Critical Reflection

 This documentary has been one of my favorite projects I have ever worked on. I have had experience working on film openings, music videos, news stories, and a previous documentary at the beginning of the year. However, I have never worked on something in the sports media sphere, which is ironic as I plan on attending Florida State University this summer for sports media. 

I have always had a strong infatuation for sports. Whether it was playing soccer from a young age or just constantly watching games with my dad, it was always a huge part of my life. One show we would always watch

together was the series, Hard Knocks, developed by HBO. This show inspired the thought of having a future career in the sports media world. The series follows a new NFL team every season, whether it's during their pre-season training, or now recently during their actual season. I took a lot of inspiration from this show to develop my own piece. As I discussed in one of my early research blogs, this show does have its differences from what I’m trying to portray in my piece. While they are both sports documentaries, Hard Knocks follows a team in real-time and includes a lot of practice and game footage as their b-roll. For mine, I had to get a little creative as I was following a person rather than a sports team to reach a goal. My original plan was to use a lot of old photos and videos, to show the timeline of how long Riley has been involved with sports. However, archived footage that isn’t our own is not allowed to be used in our projects. After the interview, Riley talked to me about how she had a flag football game at the beginning of the week that was simultaneously her senior night. This meant there would be a ceremony where her family and her biggest mentor, Mr. Selvidge, would be in attendance. This was the perfect opportunity for me to get the b-roll that I needed as all of these people were heavily discussed by her in her interview. I set up my interviews very similarly to the documentary conventions that are present in the HBO Original. Along with the other sports documentaries I researched beforehand, Untold, and many other documentaries I have seen in the past, it is

very common for there to be two angles of an interview and cut back and forth from them and the b-roll. This gives the documentary a more authentic feel. I also had my interview clips in my piece be indirect based on this being what was used in the majority of other documentaries I had seen to prep for filming. Furthermore, I used selective editing to create my final product in post-production, similar to the editing of real-time documentaries. Finally, I even researched a bunch of new effects in Premiere Pro that I have seen in other pieces of media to use in my own piece. 

The idea behind my piece was for it to be an episodic documentary, in which each episode featured a person who represented a different “role” in the sports world and talked about what sports means to them in their own unique lives and perspectives. This could be an athlete, coach, fan, manager, etc. If I had developed the entire series, I would want to make an effort to cast people, regardless of a specific gender or race, to make the casting diverse and relatable for the audience who would be watching. The excerpt that I produced of the proposed first episode followed a girl named Riley who has been an athlete ever since a very young age. Though it was discussed in the actual piece, as it didn’t fit the message of the piece, I was glad I was able to get the perspective of a woman in sports, as of everything that has been going on in the world with equal pay and the gender gap in the professional sports world. Though Riley doesn’t plan on pursuing sports in the future, there are lots of stereotypes that only men are “true athletes” and are stronger/faster. Being able to feature Riley allowed me to highlight the success of women in sports and how they can be dominant in a world that is usually consumed and symbolized by the male gender. 

With all of this in mind, I wanted to have the target audience be very open in terms of age and gender, something like 13-60, as my goal is for anyone watching to be able to relate or at least sympathize with any of the subjects being featured, regardless of the “role” they are portraying. You don’t have to be an athlete to understand the things being discussed in the documentary. Sports are so much more than playing a game. It teaches you life lessons that people carry into the real world and can shape your personality. It teaches you responsibility, perseverance, teamwork, selflessness, and so much more. These are all traits we can connect to and learn outside the sports world. Anyone who watches it can easily engage with the piece and take something away from it, whether it's on an athletic or human level. 

On the topic of engagement, the piece is also not visually hard to follow. The video component includes a lot of b-roll in a hyper-active and colorful setting and the interview shots are set to be aesthetically pleasing and lit well. The magazine includes big photos and bold texts, distinguishing the headings, titles, and questions being asked to the director. The magazine is centered around a one-on-one with the director, talking about her own background experiences with sports media and her origins. This gives the audience a little bit of fun intel on her and includes information that is nowhere a part of the series, so nothing is repetitive. My social media includes lots of photos, bright colors, and fun teasers for the series to excite the audience about what is going to be released. 

The title of the documentary says a lot about what kind of purpose I intended with this piece. The types of roles one can fill in a sport are very broad and non-specific. This opens up those positions to be filled by anyone, regardless of race, gender, and sexual orientation. No matter who you are, you can love sports and have a connection with it like no one else. Each one is unique to oneself and their life story. The title “Intertwined” refers to the idea that once a part of your life for so long, sports can intertwine with your life, causing it to shape how you are and your life around you. If there was one thing I could go back and do again, that would be to make this message even more clear on my social media, as I feel that was the weakest out of my three components. 

Creating this piece was truly an unforgettable experience and I couldn’t be happier with my own personal experience, If you haven’t seen “Intertwined” yet, you should totally go do that now. 

Project Components

 The time has come... we are officially complete with our last Aice Media Portfolio Project ever,  A-level edition this time. Here are all of my components so you can take a look :) I hope you enjoy them as much as I did making them.

VIDEO COMPONENT- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_y5Wsdb3KxdvFjwDHcs8vlrbgQqebijk/view?usp=sharing

PRINT  COMPONENT- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DSjTHnb5uXgzSnO86oXzQferwc8dAzwn/view?usp=sharing

DIGITAL COMPONENT- https://www.instagram.com/m24productions/

Locking in during post-production

rough draft of the line edit

timeline for intro

final editing sequence

Welcome to post-production! Definitely the most tedious of them all. I personally, however, love to edit as this is when I truly get a sense of the final product ahead. 

Once I had all my footage, I created a project in Adobe Premiere and imported all of my video clips. I created bins for everything I needed (interview clips, b-roll, audio, graphics) and started to organize it all. This allows me to edit more efficiently as I know exactly where everything is.

From there, I dragged all of my interview clips to the timeline, synced my second angle of the interview to my main audio, and started to cut out all the question clips, leaving only the answers from Riley. Using this, I rewatch all the clips, get rid of the unnecessary ones, label them by color based on the topic being discussed in the answer, and create my timeline. For example, all the yellow clips in the timeline above are when Riley was talking about Mr. Selvidge. 

Once I have a story structure from my interview clips, I go to Youtube to search for the best music to be  in the background of documentary and the intro. The intro was placed after Riley introduced in order to get a small introduction to the subject of the episode and her “role” she is representing before the rest of the documentary. I was kept relatively short in order to have most of the five minutes reserved for Riley content rather than having some long, elaborate intro that takes up time. 

Finally, once I added the music and intro to the timeline, I slowly went through the whole thing and placed my b-roll the best I could, based on what was being said by Riley in the audio. 

All I really have left is some cleanup of the timeline and adding some quick transitions. I want to get some critiques before I export so I might show it to a couple of friends and get some feedback. See you soon with some final products!!

We have a title... finally!

 

We did it… we finally have a title! There was a point in time where I really thought that I wasn’t gonna get a title that I would like for this piece, but after testing some things out, I’ve really started to warm up to this one. 

I picked “Intertwined” to play on the fact that all these subjects, whether it’s Riley or the people I would have used if I developed this series further, all have aspects of sports mixed into their lives, to the point where they have become one. They can’t image their lives without it. 

The point of this documentary is to highlight this exactly and talk about what exactly sports means to them in their own unique roles and lives. And I honestly feel like this title ties this all together with the actual contents of the piece. 

Final draft out soon… :)

waving goodbye to the production stage

 WE ARE OFFICIALLY COMPLETE WITH THE PRODUCTION STAGE!! Today I attended one of the last flag football home game, and also the girls’ senior night, to get all the b-roll I needed for this project. I am very happy with how everything turned. 

One of the head coaches, Mr. Gordon, is the defensive coordinator for the team and allowed me to be on the sidelines for this in order to get any footage I needed. The game started out with a small ceremony for the seniors on the team, letting them walk the field with their friends and family and providing them with some small gifts as a token of their devotion to the team for the last coupe of years. Riley, a four year senior on the team, walked out with her mom and was eventually accompanied by her long-time, Mr. Selvidge, who were both heavily mentioned during our interview last week. They later went on to play against JP Taravella where Riley started on defensive and eventually transitioned to being the quarterback the entire game. 

The b-roll I collected was filmed on my Sony camera that I discussed in an early blog. However, I was unable to obtain a gimble as I was absent all day of school due to a family emergency. Instead, I took a small handheld tripod that I owned and attached it to the camera in order to still get the handheld shots I wanted without any crazy shakiness. It honestly turned out just as good, but I am excited to eventually use a gimble in the future :)

Well, now that I have all my footage… IT’S TIME TO EDIT!!

(above I attached some still shots of some of the b-roll from today)

b-roll planning

During the interview, Riley talked a lot about her origins when it came to her love of football, playing flag football, and sports media. She mentioned her family and a huge mentor of hers, Mr. Selvidge, who used to the athletic director at our school for the last 20 years. 

As she talked about all of these things, I wasn’t super confident on how to get b-roll that could show all of this and these people without using archived photos. I asked Riley at the end of the interview when her flag football games were this week, as I wanted shots of her playing either way, and she informed me that not only were they playing at home on Tuesday, but it was also the girls Senior Night. This meant not only would her friends and family be in attendance, but Selvidge himself as he is coming down to visit the girls for the special night.

I plan on attending the event and getting a LOT of b-roll from it as it just has so much to offer. I even spoke to my AP Government teacher, Mr. Gordon, who is one of the head coaches for the team, and he is allowing me to go on the sidelines to film any shots I need of the ceremony and game. 

In preparation of this, I created a list of certain parts and little actions from the night I want to capture for my piece:

list of preplanned shots

    -shots of riley throwing before the game (warm ups)

    -shots of riley with Selvidge

    -shots of riley with family during the senior night ceremony

    -shots of riley on the side lines

    -shots of rileys hands, eyes, feet, ECU of catching and throwing ball

    -shots of riley interacting with teammates and coaches

Now of course this isn’t the only things I’m going to shoot, but it helps to have this with me before I even set foot at the game to film. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Brainstorming the Opening

During the break, my dad and I binged the new documentary that was just released on Max called "Quiet on Set", having to deal with the emotional and physicals some child actors faced while working on the sets of network Nickelodeon. We basically watched all four episodes in one day. I really loved the production aspects ranging from the set to even the style of the b-roll used. Though the contents had absolutely no correlation with what I am currently working on, watching this series honestly gave me a good amount of ideas to implement into my project, more specifically, the opening. 

Since I will be producing the "first 5 minutes" of my said documentary episode, I have to create a kind of opening montage to introduce the actual series. The opening used for Quiet on Set, while being engaging and visually pleasing, was actually short and sweet. The series allowed for the actual story to do most of the work rather than having a long opening and title graphic. I really liked how this turned out and think it is perfect for my own project. The story being told is one that I find very engaging and entertaining, and I wouldn't want to waste any time, especially since the time I do have is only 5 minutes. 

This also really helps because my original idea was to do this cool, long intro involving a lot of old videos and photos of Riley playing sports ranging from all ages. Since I had found out about the "no archived footage" rule, I was kind of going blank on what I would replace it with. This I feel is the perfect substitution. 

To elaborate on my idea a little more, I am going to basically combine the two ideas in a way. I want to keep the little montage but also emphasize the little. I want a text graphic that overlays over a bunch of b-rolls I play on collecting Riley playing flag football, on and off the field. This text will slowly zoom in as the media will keep switching to something new every second. 

I had executed this kind of text graphic once before, but it was a good amount of time ago and I couldn't remember how to anymore. So, I searched for the effect and found a short tutorial on how to do it in Adobe Premiere Pro, the editing software plan on using. I can't really make one right now as I STILL have no title for this piece, but once I do and have some b-roll to put behind it, I will show you guys here :)