possibilities of being able to factor into analysis cuts to overhead and behind-the-goal cameras, examples of which have been given. Beyond this, there is enormous potential for developing a method which takes zooming and panning into account. Nevertheless, the method offered here is able to support acceleration through time. Whereas the above method, applied to the internal rotation of individual camera angles, refers to displacement of viewer perspective through the space of the stadium, action replays afford analysis of that displacement through the time of the broadcast. This is the subject of the next part of this chapter. 4.3 Acceleration Produced by the Interpolation of Action Replays In the 64th minute of the match, an event occurs on the field of play the true nature or reality of which seems undecidable to commentator Martin Tyler. At this point in the match, as Germany surge down Spain’s left flank, Spanish player David Silva tugs at the shirt of Lucas Podolski rendering him unable to receive a pass and leaving him prone. The play stops as the ball goes out and Podolski rushes on to Silva. German players harangue the referee. There is a cut to a mid-shot containing four players and the referee. It shows the referee, back to camera, awarding a free kick to Germany. Bastian Schweinsteiger is 137 prominent in the frame with arms raised in appeal, front to camera, about a metre away from the referee, face to face. The shot zooms. There is a lot of movement within the frame as German and Spanish players enter and leave. However, the confrontation between Schweinsteiger and the referee is a constant focus of the image. Tyler utters, uncertainly, “… a major movement of the head. That’s what Schweinsteiger’s saying”. During the shot Schweinsteier makes a thrust forward with his head clearly indicating that he thought Silva used his head against Podolksi. Head-butting attracts an instant red card if the referee agrees, and Spain would be left a player down. There is a cut to a mobile camera at ground level showing the German coach and squad members expressing their own outrage. Then at 64 minutes and five seconds there is a cut to a replay shot. Tyler says cautiously, “Silva … It was slightly provocative by Podolski”. At this point, 64 minutes and 14 seconds, the producers cut back to Position A to capture the ensuing free-kick. Tyler’s voice trails throughout the cut as he finishes his comment, “… and then certainly, he got a bit more back than he gave. Silva’s got away with it. Podolski really has got away with it. Unnecessary”. Tyler is careful during this sequence not to commit to one view or another, maintaining that both players got away with it. Indeed, his summary response is emblematic of some main reasons for studying digital television. He says: 138 “It’s what you see and what you want to see”. This combines with the uncertainty in his voice throughout the sequence and the way he leads into his statements slowly and with a hesitant rise in tone so that his use of the word ‘Silva’ in the replay shot is a slow emergence from silence via a slight protraction of the initial sibilance. Symmetry in the sound of the word is through the dental ‘l’ which is also slightly elongated before the cadence falls through the softening ‘v’ into a long ‘a’ to round out quietly into an ellipsis. The combination of sounds and timbres communicates clear equivocation on Tyler’s part. This pattern is mirrored throughout the sequence of shots until the free kick is taken, almost immediately after which David Silva is withdrawn from the game by his coach. The postings on YouTube after the match, introduced below, show that if Tyler was uncertain, others were not. Watch the video and tell me Podolski's head doesn't move towards Silva the split second before Silva steps into it. ElGuaje7 Actually, if you watch the video response to this, you can see that Silva started it. Silva ran into Podolski, grabbed 139 him by his hand, and (accidentally?) knocked him down. Podolski then confronted Silva. Elsonlam1 The Germans had to be frustrated because they were clearly being dominated. Podolski ran over to Silva and initiated the contact ... with a few choice words. The contact was minor and Podolski was not hurt in any way. Good no call by the referee. rmmadrid From this we see that, though some individuals were certain about what happened, there was no consistency among them. The first two make specific reference to the video footage which was the same all over the world. Each sees something different. This speaks to a characteristic of the rotation of viewer perspective, which can be approached from several directions. On the one hand, it could suggest that there is an obscurity in the vision, that data which would ordinarily be available has been clouded. This would mean that the viewer’s sight is continuous but, at this point, is blocked somehow, perhaps by another person on the field or 140 some other obstruction. However, review of the footage suggests not. It reveals that sight of the incident in question is unimpeded. On the other hand, it could suggest that the broadcast vision is not continuous at this point. This is a much trickier problem to solve. Pictures of the event in question are given below. The five pictures below are drawn from a replay of eight seconds during which the commentary made by Tyler occurs as described above. Picture 17 141 Picture 18 Picture 19 142 Picture 20 Picture 21 143 Picture 22 The camera which shot these images is not used in any of the live action surrounding this replay. Indeed, this one is from the far side of the field at B’. Picture 23 shows the closest view from the live action cameras. In this image Silva and Podolski are two relatively small figures in the bottom left of the frame. Podolski, wearing number 20 has his back to camera. Picture 23 144 It is clear that this angle offers nothing conclusive as to whether the head-but occurred. Similarly, Pictures 17-22 cannot provide a clear image of contact between the players’ heads. This is despite the view having been rotated to the other side of the field and slowed down considerably. The question arises as to why the producer did not attempt other camera angles to get a stronger view. The first reason is that the play was about to resume with a Germany free-kick, offering the production team little time to dwell on the incident. As with the cut from the 25th to the 26th shot in the first three minutes, the nature of play here has forced the producer into making a cut whose lack of frequency in the broadcast suggests is an undesirable one. It must be concluded, therefore, that the nature of live play in and of itself can force producers into certain choices, some of which, like that above, have the effect of causing accelerations. The other reason for the loss of information, which can be put down to preproduction decisions, is that the camera emplacements have been designated to perform specific jobs. Those on the far side of the pitch are used only for replays and they are set to use their slow motion capability. The producer is attempting to exploit that in the replay shot above. Unfortunately, slowing down the image of play has added nothing to our knowledge of what 145 happened in this instance. That said, it has added to our sense of acceleration in a manner I now describe. Before adding to and developing the acceleration achieved by slowing the image down, it is mentioned that the replay shot, like all others, also constitutes acceleration through space. The cut to the other side of the field ensures this, as does the natural turn of the camera used for the replay away from the normal lines of the broadcast. Measuring the acceleration of the image through time begins with the assumption that time runs linearly from right to left. The final value in the domain of time for acceleration of this broadcast is gained by understanding that the arrowhead on the vector representing it will point to the right. The time on the clock when the referee blows the final whistle is 93 minutes and 28 seconds. Thus the length of the overall time vector is almost 93.5 units in length and indicating a direction in the right. This represents the amount the viewer’s gaze has travelled through time: 93.5 units in the direction of the future. However, use of the slow motion capacity in replays means that some of those 93.5 units are slower than the others. A slow motion replay elongates real time so that it takes a longer period in replay to display a certain period of real time. Thus, the shot in Picture 23 is about five seconds in duration. The coming 146 together of the players in that shot is less than half that, about two seconds. The replay used to show the event takes eight seconds, four times as long. It is logical to suggest that real time has been slowed down by a factor of four in the replay shot. It passes four times more slowly. I propose that any slowing of the real time vision results in a vector whose direction is in the direction of the past. However, its length does not match the unit of the vector representing its real time partner. That is, a duration of one second in real time yields a vector of length one in the future direction. Slowing that one second down to, say, two seconds does not yield a vector of length two in the opposite direction. Rather, it shortens the original vector. This stands to reason as the replay shots are not reversing time, as such, just elongating it, so it takes twice as long in this example. I argue that the effect of the replay on the time vector can be measured and represented. First, take the example above where one second is dilated by a factor of two. That is, one second takes two seconds to happen on replay. Slowing that one second down still keeps it pointing toward the future. However, the replay slows the real time down so that it takes twice as long. The vector representing this counteracts the original vector with pressure to the left and a value smaller than the original unit. 147 To obtain the vector representing the replay, a ratio is taken of the real time duration to the replay duration. In this example this is a ratio of one to 2. Therefore, the vector representing the passage of time in the replay is of length one half and directed to the left of the timeline, as it resists the forward passage of time into the future by pointing into the past with half the strength. The question of what occurs when the replay vector exceeds the original time vector is perhaps one for philosophy. However, it could be proposed that, were a broadcast to allow a certain period of time to elapse, say, one minute, and then to rewind the footage back to the beginning of that minute, and no further, the replay vector would equal the original time vector and the broadcast would end up at the same place on the time number line that it began. If the ratio of replay to real time is greater than one, the broadcast would have returned to a point in time prior to time of the replay. In this case, the replay would be said to effect a reversal of time, and is commonly known as a rewinding of vision. Notwithstanding this question, the slow motion replay can have a marked influence on the change in direction of the viewer’s gaze through time in a sports broadcast. In the case under examination above, the two seconds of contact between Podolski and Silva is measured in real time. The replay of that 148 package of two seconds took twice as long. Therefore the vector representing that action is real time is halved in length. This is a principle which can be applied over the entire broadcast. That is, with no replays at all the full length of the vector would remain at 93.5 units in length. However, the painstaking result of counting and measuring the time length of all replays then generating the ratios, as described, to obtain the resultant vector would be a useful way of discussing the overall slowing of the spectator’s gaze through the broadcast. As a change in magnitude of time taken to view, this constitutes acceleration. In addition to this, the question of how the replay sequences are interpolated into the overall fabric of the broadcast can emerge. In the telecast I have chosen, all the replays occur in stoppages to play. However, the consequences of not achieving this, and having the replay take place over the top of live action, were greater than the producer of this match was prepared to risk. This is another explanation for the act of cutting from C’ to L as identified in the previous section of this chapter. In the course of televising the Spain versus Germany match producers employ 1006 camera shots. In total 113 of these (eleven percent) are in replay sequences. In the first half, there are 32 replay sequences containing 52 shots. In the second half, there are 61 shots in 38 replay sequences. The camera 149 which captured this event was called the LDK-8300. It was cutting edge in 2008 and allowed slow motion and super slow motion replay. The specifications for that camera are available and the numbers associated with those speeds can be used to make more precise conclusions than offered here. However, I count only two uses of the super slow motion replay throughout the course of the match. Some other replays contain a change mid duration, so a slow motion shot is slowed to super slow motion at the key moment in its duration. For the demonstration here, I assume all replay sequences are at half speed, thereby increasing the time taken to show a segment of play to twice its real time. The total duration of replays in the course of the 93 minutes is 621 seconds, about 10 minutes and 20 seconds. Working on the assumption just mentioned, this is a dilation of about 5 minutes and 10 seconds of real time, 310 seconds. The total number of seconds in the match was 5,580. Thus, 0.05% of it was slowed down in replays. This is the amount by which its final time vector is shortened by the end of the match. This gives the following. Without replays the vector would have been 93.5 units in length. With use of replays by the production team that vector is shortened by a factor of 0.05 leaving a final vector pointing to the right, 88.9 units in length. As already stated, the insertion of replays into this particular broadcast does not affect 150 the overall time taken for its exposure because the producer has carefully used stoppages of play to replay points of interest. The first part of this chapter was devoted to a type of acceleration that occurs because of the exigencies of live production. The decision to include the LSVD in a shot may or may not be conscious on the part of the producer. No doubt, in the case of the 2008 Euro Final the lighting in the stadium goes a long way to helping the LSVD play a major role in the broadcast. On the other hand, it reveals important aspects of the broadcast over which the producers have control. In particular, it highlights the effect of cutting between camera positions and the effect of replays on the way the telespectator’s perspective of television. In the first instance, this was shown to take place within the space of the stadium as the line of sight circulated between camera emplacements. It shows how the direction of home viewers’ perspective can be changed to yield a final displacement from the point of origin, represented by a vector with direction and size, given in metres in the present case. The fact that in 2008 there were few instances of use of cameras on the far side of the field, the direction of the change is most likely to be left or right of the central point, Position A. As this tendency evolves into more conventional employment of these positions, and certainly when three dimensional analysis 151 is possible, the direction of the final vector is likely to be in any arbitrary direction. The second part of the chapter investigated the ways in which this point of view can accelerate against the time scale. This is due to the slowing down effect that nearly all replays have and the effect this has on the vector representation of the total exposure of the match along the axis of time. The result of this is to engender the promise of measuring sports telecasts in terms of acceleration. It offers a method of considering the motion of the television camera’s perspective throughout the space of the stadium venues, and through the course of time in the match. The conclusions of the analysis in this particular instance are putative in the sense that they derive from the numbers given in the plan by UEFA. It can be assumed that these numbers do not all apply in the Final match of the Championship. Nevertheless, they provide sufficient data on which to mount an analysis and to support the conclusions it asserts. So, whilst the actual numbers given above might not represent the reality of the match in question they are the product of a method by which those realities are accessible. Certainly, the analysis in Chapters 3 and 4 was an attempt to apply the language and concepts which were the subject of discussion in Chapters 1 and 2. 152 CHAPTER 5 - CONCLUSION The purpose of this thesis was to use the UEFA European Championship Final of 2008 to demonstrate the relevance of the concept of acceleration in media studies. I identified a need for a clear understanding of acceleration if appropriate insight was to be gained into the theories of Paul Virilio on technological societies, especially where technology is applied to war and conflict. So ingrained within his thinking is acceleration that he was known to his successors as a “theorist for an accelerated culture” (Redhead, 2004) who built the term into their own writings. However, there was evidently an unfortunate drift in the significance of the word as it passed from French into English. I highlighted in Chapter 1 that the root of this drift lies in the error of translating ‘vitesse’ as ‘speed’ not ‘velocity’, a mistake which cost the term half its meaning. The problem of acceleration was instituted when velocity was robbed of its directional component. Understanding of acceleration is only partially fulfilled by associating it with speed as Redhead does (Redhead, 2004:1-6). When Redhead states that Virilio is the “high priest of speed” (33), he does the theorist an injustice. High priest of velocity is more suitable. Maintaining that speed is at the heart of Virilio’s thought causes the type of confusion I 153 discovered in the second section of the introductory chapter, where it was unclear whether the spectacle of soccer broadcasts was speeding up or accelerating. It has been the basis of this thesis that the two are not interchangeable. As I have argued, velocity would be a much more comfortable substitute for speed because not only does it retain within it the concept of speed but it adorns it with the property of direction. The remainder of the thesis was given to explicating the profits of considering this extra directional dimension of motion. I argued in Chapter 1 that acceleration was critical to Virilio’s understanding of the role and function of television in the present age. I took a path from the land speed trials of the twentieth century in which the top speed of land based vehicles was tested. I recognised the treatment of this as acceleration by Virilio, whose descriptions were based on the magnitude of velocity, or speed, increasing. I indicated in the same section of Chapter 1 how Virilio used these trials and the unique optical effects of the desert conditions to begin to theorise acceleration, the end product of this was his understanding of television. It was for this reason that, at that stage of the argument, I proposed that acceleration was the prime force responsible for television, and it was where I began to treat television as the product of acceleration. 154 The concept erected on this established the television screen as the terminal point of acceleration, the site where increases in speed were no longer possible. This is due to television’s reliance for existence on electromagnetic communication. For instance, it was identified that Virilio constructed the transapparent horizon to represent the location at which land based acceleration ceased being possible due to increases in speed. Thus, I found it possible to understand television as an accelerated entity. Beyond the transapparent horizon, terminal speed has been achieved. In another words, the magnitude of velocity is forever constant. Thus, whilst it is possible to retain the idea of television as having been accelerated to the speed of light, it is difficult to conceive how it might be said to be ‘accelerating’ as Redhead does (2004:234). Indeed, I argued that this is simply impossible if the direction of change is not a factor. Thus, I established my argument on the need to consider the direction of information in order to maintain support for using the word ‘accelerating’ in media contexts. However, I identified in the third section of Chapter 1 that this brought my argument into very close proximity with a classical body of work which, following Fiske (1990), I referred to as communication studies. Among these studies the term direction has a particular set of connotations, and I adumbrated them briefly at that point in the argument. 155 The challenge faced in being associated with these schools of thought emerged also in the language of Virilio. As part of his strong devotion to the dual properties of motion, he acknowledges the need to employ their best representation in the form of a vector. It was natural for him to so since it is completely necessary in science to use vectors to analyse motion. I spent some time in my discussion of Virilio developing his references to, and use of, vectors to study motion. I attempted to use the vector to separate my argument from communication studies. I explicated the specific properties of vectors and how they can be manipulated to yield meaningful descriptions of the changes that systems undergo. The difference emerged that, whereas communication studies were likely to use the figure of the arrow as a graphical tool to indicate the relationship between the components of an information system, the vector indicates that changes within that system, including both the speed of the changes and their direction. Thus, I tried to open the way toward discussing the direction of information without importing any of the notions communication studies have used the arrow to model. As a medium that has been accelerated, television contributes an accelerated presence to the societies to which it belongs. I provided an example from Redhead (2004) in the first section of Chapter 1 to suggest that how the sport 156 of soccer can be one of the determining factors of the degree to which those societies can be thought of as accelerated. I proceeded to open my analysis by beginning attention to the opening three minutes of the 2008 European Championship Final. This match has historical importance in the sport of soccer. It also represents a discernible moment where broadcasting practices are undergoing alteration, mostly due to improvements in technology – smaller cameras mean new perspectives and digital broadcasting opened up bandwidth. Also, new camera positions are beginning to be employed. Finally, the match contains an important moment in which information about the match is lost. I have argued that this loss is due to the acceleration of the broadcast. This led into Chapter 2, where the conventional elements of broadcast style were investigated through Buscombe (1975). Other attempts at studying sport were considered here also with a view to determining some of the defining characteristics of sports broadcast style. The choice to analyse camera cutting and action replays in Chapter 4 was strongly influenced by the discoveries in this section of Chapter 2. Movement was then made in Chapter 2 to consideration of the principal media theories of mediatisation and, to a lesser extent, remediation. I linked my thesis to mediatisation by demonstrating that it had an identity in acceleration, 157 the means of achieving which was the large screen video display. The analysis in Chapter 3 was intended to support the identification of mediatisation with acceleration. At this juncture of the argument I attempted to apply the notion of the vector to analysis of the television broadcast of the match. This dominated the remainder of the analysis in a number of ways. First, the vector was shown to be applicable to an understanding of the large screen video display. Initially, I explained how the vector was identified with acceleration and how the rotation of a vector constituted acceleration. This made it available as a tool of measurement. Its efficacy was determined by the argument that the LSVD reflects, or rotates, the telespectator’s point of view back upon itself, through an angle of 180 degrees. Subsequent to this, I used analysis to argue that a complete rotation of perspective could take on a value of one for acceleration. I also demonstrated that it is possible to mark out instances where this value was less than one, and to show that disorientation of the viewer is more pronounced in these cases. In the final section of Chapter 3, I constructed the broadcast normals. This was due to the need to discuss acceleration in terms of the angle of rotation of the viewer’s perspective. This was clearly present in analysis of the LSVD whose value for acceleration, one, was gained by rotating the vector through an angle 158 of 180 degrees. It became more important in Chapter 4 to establish standards in the broadcast against which angles could be measured. These lines are perpendicular to one another, supplying the reason for referring to them as normals, and they intersect at the centre spot of the field, where all play begins at the first whistle. In the latter part of Chapter 3, I gave an example of a shot containing the LSVD in which there were intersecting lines of sight, causing a disjunction in the viewing experience. I also indicated that these disjunctions were most likely to occur when the value of acceleration through the LSVD was not unity. At this point, I suggested that such images would be very useful subjects of further analysis. This would help develop the vector as an effective measuring instrument and allowing more complex theories to be built around the acceleration of perspective that can be gained by causing two vectors to intersect. This would naturally draw from more complex vector operations than have been introduced here. For example, two lines of sight can multiplied together according to the multiplicative operations permitted in vector analysis. One operation, called the dot product of the vectors, relates two vectors through their lengths and the angle that separates them. Another, more complex, called the cross product, could be used to take analysis of the audiovisual vectors into multidimensional regions. 159 In both cases a definite relationship between the two vectors would be expressible in very succinct terms, but it would involve more complex mathematical terminology than is appropriate here. Nevertheless, it would be an extremely valuable exercise which would permit two images to be related to each other easily. The only precaution would be that for a correct measurement to be gained, exact camera positions would need to be known. In Chapter 4, I continued in pursuit of rotation of perspective as a cause of acceleration. To begin that chapter I conducted a short discussion of the internal rotation inherent to all camera shots when there is a deviation from one or more of the broadcast normals. This was referred to as internal rotation because it happens as a result of forces within the shot rather than the result of the relationship between shots. Acceleration due to the latter was pursued through analysis of camera cutting, which causes viewer perspective to change direction left or right of a central position or, as in the sequence presented in Chapter 4, when there are cuts between the near and far side of the field. The other type of acceleration due to relationships between shots was offered in the study of action replays. In this section of the analysis I introduced an example found in a replay sequence in the 64th minute where there is clear evidence of information having been lost to the broadcast. In the context of the present study, I proposed that this was due to the constant changing of 160 direction of viewpoint, which I have prosecuted under the name of acceleration. Thus, this loss becomes clearly associated with the forces of acceleration. Finally, in Chapter 4, I applied the vector to an analysis of what happens on the time scale as a result of action replays. I offered a way of understanding how the duration of the match could be gained through vector representations and I applied it to the match in question, arriving at an arrow of length 88.9, pointing in the direction of the future. This brought my analysis to a close. It showed that if the large screen video displays at sporting stadia are forces of mediatisation, they are also agents of acceleration. The two terms are then identified and future studies of acceleration can be incorporated in to the field of inquiry into mediatisation. The result of the study of camera shots and action replays in Chapter 4 served to confirm them as sources of acceleration supporting the argument that all but a small group of camera shots, which I called ‘flat’, contain some form of acceleration against one or more broadcast normal and against the scale of time. That was to guarantee the importance of duration in the acceleration of sports telecasts, which is of course directly related to the number of shots made to capture an event. When fewer shots are employed, longer duration is ensured. I argue that longer duration actually increases the internal type of acceleration. However, 161 shorter duration in shots is equal to more cutting between cameras and potentially greater displacement during selected sequences. The products of the analysis extend beyond the identification of acceleration with mediatisation, which might be said to be a contribution to theory rather than analytic practice. Other gains made in this thesis are directly applicable to analysis not just of sporting matches, but all live events, and potentially events that are not broadcast live. As described, the production technique employed by the producer or director of a broadcast can have effects on their broadcast which I have demonstrated can be measured. In instances, such as internal rotation, where I have not offered a method of measurement, development is possible so that they become measurable. Of course it would require much more extensive attention than offered here. Similarly, in the figures derived for acceleration in the cases introduced above there is, by necessity, a disjunction from reality. This is due to the inaccuracy of the co-ordinates of the camera emplacements and the unknown distances between unmarked cameras. In a longer study, these co-ordinates and distances could be accessed so that there is an exact relationship between the numbers yielded by analysis and the case in reality. The best circumstance 162 would be that the exact location of all cameras was known at all times. Given the growth in current technology this may not seem absurd. The final point to be made as a result of the argument presented in this thesis is that my analysis shows that not only is use of ‘accelerated’ and ‘accelerating’ legitimate in television studies, but that the levels of those accelerations are controllable. I have explained that the initial design of a stadium is itself a good predictor of certain types of acceleration, particularly because its size will affect the distances between cameras. My analysis shows that this influences the displacement of the television point of view. Similarly, in the set-up of a broadcast production, decisions which affect the relationship between cameras can be telling, this includes preparations for what types of cameras will be used to gain which points of view. Finally, my analysis shows that the final values for acceleration of a live broadcast are the products of decisions made and techniques applied by the producer and director as the event unfolds. This ensures the value of experience in this combination on big matches. I identified two occasions in the broadcast of the UEFA European Final of 2008 where the producer/director cuts to the far side of the field and then fails to resume vision of the match via Position A. 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