At least they didn't call it A Football Tahn.
Actually, the yinzer-ism was kept to a minimum. Although Pat McAfee briefly made it a point.
Yes, the yinzer-ism was tamped down, thank God. And so was McAfee. The ebullient new sports media sensation from Plum is the latest in a line of, well, ebullient new sports media sensations, but he was satisfyingly restrained in this new NFL Films production "The Football Town," which was screened for Pittsburgh media Monday morning at the Kamin Science Center.
The movie will be available to the public on Feb. 28, and it was dubbed "the first major activation in the run-up to the draft."
If an activation equals a cinematic feast, then bring on the next "activation."
The NFL Draft, of course, will be held in Pittsburgh this year. The city's expecting half a million strong to come out and watch NFL officials read from lists and hug players as they're drafted every 10 to 15 minutes outside of Acriscure Stadium.
That weekend can't possibly be as exciting as this movie, thanks, again, to NFL Films.
Nothing new was uncovered in this film about a football weekend in Western Pennsylvania. But the cinematography is breathtaking. And, thankfully, at the other end of the spectrum was a restrained McAfee, who narrated the film like the first trickle of the Allegheny River in Potter County. That was the opening scene, which then moved 110 miles southwest to the Monongahela springs that begat a second river rolling into Pittsburgh, where it meets the Allegheny to form the Ohio River.
Of course, at that point rests Acriscure Stadium, the fort, the castle, of The Football Town.
"What's in the water?" Jerome Bettis asked Bill Cowher as the two Steelers legends sat alongside the river bank at the confluence of the three rivers.
It's a perfect question, and one with which McAfee ran.
Not that any new information came forth. But the cinematography was -- not to belabor the point -- simply spectacular.
First of all, the screen at the Kamin Science Center, across the street from Acrisure Stadium, is 71 feet wide and 40 feet tall. "It's Cathedral of Learning big," said Neil Zender of NFL Films.
The camera work by NFL Films, of course, is legendary. Football fans have long appreciated the company's artistic eye over the years. But for this documentary, NFL Films used two drone crews and a helicoptor to capture brilliant art of this particular football weekend. The aerial cameras captured the Pittsburgh landscape littered high school games on Friday night, Pop Warner games on Saturday morning, a Pitt game Saturday afternoon, and a Steelers game Sunday night.
NFL Films got a specific opportunity to show off its first "immersive" filming technique on the "Cathedral of Learning" screen with film of a Zambelli fireworks night-time display at Acrisure Stadium that stretched from high in the heavens to a dazzling reflection in the river below.
"It is about twice the size of your typical movie screen," Zender said, "so we had to use, for the first time ever, a brand new camera, the Alexa 35 Extreme, which has a sensor that is big enough to capture an image of those spiral shots that are an NFL Films trademark, and show it on a screen of this size. So the Alexa 35 Extreme is capable of shooting at 660 frames a second. This is the first time it has been, ever, ever been done for football."
The first hint of cinematic glory to come was at the theater's entryance way, with a stairway that climbed nearly straight up to the seats at the Rangos Giant Cinema inside the Science Center. The water trickle led to the rivers, of course, and then the concrete of the city and the "lava" inside a still-existing steel mill, and from there to the legendary touchdown pass from Dan Marino to John Brown on a fourth down to win a bowl game in the last seconds for Pitt. That's when the football kicked in.
At one point, the screen was broken down into seemingly thousands of smaller screens with audio play-by-play calls on the many football players who've been drafted out of Western Pa. Even McAfee, a former punter for the Indianapolis Colts, was highlighted making a tackle alongside a tackle being made in the 1950s by the great Pitt middle linebacker Joe Schmidt.
NFL Films began its weekend on a Friday night with The Quips, home of the nation's only high school with three Pro Football Hall of Famers: Darrelle Revis, Ty Law, Mike Ditka.
The passionate, screaming pre-game speeches by halftime coaches brought to mind what Jack Ham said of a typical Chuck Noll speech in yesterday's interview at SteelCityInsider: "OK, we're going to introduce the defense first," Ham said of Noll, who then abruptly finished this pep talk with "and let's go."
But the shrill of grown men screaming is part of Friday Night Lights, of course, as it was the next morning with children in the Pop Warner game. Again, the highlight was the film work. And there were also old clips of former Pittsburgh-born quarterbacks: John Unitas in The Greatest Game in 1958, Joe Namath in the AFL's first Super Bowl win, Marino, Jim Kelly, Joe Montana, all caught in their NFL glory alongside their high school football photos.
Of course, the Immaculate Reception is featured, but even this screen wasn't big enough to let us know for sure if Franco Harris did, in fact, pluck the ball out of the air before it touched the ground.
No. nothing new under the Pittsburgh sun was revealed in "The Football Town." But it's absolutely worth a night out. The 52-minute film will be unveiled to the public on Feb. 28 and will run for two months through the draft. It's worth dialing up the Kamin Science Center online and grabbing a $10 ticket, whether for a date or a family outing.
"Football is special here, and it's something that we have that makes us unique," said Steelers vice president Dan Rooney, who worked with NFL Films on the project. "It's really in the fabric of the community."
"If you're from Pittsburgh," Zender, of NFL Films, reiterated, "it's THE football town. It's not a football town, it's THE football town. And it's different."