It’s a moment forever immortalized for 49ers senior producer Sarina Soriano.
Stepping onto the field at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium in February 2020, an “overwhelmed” Soriano teared up just thinking about her family in the stands as she took in her first Super Bowl experience with the 49ers team she grew up watching and now worked for.
“I’m sentimental,” Soriano, 30, said in a recent interview with The Post. “It was like, ‘Wow, dad, we used to watch San Francisco 49ers games in the nosebleeds, and now, here I am capturing history, whatever the outcome is going to be, for better or worse, I’m here capturing the San Francisco 49ers, our favorite team,’ and that was a moment where I was like I’m meant to be here.”
Although the 49ers didn’t hoist the Lombardi Trophy in the end — Kansas City won its first Super Bowl in the Patrick Mahomes era with a 31-20 victory — the gravitas of that moment has had a lasting impact on Soriano, one of the first Latina cinematographers in the league.
Born and raised in San Jose, Calif., Soriano began playing soccer at the age of 3 and continued into young adulthood, all the while taking in 49ers games with loved ones.
“Sports has been a huge part of my life,” she said. “My dad was a huge football and baseball guy, so I think for me growing up, one of the ways how we connected was watching San Francisco 49ers games.”
Knowing she wanted to turn her passion for sports into a career, Soriano studied broadcast journalism at Caldwell University in Caldwell, N.J., where she took editing and film classes as part of her exploration into roles behind the camera.
“For me growing up, representation was lacking,” she said. “The only woman that I really saw on the TV screen was people like Michele Tafoya, sports reporters, so actually, for the longest time, I thought that I wanted to be a sports reporter, that’s the only way I can make it. But it’s funny how life works.”
Upon graduating from college, Soriano applied for the 49ers’ Denise DeBartolo York Fellowship, a program that selects a female graduate and puts her in six departments where women are underrepresented. When she arrived at 49ers Studios as part of a department rotation, Soriano “knew in my heart that’s where I wanted to be.”
“I was only there [at 49ers Studios] three months, but they’re truly the ones that put a cinema camera in my hand, and that was the Sony FD5 at the time,” Soriano recalled. “… I just will never forget the feeling of filming my first practice or filming my first community event and getting to interview some of these professional players that my dad has pictures and jerseys hanging up in his man cave at home. And that’s where I was like, you know what, I want to be a cinematographer, I want to tell stories this way.”
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Building a career in a male-dominated space wasn’t without obstacles for Soriano, who learned to tune out the “outside sources” over time as she paved a path into becoming the 49ers’ first female senior producer.
“I think a lot of times, it was really hard earlier on in my career, cause people would take one look at me and be like, ‘You should be in front of the camera,’ or, ‘That camera looks really heavy,’ or, ‘What are you doing carrying that heavy camera around,’ but for me, there were times and moments before I got to work where I was like, ‘Are they right?’ I was a 5-foot-3 Latina surrounded by these tall, predominantly white males in this space, and here I was being like, ‘No, I’m running with you guys. I’m holding this cinema camera on my shoulders for hours and hours and hours.’ I worked out a lot to keep up with the physical demands of a job like this. I’m just so proud.
“… The only validation I ever needed in life, in regards to my career, was how I felt about myself and letting my work speak for me.”
Now entering her 10th season in San Francisco, the seven-time Emmy Award winner and her team are tasked with capturing an array of game-day moments, a day that begins long before the start of the first quarter.
“My team and I, we arrive five or six hours before kickoff, and during this time, we’re setting up our cameras, setting up GoPros and the Spanish and English radio booths,” explained Soriano, who often works with Sony’s FX3 full-frame cinema camera and the FX6 full-frame cinema camera.
From there, Soriano and her crew film the players arriving at the stadium and pregame warmups, all the while editing and pushing out content featured on the 49ers’ social media channels.
“We’re filming the best part, which is highlights or cutaways, or somebody mic’ed up,” she explained. “And then, if-when postgame, we’re getting to film an interview with a player and our team reporter, and then we’re heading into the locker room getting [49ers coach] Kyle Shanahan’s speech to the team, and then all of that, we’re editing stuff, filming press conferences, and that’s a full work day.”
As a leader within 49ers Studios, Soriano has taken great pride in guiding young producers who aspire to walk through the door she opened.
“It’s really crazy because sometimes you don’t really see the bigger picture until later on in your career,” she said. “And for me, I’m just clawing my way to get a seat at the table, to feel like I belong, and while I was doing that, I subconsciously was creating this whole other table for people that look like me that wanted to be and make an impact in the sports industry.”
With the 49ers riding high at 3-0 in September, which is National Hispanic Heritage Month, Soriano is eager to share new stories with The Faithful as the 2025 season revs up.
“For me, every year is always a new challenge,” she said. “A new team, new faces, new stories to tell, and I’ve always wanted to push myself and my team to tell that in the most authentic way that we can.”
And that, according to Soriano, is capturing the heart of a champion beyond what transpires on game day.
“Our fans can feel inspired by these athletes and kind of see them as more than just athletes, just as people who have still gone through a lot, who have struggled, who have been resilient, and at the end of the day, that’s what I love about being a cinematographer,” she said.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
