A level project

Thank you and enjoy!

Reaching the Bar - Final Project

Instagram

Critical Reflection for A level project

    My group and I created a short film on the mental impact of sports. We used gymnastics to convey this message, as people only see the final product of hard work, but the sport creates emotional deprivation through comparisons to skill, talent, and body image. 

    Our group started off with a few different ideas for our short film, and finally narrowed it down to what we have produced. One of my group members does gymnasts, which I thought would be a perfect fit for the story that we decided on. We really wanted to focus on the message behind the story, and wanted to find ways that would emphasize this. Our group conducted research before beginning our project, looking at ways that we could convey mood not only through our actors, but also editing choices. We brainstormed an idea to use a change of filter throughout our short film, which shows the gradual loss of self-esteem of our main character as she ages. Filming sports is a difficult task, as there is constant movement and maybe it is hard to film certain aspects because of interference with the athlete. We were able to grab techniques, shots, and angles from gymnastics films including Stick It (2006), Full Out (2015), and The Gabby Douglas Story (2014). For example, we were able to get an idea of this low angle shot from Full Out (2015), and create a similar low angle shot, but from the other side. 

Full Out (2015)

Reaching the Bar (2023)

The genre of our film is categorized as a sports drama, with conventions that include gymnastics being integral to the plot, the action rising as the character draws comparison to others and causes a decrease in self-esteem, and the general feeling of passion for the sport that evokes the effort still continuously given by the character.

Target audience is an important factor in filmmaking. Considering that Reaching the Bar is about sports, athletes of all ages could be interested, however, this film may be more geared towards teenagers. This specifically because that is the age that people start to deal with those stresses from something that used to be so fun. When you become older in sports, it starts to become more of a competition and less of a fun activity. I think that a lot of teenage athletes would be able to relate to this and hope that what they get from it is that they are not alone in this struggle by many. As our main character, Briana, is a female gymnast, female gymnast is going to be expected to be a main component of our target audience. Gymnastics is a very complex and different sport from others. It is competitive and very much an individual sport, despite having a "team." Each person is set against each other, and this can create a lot of self-deprivation when one person is not as "up to par" with someone else. Despite what we believe our target audience to be, we also want to extend to others, like adults. I would want this film for adults to view so that they can get an understanding of what their kids, or just kids in general, may feel. Some parents may not realize the pressure that their children feel or may not be able to properly communicate. I hope that our short film will be able to present those emotions properly.

We utilized Instagram as an advertisement tool and to interact with our audience. We continuously posted, including stories, reels, pictures, behind the scenes, cast fun facts, and much more!

    On our postcard, we wanted to visual the message of Reaching the Bar, which we included the action of gymnastics, and then the internal struggle on the back. We used brighter colors, like blue and red, on the front to capture this positivity, and then the back is in a shadow to display a more somber tone.

Front

Back

The brand of our production can be interpreted in a few different ways. What we are trying to show with our film is that overtime sports can become more of a pressure to succeed than a fun activity. We want to spread the message that it is okay to give up a sport you truly love and have been doing for so long, if it is causing mental distortion. We also want to show that there is more to sports than just competition. We want our younger audience to know that sports are intended to be fun, and the enjoyment should come first. We display this message as the character grows older and slowly becomes more down on herself. I think that we could showcase the benefits of letting go of the sport if after the character quits, she is seen much happier. 

Our project focuses on social issues that society currently seems to struggle a lot with. We can make the connection to mental health and lack of self-esteem with our film. People have become a lot more open with sharing their emotions, and we think that this is important so that people know they are not alone in feeling certain ways. Our main character is seen keeping to herself about her feelings, which slowly start to creep up on her overall mindset. A lot of athletes struggle with being down on themselves because they compare their skill to others. This pressure to be the best can really start to impact mental health and decrease the fun from sports. Throughout the film, there is constant jealousy and envy between the gymnasts, however, changing this with positivity and lifting one another up can have a bigger impact than you think. The social issues shown in our film are present in many athletes and their sports, and we want to show that this is not out of the ordinary, but also that this is not the intended purpose of sports. 

We hope that our project can have an impact on all who watch it and enjoy our work while doing so! 

My final thoughts...

This will be my last blog post on our progress and my thoughts... the rest will just be the final products and my CR! So let me give you some updates!

Our project is just about done! We just have to add some finishing touches like the filters and make sure it all flows nicely. For the editing, like I had said previously, we kind of split it up amongst our group. Eugenia started to edit, but had some issues, so I edited part of it, and Ana edited another piece and was the one to put everything together. She uses Adobe and it runs smoothly on her computer, unlike the editing software that I use. Mine is super glitchy and unless I render the video, I can't watch it as a none glitched video LOL.

Yesterday in class we used our time very well. We went over what we had edited and gave our input on what was good and what could have been better. It is always nice to get another set of eyes, especially two. This was super helpful for me, as I was able to make some changes to what I edited and make it better. I finished editing my part last night and sent it off to Ana to finish the whole video. I am really excited to see how it turns out once everything is done. I was a little skeptical with my part and did not really like how it turned out. I wanted to try and slow it down by adding some spaces in between some of the scenes, but it still looked a little fast. I am hoping that once all the other parts are added and it is actually 5 minutes, not 1 minute, it will look better. 

The rest of our project, like social media and postcard, in my opinion, look really nice and I am happy with how they look. Our video has been a main focus, so again, I really hope it turns out to our expectations. Big thanks to Eugenia and her gymnastics friends for being in our project and taking time to do so! 

Another thanks for following along on our project!

EDITING

The final part (well sort of)! We have officially just have to edit! I had mentioned before that we had just thrown together all of our videos to see if we needed more, and it looked like we were set. Eugenia had started to edit the first part and got like a minute in. She decided to try out Adobe because the 'ClipChamp' that I had also mentioned earlier, was not advanced enough. She was having some issues with Adobe premiere, and it stopped working on her computer, uh oh. She asked me if I can try to edit some of it, so of course I said I could. I am currently working on the last part of the film. 

Obviously, something has to go wrong because it always does. We put all of our videos into OneDrive, but my OneDrive is not loading!!!👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 Luckily, I was able to start on this part of editing, but now I cannot access more of the videos to edit the rest. I wanted to go over in class the order in which we would be putting the dialogue and other footage that we have anyway, so hopefully my computer can stop being weird by tomorrow. 

This is the last week that we have to finish our project, and we still have to do our individual CR. I think that this will be easy for me, as I have been consistent with my blogging. I will use my past blogs and memory from the start of the project to write this. We are kind of crammed for time and have to finish this before Thursday! I really only have Monday and Tuesday to work because Wednesday is BUSY!

Next time I check in will pretty much be when we are done editing!

Insta Insta Insta

Just wanted to give an update on our Instagram as of right now. We have added more to our page, like more posts, stories, and made highlights.

We have 12 posts right now! What I really like about the Instagram feed, which is something I wanted to make sure of, is the consistency and the way it all matches. I think that we did a great job posting consistently, but also nothing stands out and ruins the feed. 

We also started to post on our story and turn these into highlights. This is a great way for people to access our old story posts and stay informed if they missed something. Here are some of the stories that our under our highlights.

I think that being interactive with our audience is important, and social media is a great way to utilize that. Using Instagram stories, we are able to create polls and questions to interact with our followers. I also think that it is important for our stories to be professional and not lack in comparison to our posts. I think we did a great job with that, as we also made designs and creative posts for our story.

We are still working on editing, which should be done in the next few days!

What's next

We really wanted to utilize our time in class today and discuss editing. Editing is basically the final thing for us to do, besides my CR. 

So today in class we went through our footage and put it in the right order. We wanted to get an idea of how much footage we have and the timing. We just put them into the video editor that my computer comes with. It is called 'ClipChamp.' I have never used it and do not really know how to navigate it, but I just used it for an outline.

After putting what we have all together, it looks like the length of our video will be right where it is supposed to be. So now, all that's left is edit the clips and make it the best that it can be!

Feedback from other groups

After hearing feedback from the other girls in my group and what they were suggested in their group meetings, we are able to make some changes and improvements.

The main change is to our postcard. Like I had mentioned before, we were trying to decide which design we wanted to use, mine or Eugenia. She got great feedback from her group on this. So here is what we were working with.

Eugenia's group said that this bottom one gives like horror vibes, which I see. I think that the issue could be fixed by changing the colors to blue like the top one. So, we combined the two and got this.

We may tweak this, but I really like the way it looks!