After over 60 years and countless games, the first all-female NFL Films crew worked the Eagles preseason opener

Laura Lehmann always wanted to be a cameraperson but never got the opportunity.

Instead, she worked her way up through NFL Films’ sales department and eventually got into production management. But once she arrived, she noticed one thing in common about each of the weekly call sheets: Almost everyone working on an NFL Films crew was a man.

“I didn’t see many women there, and I knew I didn’t really have much of a chance when I started,” Lehmann said. “I wanted to be able to support other women. I know they’re out there, but I couldn’t easily find them, so it was like, ‘How can we find them?’ Besides finding them, I want them to succeed, so how do I do that?”

From there, the NFL Films Women in Film Experienceship was born. Now in Year 3, NFL Films staffed its first all-woman crew during the Eagles’ preseason opener — 63 years after the company was founded in Mt. Laurel. Eight women worked Thursday night’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals.

The experience, originally a one-day workshop, is now a three-day program that provides women in other areas of filmmaking the tools to succeed in sports. Two participants, Anastasia Goldberg and Mindy Cook, came to the program after working in documentary filmmaking.

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During the program, NFL Films cinematographers and sound designers teach the 13 participants how to use the equipment typically employed during an NFL game, from the on-field cameras to the overhead shots and sound equipment. Before focusing on football, the team ran through each stage of the process, from setup to breakdown.

“They told us everything about how the job would work and showed us all this material and all the examples of what you would actually be doing, which I don’t get from a lot of jobs,” Goldberg said. “You don’t usually get, ‘Here’s exactly what you’ll be doing.’”

The program’s capstone project was filming Temple’s spring football game. The team did a footage review, looking over what it had captured and what NFL Films cinematographers and sound mixers in their position had captured during other games, which was the most useful part of the weekend, Cook says.

Since the end of the program in April, Cook said NFL Films’ investment in the participants’ success has stood out to her. There’s been an “open door” for participants to reach out to NFL Films employees for guidance and mentorship, and Cook said the group “really wants [them] to succeed,” something she said was rare in the film industry.

Women in film are a small but growing number, especially in sports. The program provided the women involved a lifeline and connector to other women who’ve worked their way into the industry.

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“I still get comments, ‘Oh, wow, I’ve never worked with a woman [director of photography] before,’” Cook said. “When I first started in video, people would walk in and be like, ‘Where’s the camera guy?’ ‘Yeah, that’s me.’ It didn’t even occur to them that I was the camera guy. I feel like that is improving overall, but when I became interested in sports work, I didn’t know who to go to. I didn’t know any people working in sports in my market, and I didn’t have a contact anywhere to be like, ‘Hey, I want to learn this part of the world. Where do I go?’

“Without this program, I’d still be sending cold emails, trying to get on the phone with people, and trying to figure out how to make that happen.”

During the first year of the program, two women worked on NFL Films’ crew for Super Bowl LVII. Past participants have gone on to work for NFL teams, while others have continued to work at NFL Films. The current participants hope to do the same, thanks to the tryout program that brought the women back together to work NFL preseason games.

Lehmann hopes to deepen that partnership with teams in the future and give participants more opportunities to work and prove themselves. Her initial vision for the program was five days, and she’d love to expand it further.

“There is a young woman that’s going to be in the crowd today that’s going to look and see each one of them, and they’re going to want to do that,” said Scott Carter, vice president of field acquisition for NFL Films. “That’s it. That’s all we’re trying to do. I know that sounds very corporate, but it’s actually real.”