Sports fans are a tried-and-true subject for compelling sports stories. But a documentary project currently underway puts a new twist on the genre by encouraging fans themselves to provide the footage from their mobile devices.
Called "The Season of Your Life," it will follow Detroit Lions fans during the current NFL season. The project claims to be the first "social" sports documentary, and asks fans to upload footage they shoot to the film's website. Traditions, tailgates, hopes, memories and reactions to the season's big moments are all encouraged. The Lions' official site and stadium Jumbotron will feature popular clips throughout the season, and the full 85-minute documentary will be released next year.
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Bombo, the company behind the The Season of Your Life, has made documentaries about fans of the Boston Red Sox baseball team and English soccer clubs Liverpool and Manchester United. Those films, however, were all shot by movie crews that followed the fans around -- not by the fans themselves.
The Season of Your Life is a unique idea. Fans will be recognized for their support, the team gets engagement points with fans, as well as access to user-generated content to use during games, and Bombo can experiment with an emerging form of sports storytelling. It should be interesting to see how the project turns out, especially at feature length.
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Do you think this project will sink or swim? Give us your take in the comments.
Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr, Tiger Girl
This story originally published on Mashable here.