MovieChat Forums > Athlete A (2020) Discussion > Was most of the footage of reporters sta...

Was most of the footage of reporters staged?

posted 4 years ago by tyboulder2 (101)
1 reply | jump to latest

Well, first, this is a good film and worth the watch—and hopefully more justice is served.

But as a question about how the movie was put together, it seemed like a whole lot of newsroom footage was being sold as authentic, when a great deal of it had to be dramatic recreations, trying to copy the style of Spotlight. This sort of pulled my attention away from the plot.

It also lacked some emotional depth that could’ve been highlighted a lot better using athlete’s old footage instead of the newsroom drama.

The critic reviews are a super high 86, and user reviews are a 7.7–so maybe people see something here that I don’t. (Still, a solid 7 on my book, and again, worth the watch.)

[–] whoanelly (1586) 4 years ago

I don’t think it was staged. But I also don’t think All the footage was depicting events from their investigations of this story.

The journalist meetings seemed to be about stories they were currently working on at the time of filming. They were continuing with the later developments. The story continued for a long time from 2016 into the trial. These vids were run in the background of voiceover describing different stages of the USA Gymnastics Investigation.

Another example of this technique is when they showed footage of a newspaper delivery person (female) delivering the paper in her car during the morning hours. The background was a news reporter narrating the breaking story about Nasser at the time of the Rio Olympics.

The investigation description is important because it illustrates the timeline of events.