The documentary series “BECOMING:” features the story of a different athlete in each episode. The first episode of the series, “BECOMING: Josh Chester” shares the entirety of Josh’s baseball career from his wiffle ball days to playing college ball. However, the extract from the episode focuses on the later parts of his career, ultimately ending with an injury. Throughout the doc extract and the Instagram page, Josh represents the social group of injured athletes. Although one may hear about an injured athlete every now and then in the media, their media presence pretty much dies after the injury, unless they make some kind of a comeback.
Josh had a story that differed from the rest, and that’s what caught my interest. When presented with the choice of academics or athletics, Josh never settled for only one. This was proven in his rejection of the draft offered by the Minnesota Twins, shown in the docuseries extract. Instead he chose to play baseball in college where he excelled in both academics and athletics, never letting the opportunity of receiving a college education go. Because of this, he had a backup plan to lean on after the injury, a major in Accounting that got him to the job he’s at today. From the start, this was an issue I wanted to address. There are athletes left with little to show for after a career ending injury, unless they are a professional athlete that made their money. The choices Josh made allowed him to still succeed, despite the injury. Although he mostly represents an injured athlete in these two products, there is more to him than just a career cut short, and this part of him is seen in the magazine article.
When discussing how I came up with the idea in the article, Josh was brought up because of the joke he made that funnily enough inspired me to make the docuseries on him and other athletes. The magazine revealed that although his baseball career was over, he was still proud of what he got from baseball, which is also touched upon towards the end of the extract as he begins to list the best things he obtained from playing the sport, representing a proud athlete.
This sense of pride was a major component when it came to branding. Using a brand identity prism, I began to put together what made up the brand of the “BECOMING: Josh Chester” doc extract. The target audience, males ranging from 15-55 years old of mid to high socioeconomic status with an interest in sports, saw themselves with the potential to become or further succeed as an athlete. The final parts of the extract in which Josh describes the lifelong friends he made from playing baseball serves as a reflection of the values of the brand: sportsmanship and building bonds between teammates. Further, the culture of the brand is demonstrated most through the interview element in which Josh describes the rewards of being a dedicated baseball player, like winning championships. This creates the sense of hard work leading to meeting one’s goals on the field, also known as the culture of the brand.
There was also repetition of the same three or four colors that I noticed throughout the footage, which created a physique for the brand as I began to use these colors: blue, green, white and black, for all the products. Although there is more variation of colors in the extract, both the Instagram page remain consistent with these colors as well as font choice. The font isn’t exactly the same for the Instagram and magazine article, but they are both the same style, bold, sans-serif and simple. Lastly, the title serves as a major component of the brand as the word “becoming” describes the process of coming to be, the purpose of the docuseries; to hear the athlete’s perspective of how they came to be who they are today.
The social media platform, Instagram is the product that engages most with the audience because of multiple posts that urge for viewer feedback. To exemplify this, there’s a post published with a blurred image of an athlete captioned, “The first athlete featured in the “BECOMING:” docuseries! Can you guess who it might be?” Not only does this post garner excitement and anticipation, but it also creates interaction with the audience. The Instagram hashtags are put to use on every post to catch the attention of the primary audience. Hashtags such as “#sports, #sportsdocumentary, #baseballplayer, #baseballlife, #athlete” with hundreds of thousands of viewers on each hashtag are included for users to find content from the page. Often when Instagram users attempt to find content that interests them, they use hashtags to search, eventually encountering pages like mine. Another thing people often like to do is see how a film they like was made, and this is how the magazine article works with the audience, by presenting the viewer with an athlete they have heard of and may even admire and sharing more of their lives with them. The doc extract also engages the audience, but in a minor way which is sharing an experience they can relate to. Whether it be because they are an athlete, student athlete, a fan of sports, or even someone who has sustained a sports related injury, there is something that each audience member can resonate with.
This was something I wanted to ensure when creating the products, but in order to do so I had to get to know the audience and the genre itself. The sports documentary sub-genre has common characteristics such as use of interviews, archives, re-enactments, voiceover narration, handheld cameras, intercutting/parallel editing and selective editing. Most of these genre conventions make up my doc extract but there were some I chose to challenge, like the re-enactments. Part of my research process was watching sports documentaries, but I never liked how the re-enactments or dramatizations took away from a serious situation. This was something I wanted to avoid, especially when discussing an injury, so I purposely chose to leave out any re-enactment. However, this didn’t work to the advantage of the extract as it felt like it was missing something at times in which the talking head interviews got boring. I learned that the re-enactments were almost necessary to keep the eye entertained. Lighting was another issue I encountered, which I also didn’t realize until I began to edit the footage. The lights were a bit dim, and they weren’t placed in the correct spots to illuminate the interview, but I did learn a quick fix to this problem would be to do a couple tests before filming and lighting proves to be an issue, change the setting, or bring in more light.
Looking back, the process of creating these products taught me something major: how to tell someone’s story.
The A Level Portfolio Project
Here it is! An extract from "BECOMING: JOSH CHESTER", the first episode of the "BECOMING:" docu-series. I had an amazing time creating this piece, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
The extract: "BECOMING: JOSH CHESTER"
Along with the extract, I'm uploading a link to the Instagram page as well as the magazine article. I spent a lot of time working hard on these two minor components in order to best promote my docu-series extract.
The Instagram page gives a bit of everything from behind-the-scenes footage to famous baseball player quotes and sneak peeks at the doc. It was my main platform to reach my target audience and promote the extract to them, and I hope I did just that. Click here to check it out! @becoming_docuseries
Lastly, I wrote the magazine article to focus on the behind-the-scenes aspect of creating the doc extract and I also included a section on how I came up with the idea. My hope was for this component to generate excitement as well as getting an inside look, which many sports documentaries may not offer.
To view the magazine article.
Overall, I'm sad to think this may be my last project for this class but I'm happy it ended with a project like this in which I learned so much, including how much I enjoy the documentary genre. Tomorrow I will be publishing my Creative Critical Reflection on the process and everything that went into it. Thank you for tuning in.
Looking Back
Looking back, this has been a great experience, like I knew it would be. I truly enjoy bringing my ideas to life in the form of film and even print media. I remained excited throughout the entirety of this project because I constantly got to try new things. In the past, I've had the opportunity to interview children, but I've never had a serious interview with an adult. I've already shared how nerve-wracking this experience was, but nevertheless I learned so much and found excitement in being able to do this for my documentary. An obstacle I encountered during the interview process was definitely the lighting and a small error in the way the interviewee looked. Since I didn't have a ring light, I had to make do with a lamp and simply point it in the direction of the interviewee, but this caused a shadow behind the interviewee that I didn't realize was so visible in the footage. Although this isn't a major problem, I think a change in setting or better planning would have resolved this issue. Another problem I ran into that I didn't notice until I began viewing the footage form my laptop was that the direction Josh was looking at in the interviews was to the right rather than to the left. Since I placed him in the right third of the screen I believe it would've been better for him to look to the left of me. I did ask him beforehand to look in a certain direction because I didn't want him staring at the camera, but this was an error on my end. I've thought about this frequently, but I think the only way to resolve an issue like this would've been to view the footage before continuing the interviews. Even though we did one test, it wasn't long enough for me to realize the little problem. This may be something only I notice, but I did learn from it.
Another new major thing I got to try was creating the magazine article. I've mentioned before, I had no idea what I would do for this but after I meeting with my teacher, I began thinking of a bunch of different concepts I could use in the article. It was also a much shorter process than what I thought. I believe I spent the most time figuring out the layout of the article rather than writing it. It was an aspect of this project that I definitely didn't think I'd enjoy, but to my surprise, I did.
Lastly, there's the social media page, the final component of this project that I worked on. I ran into one of the biggest obstacles here. After mentioning the idea of using sports highlights to my Media Studies teacher, she informed me that I wouldn't be able to publish this content because it wasn't mine. Although my goal was to engage the target audience, and this would be a great way to do so, I simply couldn't. Instead I'd have to focus on promoting my content, the doc through different means. I began thinking of what other content I could publish, and this is where the backups came in. I started to put everything together and figure out a good order in which to post it. I learned from a marketing class that I when advertising and trying to build interest I should always use tactics that catch the attention of the viewer and maintains it. This my main objective that I hoped to achieve. I still have some posts left to make.
Other than this, everything went smoothly and although I learned plenty of things, I wanted to share a few of the major problems I encountered and how I went about solving them or how I would resolve these issues in future projects.
I do have a few minor components to complete, however everything will be done by tomorrow and posted! I can't wait! Stay tuned for the CCR as well in which I further reflect on and analyze the creation of this project and what went into it, including my research, the branding, and representation.
Creating the Account
Last blog post I shared the list of ideas I had and I'm back to tell you which topics I've chosen to focus on in the Insta posts:
Secondly, there's promotional post that simply garner excitement. Such as, "Can you guess which athlete's will be featured in this series, it could be one of your favorite! Stay tuned for more." Then day by day I'd reveal a new athlete.
Lastly, I would create posts that consist of those short 10-30 second sports highlight videos. These always end up on what is called the "Explore Page" on Instagram that will be customized towards your likings. It's an easy way to reach your target audience without doing much but posting something they'd be interested in watching. The videos would be a great way to hook them and then bring them onto the documentary's account.
All three methods are great ways to reach the target audience through this platform to not only promote the film, but to get them to watch it.
I know I've only explained them, but the visuals should come soon as I build upon the account I've created. I need a cover for the profile picture and then I can begin posting!
Discussing Social Media
To create the Instagram page, I had to consider the type of content I wanted to post that would fit the target audience. During a group meeting, a classmate shared that the way he went about this was to create a couple different types of posts that ultimately went with the purpose of the documentary. Although our documentaries had very different focuses, we could still relate in this aspect that we both had the same goal, to promote our doc in an engaging manner fully grasping the attention of the target audience.
In fact, my classmate fit exactly into my target as he is a male within the age range with an interest in sports. When I brought up my uncertainty on the social media platform I'd use, he immediately responded with "Instagram!" I mentioned I'd been stuck between Facebook and Instagram because my target audience also consists of older men, but it was true; Instagram was the better option, especially if I was trying to attract the younger audience as well.
Within the group meeting, some ideas were proposed that I typed up:
Although they are all good ideas, I must choose what I consider to best fit for the target audience. I will soon be creating the Instagram page and will share then what I've decided upon.
A Title for the Docuseries
Hi blog! Let me share that honestly, I was having trouble coming up with a title for the series. As I've mentioned in a recent blog post, I wanted to create a solid list of ideas and then present them to classmates as a poll for them to vote on their favorites. This would be a great way to get feedback form my peers, but I felt as if all the ideas I had come up with were not good enough. I started talking with my mom who always helps me out when I get stuck on problems like this. She started giving me some ideas and although some were cheesy she did mention one that stood out, but before I announce it I'd like to tell about what I what wanted for the title.
Since the start I wanted a name that could be used for all the episodes. I don't know if there is a term for this but to exemplify the concept I'll use the example of a nature docuseries which could be titled Exploring Nature and each episode is about a different animal. So, episode 1 could be Exploring Nature: The Hummingbird while episode 2 would be Exploring Nature: The Ladybug. I wanted to apply this same idea to the docuseries, coming up with a title for the entire series followed by the name of the athlete the episode focuses on.
Some ideas I had were:
- An Athlete's Dream
- Playing Ball
- A Ball Player's Pursuit
However none of these seemed like the right fit, but the idea my mom brought up was perfect. Here we go, the big announcement. The title of the episode for the extract I'm creating is:
Becoming: Josh Chester
Not only does this title "Becoming:" work for the one episode, but it would work for all of them as it tells the story of the athlete's career and how they created an identity for themselves through a sport. Not only would it share about their careers, but what led them to follow through on playing a sport and ultimately becoming who they are today. I'm so content with this idea, and now I'm ready to get started on the other parts of the projects I've held off on because I didn't have the title ready.
An Editing Update
I'm about halfway done editing now. Not exactly where I thought I'd be but everything is coming together nicely. To be honest, I had a bit of trouble deciding upon how I wanted to structure the extract so I began by looking at all my footage. I imported the best footage I had and all the interview questions. From here I began adding clips into the timeline, following my typical editing process. I began to piece the beginning together, starting with an entrance in Josh's childhood room, full of baseball memories.
Here's a look at the clip. I liked how this point of view entrance started the doc extract, almost setting the stage for the piece. It was different from what I originally imagined, but it worked very well. The primary concern I have about this is that the footage is a bit shaky, but it may be an easy fix if I stabilize it in the editing process.
I plan to continue editing this week finishing it as soon as possible. My next task is the creation of the social media page, but I've held off on this because I can't come up with a good title for the documentary. Of course I've had a couple ideas, but they've been centered around the baseball aspect rather than the series as a whole. For the series I was thinking of something like "An Athlete's Pursuit", something along those lines in which I highlight on athlete and chasing a dream. I may hold a survey or maybe a poll to gather votes on what my peers believe would be a better title out of the options I have so far.
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