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.