Analysis On The Development And Characteristics Of American Sports Documentaries Since The 1990s

Sports documentary film is an important carrier of sports communication. It reflects social problems through truly showing sports figures and sports events, spreading the spirit of sports and sports culture. It is a strong artistic and objective mode of the transmission of sports.Since the 1990s, the US has produced 23 sports documentary films. This number is the largest in the world. Many of sports documentary films won numerous international film awards. They obtained strong approval of the movie circle and the world of sport. Besides their technology and strong commercial operations, the maturity of the narrative structure and the typical American society and culture in the films were the primary causes.The paper found the more comprehensive American sports movies. Through the statistics and the contrast, we can see the number of each theme of the movies relate closely to the development of American sports.The paper has discovered 23 sports documentary films, and summarized two stages of the development of the U.S. Sports documentary films:the 90s and the new century.The paper took the Oscar prize as the standard, and selected four sports documentary films as a text analysis. The cases are "Hoop Dreams", "When We Were Kings", "On the Ropes", "Murderball". From the movie essential factors, such as photography, movement, sound, editing and other elements, the paper chooses the most prominent essential factors of each film to carry on the text analysis, while concerned about the creative performance techniques. Then the paper explores the function of the films in sports communication, as well as the directors want to convey to the audience of non-sports contents, such as social issues, ideology and so on.Through the analysis, the conclusions drawn:First, since the 1990s, the American sports documentary films' developing process has had the obvious stages:the serious main key of the 90s and the active main key of the new century. Second, the physical characteristics of the films is paying attention to the living conditions of the black of the first floor social class, such as the black racial discrimination, drug abuse and trafficking, domestic violence, non-marriage birth. The films are not about just sports figures and sports events, but the spirit of sports, the race question. Third, the films have diverse technologies:the long shot photo are few, the lens are extremely broken, the rhythm is quick; the music of films uses many different musical instruments and styles. Fourth, the new tendencies of the films are the rising of race documentary films and the diversification of themes; Moreover, the technical technique of these films shows some characteristics of the new documentary film.Based the development of China's sports films on the past 20 years, the paper want to make some recommendations:First, to make up for the lack of Chinese sports documentary films to meet audience demands, and improve this mode of sports transmission; Second, when choosing themes and materials, the director should enlarge the field of vision to the entire society, and from records the human and the periphery microenvironment to records the times and the society. The films should reflect society questions and spirit of the age; Third, the director should strengthen the ability of showing the athletics scene, and use more performance practices in the films; Fourth, the theme and technique of sports documentary films should be diversified.