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