Friday Night Lights is an American sports drama television series developed by Peter Berg and inspired by a 1990 book of immersive journalism by H. G. Bissinger, which was adapted as the 2004 film by Berg. Executive producers were Brian Grazer, David Nevins, Sarah Aubrey, and Jason Katims who also served as showrunner. The series follows a high school football team in the fictional town of Dillon, a small, close-knit community in rural West Texas. It features an ensemble cast led by Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, portraying new high school football coach Eric Taylor and his wife Tami Taylor, who becomes the high school guidance counselor. The primary cast includes characters associated with football and high school. The show uses its small-town backdrop to address many issues in contemporary American culture like family values, school funding, racism, substance use, abortion, and lack of economic opportunities.
Friday Night Lights premiered on October 3, 2006. It aired for two seasons on NBC. In May 2007, the series was renewed for a second season to consist of 22 episodes, but due to the writers' strike, it was shortened to 15 episodes. Although the show had garnered critical acclaim and passionate fans, the series suffered low ratings and was in danger of cancellation after the second season. To save the series, NBC struck a deal with DirecTV to co-produce three more seasons; each subsequent season premiered on DirecTV's 101 Network, with NBC rebroadcasts a few months later. The series ended its run on The 101 Network on February 9, 2011, after five seasons.
Though Friday Night Lights never garnered a sizable audience, it received critical acclaim, lauded for its realistic portrayal of Middle America and deep exploration of its central characters. The show appeared on a number of best lists and was awarded a Peabody Award, a Humanitas Prize, a Television Critics Association Award and several technical Primetime Emmy Awards. At the 2011 Primetime Emmy Awards, the show was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series. Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton also scored multiple nominations for the Outstanding Lead Actor and Actress awards for a drama series. Executive producer Jason Katims was nominated for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. Chandler and Katims each won the Emmy in 2011.
Background
Inspiration
Friday Night Lights was inspired by H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger's non-fiction book Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream (1990) and the 2004 film based on it. The book, which explores the 1988 season of the Permian Panthers, a high school football team in Odessa, Texas, was a factual work of documentary journalism. The people featured were not renamed in the book. The Universal Pictures film, which stars Billy Bob Thornton and was directed by Peter Berg, Bissinger's second cousin, based its characters on the residents of Odessa, c. 1988.
Conception
Once filming on the movie was completed, Berg began to explore adapting the story for television. Berg later said he had regretted having to jettison many of the interpersonal topics from the book because of the time constraints of a feature film. Creating a TV series, particularly one based on fictional characters, allowed him to address many of those elements in-depth.
He decided to set the series in a fictional town of Dillon, Texas, with some characteristics of Odessa. The football team was given the Panthers name. Berg deliberately carried elements from the film to the series, particularly for the pilot, which was closely related to the film. He cast Connie Britton as the wife of head coach Eric Taylor, and Brad Leland as Buddy Garrity, a major businessman and football booster, in roles similar to those they played in the film.
Production Filming for the show's pilot began in February 2006 in Austin, Texas. Berg said he required filming the pilot and eventually the show in Texas as "a deal breaker" in order to agree to participate weekly in the project. The show features homages to its Texas heritage. In the pilot, Berg featured former Texas Longhorns football coach Mack Brown as a Dillon booster and had a caller to the fictional Panther Radio compare Panthers' coach Eric Taylor to Brown. The pilot referred to much of the surrounding area in its scenes. Football scenes were filmed at Pflugerville High School's Kuempel Stadium and at the RRISD Complex. The Dillon Panther football team and coaches' uniforms were based on the uniforms of the Pflugerville Panthers. Some of the scenes were filmed at Texas School for the Deaf.
Berg's observation of local high school students while preparing to film the movie inspired his development of some of the characters. For example, Jason Street, the character whose promising football career is ended by a spinal injury in the pilot, was inspired by a local event. David Edwards, a football player from San Antonio's Madison High, was paralyzed during a November 2003 game. Berg was at the game when this accident occurred; he was profoundly affected by Edwards' injury and how it overturned his life. Berg set up a similar incident in the pilot.
Performances While relying on a script each week, the producers decided at the outset to allow the cast leeway in what they said and did on the show. Their decisions could affect the delivery of their lines and the blocking of each scene. If the actors felt that something was untrue to their character or a mode of delivery didn't work, they were free to change it, provided they still hit the vital plot points.
This freedom was complemented by filming without rehearsal and without extensive blocking. Camera operators were trained to follow the actors, rather than having the actors stand in one place with cameras fixed around them. The actors knew that the filming would work around them. Executive producer Jeffrey Reiner described this method as "no rehearsal, no blocking, just three cameras and we shoot."
Working in this fashion profoundly influenced everyone involved with the show. Series star Kyle Chandler said: "When I look back at my life, I'm going to say, 'Wow, [executive producer] Peter Berg really changed my life.'" Executive producer and head writer Jason Katims echoed this sentiment, saying: "When I first came on [the FNL] set, I thought, it's interesting – this is what I imagined filmmaking would be, before I saw what filmmaking was."
Filming All five seasons of Friday Night Lights were filmed in Austin and Pflugerville. With the show yielding roughly $33 million a year in revenue, other states courted the production company after the state of Texas failed to pay all the rebates it had promised to the show's producers. The Texas legislature authorized funding to match the offers of other states, and the production company preferred to stay near Austin, so the show remained in Texas.
Friday Night Lights is unusual for using actual locations rather than stage sets and sound stage. These factors together with reliance on filming hundreds of locals as extras, gives the series an authentic feel and look.
The producers used a cinéma vérité (documentary-style) filming technique. Three cameras were used for each shoot and entire scenes were shot in one take. In contrast, most productions film a scene from each angle and typically repeat the scene several times while readjusting lighting to accommodate each shot. The first takes usually made the final cut. By filming a scene all at once, the producers tried to create an environment for the actors that was more organic and allowed for the best performances.
The series borrowed the uniforms, cheerleaders, fans and stadium of the Pflugerville Panthers. Producers shot Pflugerville games and used them as game footage in the series. University of Southern California football announcers Pete Arbogast and Paul McDonald provided off-screen commentary during the football game sequences. The facilities, colors and bobcat logos of Texas State University in San Marcos were used as the setting and creative inspiration for the fictional Texas Methodist University. The show features the fictional Herrmann Field, named for George Herrmann, the head coach of the Pflugerville Panthers.
Some scenes were filmed outside Texas. On June 20, 2010, scenes were filmed at Temple University, which was to portray the fictional Braemore College. An episode from Julie's senior year in high school was filmed in the Boston area, at Boston College, Boston University, and Tufts University.
Some scenes at fictional Oklahoma Tech University were filmed at Gregory Gym at The University of Texas at Austin.
Marketing
Initially targeted at the youth market, the show emphasized the football element. NBC teamed with social networking site Bebo to create a site that allowed students to upload video and photos, as well as create blogs about their local football teams. Students who participated were eligible for one of 10 $5,000 scholarships. NBC had negotiated with Bebo for network and series promotion on Bebo's network of youth-oriented sites including Piczo, Hi5, Tickle, Ringo, and FastWeb.
To complement this promotion, NBC sent out "School Spirit" kits to 1,000 high schools around the country. These kits included posters, pom-poms, mini-footballs and disposable cameras, all bearing the show's logo. The kits also contained copies of the show's pilot episode on DVD. The network repeated this promotion for its second season promotion, when it teamed with HouseParty.com to send out 1,000 "Party Kits", which contained advance copies of the Season 2 opener along with other promotional material.
NBC also paired with Toyota to create the "Hometown Sweepstakes", in which students could earn cash grants of up to $50,000 for their school's athletics program. It was open to high school students ages 14 to 18 and was designed to draw people to the show's official website, where they could download AOL Instant Messenger icons, screensavers and desktop wallpaper. Students who registered could also download free movie theater passes to special early screenings of the pilot episode. These movie theater screenings took place in 50 cities nationwide and ran until a week before the show premiered on NBC.
In the later part of the season, NBC chose to switch course and pursue the female demographic. The network designed a strategy based on the personal elements of the show, giving the show the tagline, "It's about life". NBC Marketing President Vince Manze stressed that the goal was to assure viewers that the show was family and relationships as well as athletics. The network ran 30-second spots in movie theaters that featured cast members and fans being interviewed about the show.
Cast and characters
As a show about the community of Dillon, Texas, Friday Night Lights has an ensemble cast. The show features Panthers' football coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler), who strives to balance his work, family, status in a sometimes confrontational community and his personal ambitions. His family – wife Tami Taylor (Connie Britton), a guidance counselor turned principal at Dillon High, and teenage daughter Julie Taylor (Aimee Teegarden) – are also central to the show. Coach Taylor and Tami are the only two characters to appear in every episode.