IN THEO ANOTHONY’S SHORT DOCUMENTARY, THE DIGITAL UMPIRE IS THEORIZED AND QUESTIONED
By: Kaitlyn Simpson
Challenging the calls of referees, umpires, and game officials has become commonplace in modern professional sports. Players can request a review of a specific call, and viewers can participate in the suspenseful act of determining if an official truly did mess up.
Theo Anthony’s short documentary, Subject to Review, uses tennis as a case study to explore technology-enabled official calls. Professional tennis matches involve eight line judges, a chair umpire, and, the ultimate authority, technology.
The film progresses through narration. Its components are broken up with vignettes that pull you into details and abruptly snap you back into the reality of a match.
As with other Anthony films, the filmmaking process is included in the final product. In Subject to Review, we watch the filmmakers offer direction to a voice actor as he shares a historical account of photographed replications. This technique – of including the making of a film within the film – is one that is perhaps unique to the documentary genre.
Subject to Review shows us how judgements that were once regulated to human expertise have been placed squarely in the hands of Hawk-Eye – a tool that strings together images and creates a digital recreation of the path of a tennis ball.
“A new world previously hidden to the human eye was revealed,” the narrator says. “The closer our instruments look at the world, the more clearly we see what cannot be known to us.”
Interestingly, the short film complicates this assertion and questions the supposed perfection of Hawk-Eye. What does it mean to place authority in the hands of a digital recreation of a physical act? What implications does this have for digitization outside of a tennis court?
Subject to Review provides us these questions; it is up to us to answer.
Subject to Review is available to watch on Disney+ in Canada.
Image Credit: IMDb