Handball and Hampe

I had a cool new experience last week interviewing on TV, which you can watch here. Go to Episode 5. Handball footage starts around 2 minutes 30 seconds, then starts again around 10:40.

My brother and I cofounded the Illini Handball Club, and serendipity just so had it that one of our members is a TV producer.

Now handball is a fantastic sport. I grew up playing sports and handball is the best. It's the most technical, the most physically demanding, the most fun.

The problem is, handball is not the most exciting game to watch. In fact, there's a near-unnavigable chasm separating the enjoyment one gets playing handball versus the snooze-fest one enjoys watching it. I imagined it would be even worse to capture it on camera -- yet another mediator diluting the joy of actually being in the court and smacking the ball.

And I was right. The footage of us actually "in action" and playing the game is spotty. The girls filming were getting bored so they let the camera wiggle.

As Hampe writes in Visual Evidence, "It is the actual scene as it's recorded on film or videotape that has to provide the visual evidence for the audience of what occurred while you were there" (p. 53) And that's it. The film of choppy footage of a seemingly mildly enjoyable game is all we have to convince people to come to Handball Club. You can barely see the ball in the video. Maybe my interview made up for the gap between playing, watching, and watching on video. But I was pretty nervous...

But I swear it's a great game. I do! I do!