James McDonald
Cristiano Ronaldo is one of the greatest sportsmen of his generation. A new film from the producers of Senna explores the life of this Real Madrid Galáctico and global superstar. MOVIESCOPE spoke to James McDonald, the man tasked with finding the footage to capture Ronaldo’s life on film.
Will the film only be of interest to football fans?
It was apparent from the outset that this was a very personal story, and one about the youngest in a family, who was to change that family’s fate beyond all expectations. Coming from the makers of Senna, one can be confident of generating an appeal well outside of the niche subject matter. Working on this film hugely changed my opinion of Cristiano Ronaldo and gave me a much deeper appreciation for him as an athlete and as a person. I’d challenge anyone to not feel the same having seen the film.
Tell us about the film and your involvement in it.
I had worked as archive producer with the production company On The Corner on a previous feature doc called All This Mayhem a couple of years before so was delighted to be asked to work on this film about Ronaldo.
What made this film special from the outset was the access to Ronaldo himself. Not only did he authorise the film, but he was willing to give a lot of his time and allow access for the crew to a lot of his private life and for the film to tell all the details of the difficulties of his family life. There’s some quite dark stuff in there right from his conception – his mother didn’t want to keep him and attempted abortion, the family were destitute and his father had a very serious problem with alcohol.
My role involved getting all the existing footage and photos of Ronaldo from his earliest day’s right through to the constant media coverage around him during the 2014 world cup and champion’s league tournaments.
Where did you find the non-sports footage?
We sourced material from family (his brother runs the Ronaldo Museum in Madeira, which has a lot of photos and footage), film-makers and a considerable amount of footage from Real Madrid TV who had done a lot of observational filming of Ronaldo and the team over the past few years. We also engaged quite a few fans to supply their own footage of Ronaldo and themselves watching matches.
What’s the dynamic between yourself, the editor and the director? (how long do you all work together?)
We worked together for about six months. I was based in the production office, along with the producers, production co-ordinators, edit assistant and research assistants and would visit the edit a couple of times a week to have a look at sequences the editor had cut or to talk through what footage was needed, what was working, what wasn’t. The rest of the time, the editor and I would communicate a lot through shared documents so that he could see all my notes relating to the material I had sent to the edit (dates, descriptions, locations etc) and regular phone calls to discuss the particulars of certain scenes, the availability of certain footage and figuring out what might exist and who might have it… right down to figuring out what camera angles we should be getting in from FIFA for the world cup or which player Ronaldo is on the home movie footage we found of him playing at age 9. (Coincidentally, he was number 7 back then too!)
Trailer for Ronaldo, released in the UK on November 6th
Follow James on Twitter and visit his website.
