Poster

Hello!

Update! I have almost completed the poster for my documentary! Here it is 

Im not 100% finished yet, but I do feel that its a good start! When making the poster I knew that I wanted something that would show each athlete participating in their sport and that I wanted to carry out the colorscheme and font that I used on my website and in the documentary itself, which is why I choose to keep it simple with the pink and black and white. I also added a lot of contrast to the pictures because I felt like it gave them the dramatic effect that I was going for. Im not sure how much I like the "become inspired" quote at the top. That is defenitaly one thing that I do plan on changing for sure. Other than that I am really happy with the outcome. 

Final Stretch

Hello everyone!

Today has mainly consisted of me editing all the footage that I have. We are getting down to the last week, I am not going to lie, its stressing me out just a little bit. Today I realized I dont have as much b-roll as I thought so im going to have to film a bit more next week. Im just glad that I have a majority of it done. I also do not have school on Tuesday of next week so that will give me the ability to take my time and edit as much as I can, which is great! Other than editing all I have to do is finish my poster which I plan on woking on tomorrow! I have an idea of how I want it to look, and I absolutely love graphic design so thats one of the parts that Im looking to doing. Other than that I feel like im right on track! One more thing that I have to do is finish up the last few small details to my website, such as a few more pictures and captions, so that is something that I plan on doing within the next week! This is the final stretch, I cant wait to see how everything comes together! 

Music

Today I decided to take the time to look for some music for my documentary! To be honest this Is one of my least favorite parts about editing. Its very time consuming, and me being the indecisive person that I am I have a hard time deciding which songs I want to use. But on the other hand I feel like music is one of the most important parts of documentarys because it is like the glue that ties everything together, on top of that It also helps to set the tone and add a bit of a dramatic effect. Today I am just picking out a bunch of songs that I like and then once I finish all the editing I will decide which ones I want to use. But for now I am just narrowing everything down. One of my favorite websites to use to find music is SoundCloud. There are many artist who make their music royalty free, and there is soooooo much to choose from!

 

B-Roll!

Hello!! 

So this morning I went to CrossFit to film a majority of the B-roll for my documentary! At first, I was really worried that the lighting inside the gym would be too dark and that it would look terrible, but thankfully that was not the case. The gym is inside a warehouse that is open at the end. Because of this, there was a ton of natural lighting and to my relief, all my footage came out super nice in my opinion. I was also scared to use my iPhone to film, because I was scared the quality was not going to be good (Unfortunately I don't have access to a high-quality camera and It wasn’t in my budget to rent one :( ) But the footage actually came out quite nice, and I plan on fixing the coloring a bit when I'm editing! I would say today was a success! 

Stress

Hi everyone!

So as I mentioned a few blog posts ago I have been beyond busy this week so I have had very little time to work on my project. This whole week I was focused on finishing third quarter strong, and on top of that I left on Thursday after school to go visit my best friend Hannah at the University of Florida in Gainesville to celebrate her 20th birthday! Because this has been such a hectic week I feel like i'm really behind on my project, but it's ok because I have a lot planned over spring break. On my way up to Gainsville I did get a chance to edit a bit of Emily's interview that I shot last week. I mainly took out the bloopers and played around with the colors, but at least it is a start. I come back home tomorrow so I will have time to work on my movie poster! I am a bit stressed, but i'm confident that over the next week I will have more than enough time to get everything together!

Tennis

Hello!

So I have scheduled a photoshoot with another one of the athletes. I meet her through my father who is her tennis coach. She is on his women's tennis team and she has agreed to be a part of my documentary! I have not yet met her but Im super excited to get a chance to work with her. I absolutely love tennis and I grew up watching and playing it, so I am so glad that a tennis player will get to be part of this project. I am a big fan of how tennis action shots look so I am so excited to get to photograph her. Here are some pictures that I am taking inspiration from!

To Do

Hi everyone!

So it is currently the Tuesday of the last week of third quarter! This last week is SUPER stressful because I have a ton of big assignments to turn in for my other classes, making this week super stressful. On top of that I have to make sure all my grades are good so this week it is going to be really hard to make any progress in my project. Thankfully, next week is spring break and I have a lot planned in terms of advancing in my project. As of now I think the only thing I can really do is make a checklist of what I have done so far to help me make sure I stay on track. So here It is:

Layout for website ✅

Outline for documentary ✅

Permission to film in gym ✅

Scheduled photoshoot with 2 athletes ✅

Interviewed Emily ✅

To do list

Film B-roll

Edit

Begin Movie poster

Finish website

I have a lot to do next week, but im super excited to get everything done and see my project come together!!

Photography

Hello!!

So next week I will be photographing my friends' sister, Sophia, who is a boxer. I am super excited to have a chance to photograph her because I have been super inspired by a lot of the Nike pictures that I have found on their Instagram (you can see them in my other blog post!) I was really hoping that I would get a chance to take pictures of her in her boxing gym but unfortunately when I called to ask for permission they explained to me that they don't allow photography in their gym. But no worries I have a plan! I have noticed that a lot of the Nike pictures are taken inside concrete like buildings, so I thought that It might look cool to take some pictures inside her garage. As of now, it is just an idea so I will be brainstorming of other places or backdrops.

Here’s an example of the type of background I'm talking about! The only issue that I believe I will have is the lighting, but I LOVE photography and I am confident that the pictures will come out great!

Plans

So I have found two other athletes that are willing to be featured in my project! After doing some thinking I decided that I wanted to represent women of all ages, so I wanted my documentary to feature some who was younger that Emily and someone who was older. I after some asking around I found a 12 year old girl who does boxing, and a middle age woman who plays tennis! I still have not been able to set up exact dates with them but I know that they will both be free within the next week and during all of spring break so it works out perfectly! So my plan of the upcoming week will be to get lots of b-roll as well as begin my documentary poster. I also plan to begin to take pictures and edit them for my website.

I'm excited to see everything come together!

Obstacles

So filming went great yesterday! There's only one small issue when I went to download the footage to my laptop yesterday I came to find that the cord that connects my laptop and my computer was broken which means that I'm going to have to go out this week and find buy a new cord so I can download all the footage and edit it and make sure that it is ok. I would also like to begin to film the b-roll ASAP. It has been really hard this week to film the b-roll because Emily was only able to go to crossfit once this week because of a big school project and some test (the end of third quarter is rough). I feel better knowing the spring break is coming up so I will have that whole week to film b-roll and even have time to stay after the classes and film.

Filming

Hello everyone!

Today is the day to film my first athlete Emily! I am currently at my house setting everything up. When I first got here I was unsure of where I wanted to film and what I wanted the background to be so I decided to look at a few different mini docs that I found on youtube for some inspiration and guidance.  I noticed that there are many documentaries that interview the athletes inside the gym, but I knew this was not an option because it is very loud inside the gym so the audio would be very low in quality. I did see a few documentaries that made the background something simple inside the subjects house. Because of this I decided to film Emily inside her kitchen. I decided this was the best place for a few reasons. First off, there is lots of natural light inside the kitchen so the lighting inside the kitchen is perfect. Secondly, her kitchen is very white and simple, which would make for a very aesthetically pleasing background that would not distract the viewers.

Also for this part of the documentary I will be using my nikon DSLR in order to get that professional looking blur in the background. Im very excited to see how this comes out!

Options

Leading up to the day that I was going to meet with my friend Emily to interview her I felt very unsure about the direction in which my five-minute clip for my documentary was going. I knew what I wanted the focus of my documentary to be and the message that I wanted to convey through it but I didn't know which part of this giant idea I wanted to film. I was stuck between two ideas.

Option 1: I could create the first episode of this series called “Meet the Athletes” which would introduce all the athletes that would be featured in the documentary Empowered. The main focus of this episode would be getting to know the athletes. Additionally, this would be the only episode that would feature all four athletes.

Option 2: I could make an episode that features one specific athlete. This episode would go into depth about how they discovered the sport, the people that motivate them, and what aspects of the sport they like etc.

I think that this is something that I will decide after filming my first interview with Emily. Because of this, I will film the questions for both of the option and then decide afterward.

Questions

Hi everyone!

I am excited to say that I have scheduled an interview with my friend Emily on Thursday, which means my project is officially beginning! This means that I have a few days come up with a list of questions that I will ask her. I have decided that I am going to ask mainly open questions. I came to this decision because I want to encourage Emily to be able to expand on her ideas and have the freedom to give me meaningful answers using the her knowledge and feelings about the sport. I also feel that open questions allow for the documentary to flow much better and be much more personalized and honest.

Here are a few questions that I have come up with:

Tell me for how long you have been doing crossfit, and how you discovered the sport.

What did you know/ think about crossfit before you started?

What is your motivation to continue the sport?

What is your advice to other women who want to try Crossfit?

What aspects of the sport do you like most?

How has Crossfit impacted your life?

What has been one important moment in your fitness journey?

How do you think crossfit will impact you in the future?

Describe how you feel after your workouts.

What other women motivate you?

What was your life like before crossfit? Did you participate in other sports before?

What is the biggest challenge you've faced?

What are your goals for the future?

What lessons have you learned through the sport?

What is your favorite thing about crossfit?

I am very excited to meet up with her and see what she has to say!

Vision Board

Hi everyone!

To the left a picture of a vision board that I created, which is basically they plan that I have for the very beginning of my documentary. The first box is my intro. I plan to have the intro be about 5-10 seconds, and as I discussed in the past, it will be a small montage of clips of the athlete that will be in the series. After the into will be the title of my documentary which is “Empowered.” After that I will have an establishing shot of the crossfit gym, with the location at the bottom left. Following this, I would like to have a few clips of Emily setting up her equipment and getting ready for her workout. Lastly, I will have a mid shot of Emily as she introduces herself as well as the sport that she plays. I will continue to add to this as soon as I finish my interview with Emily. This week I will also begin to film some b-roll and start asking other Athletes if they would like to be part of my project. I am hoping to get a variety of ages so I will be looking for maybe someone a bit younger, like in middle school, and someone a bit older. I would like my documentary to be able to represent all women!

Website

Im excited to say that I have finished the layout for my website!
This is the home page. I added the header at the top which links the trailer for my documentary, an about page,  a link to all the places it will be screening, and a crew page.


The next section of the website is the review page.

 
The I added a meet the athletes page that has each athletes episode linked. For now I put temporary pictures that I found on google, but I will change it after I shoot and edit the pictures of my athletes.


And the last section is currently a credit page, but I would like to eventually change it to something else, but I am not quite sure what to do yet.
I decided to make the color theme pink and grey because I really liked the simplicity of it and I thought that it matched perfectly with the logo that I mentioned in my last post. To create this website I used the website Wix, which made this process very easy!
I can not wait to take all of my own pictures and to see my website come together!

Title!

Hello!!

Over the past few days, I have been trying to come up with a name for my documentary. I wanted a name that embraced the theme of my documentary. I finally decided on the name “Empowered.” After deciding on the title I began to create a few designs for the logo that would be featured at the very beginning of the documentary as well as on the website. I used the website Canva, which is one favorite resources to use.

These are the three designs that I have come up with so far. I used the pink women's symbol in each of the designs because I felt like it added to the design but to the meaning as well.

I think my favorite one is the third one because it is very clean and simple but at the same time very visually appealing. I might make a few small adjustments but as of now, the last one is the official logo for my documentary.

Feedback

Today in my media class my classmates and got together in groups to discuss our projects and receive feedback. I explained to them my idea of a documentary about Women Athletes and they gave me some really helpful Ideas and tips as well as answered some questions about my project that I was unsure about. The first thing that I asked them was whether they thought my five-minute excerpt should feature just one athlete and have each episode be about a different athlete, or if my episode should feature multiple athletes throughout one episode. One of my classmates suggested that I should make my documentary like the TLC television show Toddlers and Tiaras, in which each episode focuses on three different girls, such as this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfVC2ad1ybU

After going back and watching a few episodes of the show I think I have decided that I would like to have my documentary in this format.

One of my other classmates also reminded me that I need to make sure that I have a lot of b-roll. This means that I am going to have to start filming as much as I can as soon as possible.

I also looked up other documentary television shows on Netflix and came across a show called Cheer Squad. This show was formatted very similarly to Toddlers and Tiaras. I watched the first episode of season one that featured a very short 20-second intro which was a montage of clips of different cheer teams and then the title of the TV show. This is something that I would like to do in my documentary, since I will be doing the first episode, in order to introduce the topic and show that I will be featuring athletes.

I will also begin to brainstorm for a name for my documentary! I’m so excited!

Website

I have began to look at websites from other documentaries to try to get ideas about how to do mine. I came across the website for the film Icarus (https://www.icarus.film) which is a Netflix original series. I absolutely loved the way the website was laid out. The top of the page features a tab that has: a link to the trailer, Information about the film, reviews, features (which has all the articles and news channels it has be talked about on) and Speaking Engagements. 

Overall the website is very clean and simplistic, which makes it easy to navigate I also really liked the format of the website, which is one where you scroll down. I also really liked that they linked their social media pages and offered a contact page at the very bottom.  

I am also going to begin look at websites which allow me to create a free website. In the past I have used Wix, but I had many issues with it. It is very slow when loading and sometimes doesn't save all your work. I really liked the websites that you can design with Wix, because they have so many options to choose from that really allow you to customize the website that you are creating, but it also has many flaws. So I will begin to play around with some other wesites just to see If I like them.

New Ideas

Hi everyone!

Today I was scrolling through my Instagram feed when I came across a new Nike commercial about female athletes who were constantly told that they were crazy for doing the sports/exercise that they loved. This small video had the exact theme that I want to portray in my documentary, women feeling empowered through sports. This commercial has given me the idea to create a montage of small clips like this as the introduction to my whole documentary series, but instead of using clips of famous athletes like Nike did, I will be using my own clips of the athletes that will be featured in my series. This means that the documentary I am creating will be the first episode of the series and I will be making an excerpt of the first five minutes.

Here's the link to the Nike Ad! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whpJ19RJ4JY
I also decided to go to the Nike women's Instagram feed. I was extremely inspired by some of the pictures of the athletes that they had on their feed.

These are the type of pictures that I would like to feature on my website for each athlete that will be in my documentary.