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!