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 :)

Magazine Article Layout

Page 1

Page 2

Today I sat down and started to create the layout of my print component, a magazine article. I decide to use the software, Canva, to design the spread. I have a lot of experience with graphic design on here, dating back all the way to 8th grade when I was a yearbook editor. I know it like the back of my hand. I also have Canva Pro, which gives you access to so many cool features and graphics you can implement into your designs if you choose.

I started out by finding a basic magazine template to get the basic shape of a typical layout. Magazine layouts tend to be very specific with text alignment, spacing, and headings, so finding a template made sure I hit all of those kinds of conventions. However, the only templates available were one pagers, and I needed to create a spread. So, I created a duplicate second page and messed around with the spacing. I made the left column wider, moved the right column to the top right, made the photo bigger, and created a space/text box in the bottom right to add an important quote.

In the print component lecture Mrs. Stoklosa gave us, she gave a good amount of examples of what we could write about if we were completing a magazine article for the documentary portfolio selection. The one that interested me the most was writing about the director. I haven't quite decided if I want to have a "Director Q & A", a "Director Highlight", or something else along those lines. The writing portion of this is still a work in progress.

 

INTERVIEW COMPLETEEEEEE

The time has finally come... WE HAVE FOOTAGE!! I sat down with Riley today, the first weekend of spring break, and interviewed her for my piece, and I'm thrilled with how it turned out. 

Not only is Riley just a kind-hearted and well-spoken person, but as a whole, it was a great experience tlearnut more about her journey in sports and truly understand her passions as an athlete. During the interview, we got into her origins as a flag football player and her love for the sport of football on a professional level. She is super involved in so many aspects of the athletics program at our school. I was able to really get a grasp of how multi-faceted she is in the sports world and her plans for the future when it came to further pursuing her interests. 

I had a little problem with obtaining equipment for this interview in the beginning but it ended up working out in the end. Since school was out, I couldn't get the remaining equipment I needed from school so I had to turn to BECON. However, a lot of kids had plans to film projects over the break so almost all the equipment that was available there was already being borrowed by other people. Thankfully, my friend Male had checked out some equipment

from there and was nice enough to allow me to use her equipment for the interview that morning. She came with me and helped me during the interview, controlling the audio while I interviewed Riley. I owe a huge thank you to her. 

Male had checked out equipment to film her short film over the break, so the audio equipment she had was a little different than what I had in mind. However, it was actually a great experience. I never had experience using a boom pole, but the one she had synced automatically to my main camera and honestly had great sound quality. The audio has a little echo but that was mostly because it was filmed in Riley's house, so I gonna just fix it in post-production editing, but it's not too bad. 

I can't wait for you guys to get to know Riley as I was able to today.

title of doc... TBA

Something that has been really on my mind and I've been having a hard time with is naming this documentary.

This is always the part that I tend to struggle with. 

In my opinion, the title of a piece is what ties the whole thing together. If the title isn't fitting or doesn't tie in well with the central idea of the content, it throws the entire piece off. I keep telling myself that once I get my footage and hear what Riley has to say, something will come to me. But what if it doesn't...

Plans are made and the project is well on its way with progress, but without a title, it doesn't feel like a real project. I don't know quite how to explain it but I kind of associate titles with a cohesive idea. Something that makes an idea identifiable and complete.  Without that sense of cohesiveness, I've been having a hard time processing in my mind that this piece is going to be finished and completed in just a few short weeks. And this really scares me. Since the day we started this piece, I knew I wanted to put my all into this and have the final product be something that I am truly proud of. Having such an important aspect of doc being incomplete makes me feel unconfident.

I had an idea to possibly name it a verb that is sports-related, kind of like "Preserve", but it just doesn't feel right. 

I'm gonna keep workshopping it and maybe once I hit post-production something will come along, but for now, it remains untitled.

Social Media Posting Schedule

A huge inspiration I am taking from for my documentary social media is the AMT (American Musical Theatre) instagram page for my school:

@cbhs.amt

This page is the social media account that advertises the school musicals we put on every year, The screenshot above is the publicity done for one of our shows this year, Chicago The Musical. I love looking at the page because everything is so visually aesthetic and uniform. I want to execute kind of a similar layout for my own social media page. One thing these pages both have in common is being a broader production page that advertises smaller pieces. What I mean by that is that the big AMT page that publicizes all the shows is very similar to a production company social media page that publicizes for all its content that they produce/distribute. 

One thing I especially want to do is create a logo and have it spread out like it is one the bottom to establish the above content as apart of my documentary. I’ve been seeing these types of posts, using multiple posts to display a bigger image visible in the page, and I really like how the final product looks. I also love the clear color theme that is established throughout all the posts. I want to establish a color palette through my documentary title/logo so I can keep that palette in all my posts. 

Here is a social media posting schedule I created and plan on following:

03/22- CREATE LOGO AND POST IT

03/24- PHOTOGRAPH AND EDIT 1ST AND 2ND OBJECT TEASER POSTS

03/26- POST 1ST OBJECT TEASER POST

03/28- POST FILLER POST

03/30- POST 2ND OBJECT TEASER POST

03/31- PHOTOGRAPH AND EDIT 3RD AND 4TH OBJECT TEASER POSTS

04/2- POST 3RD OBJECT TEASER POST

04/3- POST FILLER POST

04/4- POST LAST OBJECT POST

04/5…04/9 - START COUNTDOWN POSTS FOR RELEASE

04/10- LAST POST ANNOUNCING OFFICIAL RELEASE ON MAX

I’ll keep you guys updated with how my social media page is looking :)

Obstacles/Issues- Filming

 According to the project production schedule I made at the beginning of this process, I was supposed to start filming about 2 weeks ago. However, as you guys can see, unfortunately, that has not happened yet. 

This problem more stems from trying to find a good time to film rather than being unprepared. I’ve had my interview content ready for a good amount of time now, so you may be asking, why is there a delay then? Well, for the past few weeks I have been extremely committed to a few events involving the drama program at my school. We performed Chicago the Musical form March 6th-8th, but even before that I was stuck after school every day during the two weeks before this from 3-5:30. This had made it extremely hard for me to find a time after school to film. 

So, I turned to class time. I wanted to try to film the interview during 2nd period as that is when Riley and I both have Aice Media, so we are both in the same place at the same time. However, during show week, one of the days I was gone for a full day on an excused field trip as we were performing Chicago the whole day. The remaining days have either been a day where a sub is there, a lesson day, a group meeting day, or a day that happens to not work for my subject. 

This week I am currently away on a field trip for a drama competition in Tampa, ranging from Wednesday to Saturday night, missing two A days which could have been potential filming days. 

Our time to complete this project is slowly chipping away and it is stressing me out that I don’t have any footage to work on at this point. So, I started to create a plan B. Now, the last week before spring break we have 2 A days, one however that is on an early release day and one that a group meeting is planned for. I still want to try and film in class during these two days, but in the case I can’t, I am going to film my interview over spring break in my subjects house. I can easily check out equipment from BECON and this way I have a lot of uninterrupted time. 

I will keep you guys updated on when I get to film

Print Component Research

Cover

Summary

Part of Interview

#1- The Extreme Sports Roulette

In 2009, about a month before the 2010 Winter Olympics, Kevin Pearce, 22-year-old snowboarder, was practicing one of his highly dangerous tricks and hit his head in a snowboarding accident. Pearce was an up-in-coming athlete, as he was a top contender at the time on the US Olympic team. Oscar nominated director, Lucy Walker, created a film called Crash Reel in which it followed Kevin and his family after his severe accident. It also featured some other athletes who were severely injured, even some who have died. 

The writer starts by giving a few paragraphs on the incident/history of the event that surrounds the athlete, Kevin Pearce. The author then transitions into giving some background on the film director, Lucy Walker, and the film itself. This smoothly moves into the full interview provided between the author and the director about Crash Reel and its connection to Pearce.

This kind of layout for a print component is very similar to the technique of doing a “Q&A with the Director”. It shows me a way that this is done in real life and how I can adapt this prompt and make it more natural and conventional.

Summary of Article Topic

Part of the Article 

#2- The True Story Behind the HBO Documentary BS High — and the Football Scandal at its Center

Towards the end of 2023, HBO released a documentary onto Max that captured the high school football scandal that shook up the sports world at the time. Not only was it detrimental to the head coach, Roy Johnson, but also the many players who got caught up and used in Johnson’s scam. 

The writer of the article goes from the history of the event to discussing what exactly happened and is captured in the documentary in chronological order, using quotes from Johnson that are pulled right out of the piece. The article also goes into some of the behind-the-scenes aspects of the film. For example, the interview of coach Johnson was used “to paint a picture of how Johnson fabricated a high school football team” and essentially scammed his way to the top, before it all came crashing down. 

This kind of layout of a print component is similar to the technique of doing a “BTS Article” of my own documentary. This piece shows me a way that I can do so, as it is a real life example, and how I can make it original and informative.

Possible Equipment

 With an interview soon underway, I thought this would be a good time to discuss with you guys the possible equipment I plan on using during this process. 

First of all, I am SO excited to finally be using my new camera: the Sony a7 IV

I had been saving up for this camera for such a long time and I finally was able to purchase it. It’s been my favorite thing in the world ever since. I am the photographer for our Class of 2024, so I’ve only been able to use it to take photos of our prom theme reveal, but I can’t wait to use it for this as this is exacting why I got it. In my mind, it was an investment in exchange for high quality for all the sports media I plan to make in the future, as I am committed to FSU for sports media [ go noles :) ].

This is going to be my main camera, as it will be the main shot for my interview and the camera I film all my b-roll with and shoot photos for my social media page. My secondary camera that will be my alternate shot in my interview I plan on either checking out at BECON TV or from my TV program, CBTV,  at my school. 

Along with the necessary essentials (tripod, rode mic, lav mics, lenses, etc.), I plan on trying something new, as I talked about in one of my previous blog posts. My goal is to use a gimbal in order to get the high quality, dynamic b-roll I envision for this piece. This is the gimbal currently available at my school that I plan on using: DJI Ronin- SC - Camera Stabilizer

If this is not available at the time, I plan on getting it from BECON. This piece of equipment is more on the difficult side to use, but I plan on learning how to use it through my friends in TV who have experience with it  and videos if that is what it takes. I will document my process of trying to use it on here. 

Keep you guys updated :)

“Casting”/Target Audience

 As you all know, I have chosen Riley Orovitz as my subject for this documentary extract I will be producing. However, I haven’t really taken the time to fully explain why. 

Riley was the person I immediately thought of when I talked to Mrs. Stoklosa about doing this piece. It all started with her brand project presentation. Her theme for the whole thing was competition and how sports has influenced her life to be very high-paced and active. Her video component was all a bunch of videos and photos of playing sports and living a life of sports from a very young age to present day. Back then I thought it was very interesting, but little did I know that it would be exactly what I am trying to capture with my piece. She is extremely active in our high school’s sport life: playing flag football, team manager for the girls basketball team and boys football team, social media manager for our school’s athletic pages, etc. The list is never ending. 

Though my subject is a similar age as me, I want my piece to have a broad target audience. My idea with this documentary was always to be an episodic series, where every episode would be featuring a new subject that fits a certain “role” in supports. This could be player, coach, manager, owner, and even fan. All different ages and backgrounds. Even though Riley fits under a lot of those categories, her episode would fall under player the most, at least that is how I play on structuring it, while also featuring all the other aspects as well. This way, there is ideally an episode that is connectable for everyone. 

Since I am only really producing one little excerpt of this documentary and not the full series, the representation of this idea would be heavily shown through the social media aspect of my project. At first I want to start by making posts to tease the series as a whole. Then, I am going to make posts that will introduce each episode. What I want to do is have a photo that symbolizes each role as a post rather than post the actual subject. Not only do I not have the people to represent each of these roles since I am only producing one, it I also like the idea of saving the identity of the subjects to be revealed during the episode.

I created my social media page today!

Based on my social media research, I decided to make my page my production company that is producing this piece rather than the actual docu-series, as it is not customary to the social media presence of sports documentaries.

Here is my page and production logo: 

                        

The production logo I wanted to be very simple, but also modern. Though it seems very similar to the famous “A24 Productions”, that actually was not the purpose at all. The M is an initial to my first name as this is my own individual production company, and the 24 is a reference to my sports number that I used the majority of the time I played soccer. 

I can’t wait to update you guys on my future posts!

Group Meeting #1

Welcome back everyone, today we had our first group meeting! [ as you can see form above :) ]

The majority of the people assigned to my group were working on documentaries as well, so it allowed me to ask lots of questions and overall be very productive. 

I went first in taking about my questions and I talked about a lot of ideas with my classmates. I plan on doing the first five minutes of my doc as the extract for my portfolio project, so that’s means I have to plan out an opening to the actual “series”. I had an idea to use a bunch of old videos that Riley has of her playing sports as a kid to kind of develop her character in the doc and show a timeline of how long sports has been apart of her life.  However, after talking to some of the people in my group, I have officially learned that archived footage is not allowed to be used. But! Samy gave me a few ideas in order to keep this idea but loophole the “no archived footage”, like putting a bunch of photos on a fridge and filming it that way, which I thought was super creative. With that, I had mentioned I was having a problem with brainstorming b-roll to film for this specific piece. We came to the conclusion that I would need to probably stage a lot of my b-roll in order to get the specific things I had in mind, like a possible tutorial section with Riley teaching how to throw a football, as she is the quarterback in our school’s flag football team. 

I would take a similar approach to building my social media page content. With this being episodic, I had ideas to “continue” this doc by having other episodes for different kinds of roles present in sports: athlete (Riley), coach, fan, etc. However, if I can’t by any chance find people at least to capture for the idea to be present on my page, they suggested I make posts with objects that symbolize each role. For example, a potential post for coach could be a whistle on a desk. I thought this was super cool and plan on executing this idea. 

The last thing I talked about was my problem with creating a narrow structure for this extract. More specifically, what exactly I want for this piece to preach other than just expressing how much sports affects people’s lives emotionally. With my interview coming up, they told me to really focus on the creation of my interview questions. I can sort of manipulate the answers I want from Riley in order to fit the theme of this doc, so I want to go back and really develop the wording of my questions to kind of guide a specific style of responses form Riley. From there, I will take her answers and craft my first line sequence with it. 

I really felt a lot better after this meeting so I’m so excited to have another one soon. See you guys soon :)

Social Media Research

In preparation of creating the social media aspect of my portfolio project, I decided to research the social media presence of some sports documentaries I consume in my free time.

Hard Knocks- HBO

         Media text: documentary 

         Social Media Tool: instagram

Description of types of posts

There are 3 main types of posts are present:

- video clips from posted episode, whether its an interview or interactions

- funny clips of players mic-ed up on the field or on the side line

- still shots from the episodes with the subtitles of what is being said on the bottom

Description of how branding is developed:

The series heavily establishes their brand through their social media presence. Immediately when you click on the page you get a description of the purpose. The clips and still images are all directly pulled from the show so you know exactly what you are going to be watching based off the content. The color theme of the pages always correlate with the NFL team colors that they are following during that season. Overall, you get a sense of the “tracking/behind the scenes” from the crew, which is the idea of the show.

Analysis for my own implications:

The show posts lots of clips and images from the filming of the episodes which I really like the idea of. When I do my documentary, though it would be with dialogue or be clips of interactions, I want to post still images and b-roll shots as teaser to introduce/develop the subject.

The Last Dance- ESPN

        Media text: documentary

        Social Media Tool: instagram 

Description of types of posts:

All the posts on social media that are related to the show are actually not on a series-branded page, but posted by viewers. ESPN, the service that produced the show would post an occasional flyer to promote the release and distribution, but most of their publicity was through airing ads/commercials on TV. This is most likely due to the target audience they are reaching to with it is an older crowd who are not super present on social media, as the main subject of the doc is an basketball legend who is retired. The content posted by fans all clips from the show are typically clips from the show with added subtitles, flyers, or images of them watching the show with a promotional caption.

Description of how branding is developed:

The brand is heavily established as a limited series that follows the story of the last few season of Michael Jordan’s career. All flyers and clips always have Michael Jordan present. In the same case they don’t, they are from interviews of people telling their side of the story, involving Michael Jordan. 

Untold- Netflix

         Media text: documentary 

         Social Media Tool: instagram 

Description of types of posts:

Similar to The Last Dance, there is not official brand social media page used to publicize the series. All posts are either through Netflix’s page or by viewers. However, this series is an episodic documentary, meaning that every episode covers a different person and their careers in a sport. All the posts are flyers or still images made specifically for each episode.

Description of how branding is developed:

The show itself doesn’t really have a huge brand that is publicized through social media. The main purpose of the series is more established through the actual episodes and how they are structured: telling the stories of not as popular athletes and how they got to where they are today in their sports.

Analysis for my own implications:

What I’m taking from my research of both Untold and The Last Dance is that social media is not a huge factor when it comes to the publicity for sports documentaries. At least for the specific series, it’s more through the streaming service/distributor. So, for my sports documentary (untitled at the moment..), I want to create my social media page for a production company that would be hypothetically distributing my doc. This would, in my opinion, be more realistic to how real sports documentaries are publicized by real streaming services.