The Queen of Basketball – by Ben Proudfoot
New York Times’ OP-DOCS
https://youtu.be/vPFkcoTfr7g
I have selected this 22-minute nonfiction short film because Lusia “Lucy” Harris was a legend in basketball. And I love basketball and its history. Lusia passed away in January 2023. Her basketball handprint made her legendary. The director Ben Proudfoot renders a distinguished homage to her. Shaquille O’Neal and Stephen Curry serve as the executive producers (Breakwater Studios). This New York Times Op-Docs has received many awards, including the Academy Awards, Peabody Awards, Tribeca Film Festival, Best Documentary (Short) Palm Springs ShortFest, and Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards. To view the film, please visit https://youtu.be/vPFkcoTfr7g
To bring her story to life, the director used archives as well as the first-person narrative. When she answers the director’s questions, Lusia’s portrait is well-centered as a close-up. There is frontality as Lusia looks directly into the camera’s lens as she is being interviewed by the director. This makes her closer to the viewers with her conversational, on-screen narration. In addition, this type of visual brings the audience closer to her eyes, and the eyes are a person’s soul.
In filming, Proudfoot used a filming technique that Errol Morris is known for. It puts the interviewee into the spotlight. This technique is about the Interrotrons, a huge glass at a 45-degree angle. It has the effect of having the storyteller, Lusia, look right into the lens and talk to the viewers. It is that purposeful storytelling told through a tool by which the viewers and storyteller (interviewee) are at eye level. The interviewer is mostly invisible in that short film. For the interviewee, the Interrotron gives enough comfort and closeness to create a conversation. It is a two-camera system in which the interviewer’s face is projected unto a prompter, and a prompter projects Lusia’s face onto the interviewer. And that worked well as the film was being made during COVID-19. The director and his team had to follow safety issues.
Proudshot used several camera moves as well as shots. Headshots of Lusia (first one appears at the beginning of the film), black & white photos as well as colored ones, creating contrast in time period. Shots taken from a high angle above Lusia (bird’s eye view) as she is shooting the ball into the basket. There is another high angle shot in which team members and coach are looking up. There are photos taken from a low angle as Lusia is being photographed with her other team members (worm’s eye view).
By framing Lusia’s head in the center gives her portrait a great visual significance. There is no created tension. Lusia is calm and not adamant about how her career could have gone had she been selected to do ads, get high pay, be treated without looking at her race or gender, etc.
There is symmetry in framing the basketball hoop equipment as well as in the basketball court.
There is repetition in the pattern of the Alcorn cheerleaders and the positioning of the orange cones. There’s also a harmonious positioning of the similarly-shaped cones. Also, the equipment in the basketball gym is harmoniously positioned.
There is also a contrasting texture between the soft, white cotton and the rough land. Lusia’s family worked in crop sharing, which wasn’t an easy livelihood.
There is also different angles and distance used as basketball players are aiming for a shot.
There is a sign running outside the frame’s edges. This implies a world existing outside those edges.
Some photos from the archives appear in sequential order. Photos of Lusia from her teenager years to her growing years. And they are made to appear jumping from one to the next as if to represent the passage of time.
There are wide shots showing players from head to toe. There are wide shots showing Lusia and her siblings sitting on the porch having snacks. There are also medium shots showing Lusia from head to waist as well as her college coach. There are several close-up shots showing only Lusia’s head. There is a close-up of Elzy High School’s name as well as the coach’s button “GIVE THEM HELL.” There is an extreme close-up of the basketball itself.
As to the moves, the director uses zooming. There is a zoom in as Lusia is about to shoot standing at half-court. There is a zoom in and out on A.I.A.W.’s name. Panning (swinging camera along x-axis) from left to right in the neighborhood shot. There is pedestaling with camera moving down to up with zooming in on Lusia’s individual yearbook photo. Same in the Delta State’s name. There is trucking side to side as players move on the court from one end to the other. There is a push-in of the camera into a sports equipment area followed by a basketball hoop tilting from down to up.
The mise en scene is about production design, costumes, lighting, space, actors, and composition. In this short movie, the main set is Lusia’s Mississippi’s home. But archives show footage of basketball courts and games, Lusia’s childhood Mississippi’s home and neighborhood, Lusia’s high school and college, and Lusia’s travels as a basketball player (ex: airport scene). Light is used in a way that shows Lusia without any shadow or backlight. Her sitting space remains the same throughout the film.
Lusia is only being herself throughout the film. No acting. No staging (no movement on her part except occasionally moving her head slightly.) It’s a documentary dialogue film between the director and Lusia.
I encourage you to learn about Lusia’s story and note the director’s different camera moves, shots, and tremendous archival research.
BONUS INFO:
Lusia made history by being the first female to score a basket in the Olympic. She was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. She was a three-time national college champion. She was awarded an Olympic silver medal. Of the 1970s generation, she never got to have the W.N.B.A. offers as that organization wasn’t yet created. She was, however, drafted in 1977 into the NBA’s New Orleans’ Jazz, a men’s team. She rejected that offer as she wanted to focus on raising a family. In time, she chose to be a basketball coach.
Proudfoot found a lot of Lusia’s archival footage at Delta State University. He brought that footage to Washington, DC, scanning it in 2K and digitizing it. Whenever Lusia is telling Proudfoot a story, Proudfoot supports it with an old footage. For example, Lusia mentioned how the nuns at Immaculata would come to watch a basketball game and start beating on buckets. But there is more. Proudfoot is that type of a director who would go to the extreme to find old footage. He knocked on Kodak’s door as Kodak used to sponsor women’s basketball games (1970s). Please visit https://filmmakermagazine.com/113608-interview-ben-proudfoot-the-queen-of-basketball/ for more details about “Rediscovering the NBAs First Female Player: Ben Proudfoot on The Queen of Basketball.
The director provides context about the 1970s, Title IX, Lusia as the only black female on a white girls’ team, a flash of Patsy Mink (first elected female of color at US Congress heading a table of white men), passing over Lusia as she looked for a coach position but ended up as an assistant coach of her high school (not worthy of a legend but acceptable in a world centered on race and gender and operating a scale of inequality). And to think that Lusia played at Delta State where the Coliseum was named after Walter Sillers, a segregationist.
Irony: In Erik Luers’ Filmmaker interview (March 10, 2022), Proudfoot mentions how he was rejected by USC’s film school. So he went there as an undeclared student and the rest is history.
For more short story films’ selections, visit https://www.shortoftheweek.com/
Philippe Abizeid's Visual Literacy 