Touchdown!!!!!

I can't believe I can finally write this, but this project is finally over! Don't get me wrong, please; as much as I love communications, media, and journalism, this project has felt way longer than nine weeks. I have always loved watching the behind-the-scenes of movies and series more than actually watching the final products. I always thought that was only a matter of taste; I never thought it would lead to what it did. I have now completed four years of studying television production in high school and two years of AICE Media Studies, and I am now committed to college for a journalism major. Working on this project was exhausting, but most of all it was very special!

As I mentioned in my interview for the documentary, I have been working as the media manager and public relations for the Cypress Bay football team since my sophomore year. Ever since the fall, Friday nights have been in the football fields, doing what I love the most: photographing and telling stories. It was with the football team I learned how to photograph. As the years passed by, we would spend more and more time integrating with each other. Creating a true family!

I have been through numerous downs with this project, moments that I have briefly shared in this blog and moments I have decided to keep to myself. As a senior in high school, I am going through many rapid, MAJOR changes in my life, like moving away and choosing where to go; along with the changes, I also had to keep up with the closing of this chapter in my life (focusing in school and studying for my upcoming AICE exams). Causing a problematic situation in my schedule, making it difficult to take on with this project. On the other hand, this project also fulfilled me with major "UPS"; nothing pays the gratitude of seeing emotional reactions from those watching a piece you made. Over the weekend, as I showed my boyfriend (a football player) the final product of the documentary's excerpt, he told me he had goosebumps and that he felt relatable to the piece.

How do your products represent social groups or issues?
"The Sweat that Runs Through Our Veins" represents all the people that are involved with sports teams, from athletes to coaches and any kind of "helpers"/"workers (photographers, filmmakers, athletic trainers...). It represents them and their will to explain why the passion grows on them; it explains that family includes but is not limited to the blood that runs in our veins. Family can be constructed with CULTURE.
The documentary represents this CULTURE, the cherished feeling created between those who participate and work with sports teams.

How do your products engage with the audience?
This documentary engages with the audience by showing the intimacy of the "behind the scenes" of the Cypress Bay Football team and that it is not seen. Like any documentary, its purpose is to show a piece of reality. "The Sweat that Runs Through Our Veins" breaks the fourth wall within the first scene/interview. I chose to do it this way so the audience feels like it is talking to them personally. This happens with a simple change from the other interviews:
framed the director in the center of the shoot instead of the thirdsThis simple change from the other interviews develops a different way of audience engagement. Like the director is telling YOU, the audience, the story.

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?
The social media page for the documentary is what develops the greatest sense of "branding" for this project. Social media develops a personality, culture, physique, self-image, relationship, and reflection for the brand. It does so by constantly repeating colors, fonts, and writing style. The same colors and fonts are used in the documentary to annex both "pieces" together and make it all ONE "brand."
Similar to the "brand project" we did in the beginning of the school year (where we made ourselves into brands using the prism), the consistency creates the 'essence' of the brand. Like a person... The colors and fonts help develop the physique; the culture is developed (family).

How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?
As a TV production student, I am used to having to work on very large projects with very limited and harsh time frames, which trains me to work with barely any pre-production. Which is something Mrs. Stoklosa HATES ABOUT ALL OF US TV KIDS.
With the beginning of this project, I made a promise to myself I would not allow this to happen; I would research and focus a lot of my time on research, and so I did. I used references from documentaries we studied in class and outside of class. I used notes from our class lectures and spent HOURS and HOURS trying to find documentaries that had social media accounts hahahaah. In the end, all the research I did turned out to be very helpful and made my whole process easier. I spent less time filming because I didn't need to overshoot because I knew what I wanted and needed. I spent VERY VERY VERY little time editing.
In terms of challenging conventions, "The Sweat that Runs Through Our Veins" does not challenge conventions. The documentary follows after much research of numerous documentaries, meaning that, like most documentary productions, it follows exactly what is expected from the genre.