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 :)

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.

Prepping for the Interview

 As we enter the 3rd week of working on our portfolio projects, it is soon time to start filming. I currently have organized an interview with my subject for next week on Monday (date tentative depending what we are doing in class that day). With the date coming close, I wanted to share some of the prep I’ve been developing in order to be prepared for it.

Last time I filmed an interview for the documentary I created a little bit ago, I had two camera angles set up for filming. Personally, even though it’s a little more to edit, I loved how it looked visually as it gave the doc a more professional look. It also allowed for the visuals he to be more engaging to viewers whenever they were viewing the actual interview clips, as they weren’t just staring at the same clip over and over again. The second angle provided some variety. 

Another aspect that I’ve been thinking about is the actual location of the interview. My subject, Riley, is a very busy person outside of school as she is involved in so many things (the main reason I wanted her to be my subject in this doc). However, this means that I only really have one chance to film said interview, as it was already a little hard to find a day for this in the first place. I also don’t want to have to refilm again in the sense of continuity and also convenience for her. I am also apart of the TV program at our school, meaning I have access to the studio where they film the morning announcements. In that room there is a CBTV sports background/board that I think would be perfect to put a chair in front off and still be related to the topic of the doc. I thought of maybe trying to film it outside, but since I’m trying to make this interview as seamless and problem-free as possible, I didn’t think it would be a good idea. Filming outside is too unpredictable. There could be wind that messes with the audio or inconsistent lighting due to clouds. Filming inside allows me full control and manipulation over those aspects.

The last thing I’ve been working on to prep for the interview are the actual questions I will be asking her. I have experience with conducting interviews, and though I know most questions come from the responses of the subject in the moment, it’s always good to go in with preset questions in order to keep the interview structured and on-topic. 

Here are some I’ve come up with:

They are still a work-in progress, but i think it’s a good base, just maybe a few questions I need to add or tweak.

I’ll let you know how the interview goes!!

Filming Prep/Conventions

Guess what… I have my official subject for the extract I will be producing!! 

When brainstorming this idea, I had this individual in mind from the very beginning. They represented exactly what I wanted my documentary to capture, so when I asked them about being apart of it and they said yes, I was ecstatic. 

My subject of interest, Riley Orovitz, is a senior in high school just like me. She’s loved to watch and play sports ever since she was at a young age. She’s found so many ways to outlet her passion during our time at Cypress, whether it’s working our school sports games, running the high school’s athletics social media, and even playing on the flag football team all 4 years. 

In one of my old posts, Documentary Viewings and Research (posted on December 8th, 2023), I had talked about all the documentaries we had viewed in class during the period in time we were studying Documentary as a whole. We also had various lectures with Mrs. Stoklosa where she discuss all different kinds of documentary techniques and conventions, spreading from pre-production to post-production work. 

After reflecting on some of the notes I took during that time, here are some of the things I want to specifically implement into my documentary:

Narrative Format

The entire “voice” of the documentary I want to be told solely through Riley. What I mean is no voice overs, or direct interviews, just Riley’s narrative is present along with natural sounds from the b-roll and maybe music if I feel like the sound element is missing something. I did this for my past documentary that I made and I love how it turned out. In my opinion, it makes the narrative of the documentary feel more genuine and vulnerable. 

Handheld Camera

When shooting b-roll, I want to try and experiment with more dynamic moving shots. This would be done with using the handheld camera technique. However, if I would to use FULL handheld, the shots would be super shaky and not aesthetically pleasing as I haven’t yet developed a stable hand when filming without any sort of support or tripod. So, after doing a little research, I decided I wanted to take this opportunity to experience with some new equipment, a gimble. 

                     

This piece of equipment allows for a camera t be attached at the top and stabilizes the camera itself, allowing you to get those smooth and stable shots without being dormant on a tripod. It allows for the movement that I want. Now, these run VERY expensive. So, I plan on checking one out at BECON, a local news station that allows young creators to check out high-quality equipment to use for their projects. I had checked out all the equipment I used in my past doc from BECON and it was an incredible experience and the high-quality equipment truly brought my doc to a whole new level.

Archived Footage

Since we are only producing a five-minute extract, I plan on producing the first few minutes of what would be my full episode. This includes an opening/intro. Since this would be an episodic series, it would need to be branded to the series, but I also want it to be individualized to the subject being explored each time. With this in mind, I had an idea of making a sort of “montage” with a bunch of old videos and photos Riley has as a little girl playing sports or being involved in sports. Riley had used these in a past project we did (brand project) so I know I would have enough. I just need to make sure with Mrs. Stoklosa that I am allowed to use this “archived footage” in my project as technically it was already filmed.

Selective Editing

Selective editing gets implemented a lot when it comes to documentaries. Not only does it allow you structure your piece exactly how you want, but it’s also inevitable as you are always going to film more than you need. Again, with only having to produce a five-minute extract, I am going to have to be very selective with my editing in order to fit the time limit and make sure the doc stays on track with its purpose. 

Stylistic Choices

Once I decided to produce a sports documentary, my mind immediately went to what kind of concept I was going to develop. The topic sports documentary is so broad, it was time to develop the actually substance behind what I was going to produce. The first thing I take note of when consuming any piece of media is the structure/concept behind it. I will immediately love something if I think the concept behind it is cool, or immediately dislike something if the structure of the piece is too slow or disengaging. 

Like I said before, I watch a good amount of documentaries in my free time, especially sports related ones. The structure is the most important part of documentaries in my opinion, as it can make or break your piece. For example, though the story being told was surface level, the sports doc Swamp Kings on Netflix, did tell a good story. Its downfall though is its structure. It felt too slow, it was hard to watch. 

One sports documentary that I really love and took inspiration from is Hard Knocks. The HBO Original follows around a select NFL Team, typically in the summer during their spring training camp as they prepare for the upcoming season. Recently, they created an in-season version this past season, following the Miami Dolphins behind the scenes during the season and as far as they got during the playoffs. This piece’s structured is so well thought out and the concept behind is so captivating. The switch of handheld filming while following mic-ed up players seamlessly to a static sit down interview with a player or coach is so well-constructed and thought out. This docu-series originally inspired my first idea to follow a Cypress Bay sports team around for their season, or even the soccer teams as they advance closer and closer to the state championship. However, with our project being due the first week of April, I wouldn’t be able to capture the full experience, making my doc feel incomplete to me. So though I like the stylistic choices behind it, I needed to change my idea. 

                   

                                TRAINING CAMP SEASON                                                             IN-SEASON

BUT THEN, I remembered this:

Aftershock Episode 432- Maddie Brouse Feature (1:45-3:20)

This is exactly. what I am going for. The segment follows the only girl on the Cypress Bay Football team back in 2022 in a documentary style way, almost like a nat package. In that I mean the creator lets the audio from the subject and the natural sounds collected in b-roll tell the story. No voiceovers