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!