Language Creates Reality — Words count!

The rhetorical question, “Do you believe in Miracles?” was shouted by announcer Al Michaels in 1980, as a bunch of college kids playing for the US olympic hockey team defeated the Soviet Union’s team of professionals, and went on to win the Gold medal for the USA.

In 2004 I was invited to join the cast and crew of the Disney movie Miracle as a hockey expert, and eventually the Referee of the big game between the Soviets and the USA. I want to honour the man in the middle, Miracle’s Director, Gavin O’Conner, for allowing our hockey players to make the hockey real in this movie.

Have you ever been behind the scenes of a major motion picture?

This was my first experience behind the cameras, on-set, and yes the craft services (the food people) were amazing. Kurt Russell was also amazing. Noah Emerick and the rest of the cast-members, on and off the ice, were exceptional. However, it was something that Gavin O’Connor, Dan Stoloff, and other technicians did before the cameras were even turned on, that really caught my attention.

For context, I am just an old hockey player, so I really didn’t initially understand what these movie-making experts were doing. Then it hit me. They were getting a sense of what the camera was going to see without burning up film (and money). Inside and outside of Hollywood, I like to call this technique…