Friday Night Lights Essay

The film Friday Night Lights, directed by Peter Berg explains a story about a small town in Odessa, Texas that is obsessed to their high school football team (Permian Panthers) to the point where it’s strange. Boobie Miles (Derek Luke) is an cocky, star tailback who tore his ACL in the first game of the season and everyone in the town just became hopeless cause their star isn’t playing for a long time. The townspeople have to now rely on the new coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton), to motivate the other team members to be able to respect, step up their game, and improve quickly. During this process, racism has made it harder to have a success and be happy and the team has to overcome them as a family.
There are many ways how the actors

showed key character roles to make the film way more exciting. Some very important characters in the story is the Permian football team itself being underdogs and trying to beat some very talented teams. In the Permian Panthers team, there are a lot of individuals that really make the team have more depth. As you know already, Boobie was the star player on the team before he got severely injured and could not play. Mike Winchell (Lucas Black), the quarterback of the team who lacked a lot of confidence leads to life made questions. Ivory Christian (Lee Jackson), was a black player who would vomit before each game. Another player Brian Chavez (Jay Hernandez), is the only Hispanic player who is a starter takes school seriously unlike other players and wants to go to Harvard. Don Billingsley (Garrett Hedlund), is a great player but he is a severe drinking problem that’s out of control and is very social with girls and cares a lot about them. These characters roles become very key in the film.
Many film techniques were demonstrated in the film multiple times. Some techniques are close-shot, medium-shot, long-shot. An example close-shot is when the coach is talking to the team, medium-shot is when Boobie Miles gets injured on the field, and long-shot when the Permian Panthers are playing on the field against the other teams. Also, low-angle, eye-level, and high-level were demonstrated. Low-angle shows something from the bottom looking up, eye-level lets the camera be at the face of something, and high-level looks at something from above and stares down. The music in the movie added a lot of suspension because it had to do with what was going on at the moment.
The movie exhibits many themes, messages, and ideas throughout the story that really had an impact on the depth of the story inside the film.

A message that really explains the movie in a sentence is every human is not perfect and each human has their own personal struggles that they will try to overcome. Boobie Miles thought he was perfect and he actually put a curse on himself and got injured right at the beginning.The primary theme in the film is the Underdogs don’t always win. We thought because they were underdogs they were going to win but they ended up losing. They still did put up a great fight. Some other themes are the impact of adults’ hopes and goals lived vicariously through their children. The most important theme of the novel involves the impact of adults’ hopes and goals lived vicariously through their children. The people of Odessa place an unmistaken spell on the shoulders of their sons to be champions every year so that the adults can take the triumph as their own. The result is that their children can never leave their triumphs and defeats of that short time behind. It follows them no matter what they make of their lives, and it is unfair that they must do so. The last important theme is that of misplaced priorities. The people of Odessa wouldn’t accept the fact that their obsession with football was impacting on the educational success of their children. Their need to have a winning season affected class time, homework, tests, and even whether school

was a place to learn or a place to go between football games.
Friday Night Lights is a great movie and has more meaning than you think. A character that I admired is Jerrod McDougal who is a Panther halfback and made a lot of sacrifices to be on the team and knows he is too short at 5'9 to be playing for a college so, he practices daily to improve his skills. I love his confidence and determination as a person and player. Even though, the Permian Panthers did not win the semifinal game the team put in a lot effort and became a family.