Documentary Critical Reflection

Ice Breaker

Documentary Critical Reflection

My documentary, Ice Breaker, was produced to convey the message of the inclusion of women in the male dominated sport, ice hockey.

My group members, Ana, Eugenia, and I had not conducted much research for this specific project, however, we already had research from our previous projects: our podcast and my portfolio project from last school year. For our podcast, we focused on the under representation of women in all sports and my portfolio project was specifically on hockey. Despite already knowing the females are underrepresented in hockey, the research confirmed this with numbers, percentages, and other first-hand accounts. We did not use this directly in our documentary because we wanted it to be more engaging and entertaining while using information from our interviews, instead of history of women in the sport. We were able to implement our research simply by producing this documentary and reinforcing what we found and learned in our research. For example, by including that there are only two girls on an all-boys team, as well as our interviews highlighting that sometimes girls are impacted by not being represented as much as boys, shows this. After hearing from my peers, they enjoyed how we showed the friendships created on the team and would have liked to see more of the off-ice bonding.

Ice Breaker heavily relies on the representation of social groups and issues surrounding it. As previously mentioned, we focused on the underrepresentation of women in sports, which not only deals with a specific social group, but the issue from a worldview that women are underrepresented in other areas, too. I think that this documentary works towards not only enforcing the participation of women in sports, but also the idea that women can fit into any male-dominated area of life. For example, as I had included in part of my interview, I have been playing since I was six years old, and when I started to play there was no other girls on my team, or the whole league. I think that by highlighting the game more people will be drawn in as they see the entertainment of the sport, and by noticing that girls can play, too, all will be wanting to skate. Within our documentary, I enjoyed how we showed me tying my hair into a ponytail and that being a distinguishing factor showing that I am a girl playing amongst the boys. As much as the b-roll was important, I think that our interviews had an impact on the message of the documentary, especially with how highly everyone had been talking about girls in the sport. I liked how each talked about how the females on the team are an important part and even create a higher level of sportsmanship and connectivity between the team. 

The entertainment of hockey is a simple way for our audience to engage in our documentary. The fast-paced game with something always happening makes the sport that just more interesting. I feel like because of this aspect, it is hard for the audience to gear their focus somewhere else. From our critiques, our peers agreed and despite the topic being serious, it was still a fun watch. When editing the project, I really wanted to incorporate as much of the high intensity game as possible. However, based on critiques, I could have created a few gaps in between the b-roll and interviews to slow down the production and it make it easier to watch. We had a lot of b-roll of the game itself, which I wanted to include a lot of. Although I did not plan to include voiceover at all throughout the documentary, we did not have enough from our interviewees that would match with what we wanted to include, however, in the places that we used a voiceover the visuals were for the most part continuing to engage the audience. We received critiques that the voiceover probably would not have been needed because the visuals told enough of a story.  A big part of the documentary that I did not enjoy was the audio being off for some of the clips. This was an issue that I tried my best to fix, but ultimately did not have the time to do so. I think that this was definitely not engaging for the audience and from critiques, my peers agreed that this was an issue, and hope to fix that issue moving forward.

   

Overall, I think that our project was visually pleasing and established that if females desire to play hockey, they most definitely should.

Pt. 2

 

Ice Breaker

Production Process: Production & Editing

The production of this film was very entertaining, and I think fun for all of us! My group members came to my hockey game a little early and we started off with my interview, then my teammates, coach, and ended with my mom on that day. We were able to very efficiently get these done professionally, while still joking around. 

After the interviews, we started to accumulate b-roll, which we had A LOT of. My group members just followed my teammates and I around before the game to get as much as they possibly could to fit into our documentary. Luckily, some of this matched with part of the interviews and worked well.

  

We filmed part of the process of getting dressed for the game and ended up using this for more of a story telling affect at the end of documentary. I personally think that this worked well and from the critiques, others did too, however, I do think that this footage would have had a good effect at the beginning of the documentary as well. I am ok with this working out fine because I had to do this because of the lack of interview footage to end a documentary...

Anyway, I give major props to my group members for how well they were able to film the game itself. It is such a fast-paced game and not easy to always follow, so very impressive on their part. This had a positive impact on the film and really added to the overall production and entertainment of it.

We had a game the day prior, which my group members also came to for a little bit more footage, which worked well to incorporate more than one game in the documentary. They left early and I filmed a short interview of my other female teammate after the game. With this, I wish I could have gotten more responses; however, she is quite shy in front of the camera.

I opted to edit the documentary, as I was very grateful my group members came to my game. However, I soon regretted this because it ended up being a lot more work than anticipated. This took me hours and hours over a multiple day period. I was so consumed in editing this and really wanted it to be good. I took pride in my work when I was done because of how much work I put into it. I incorporated some humor while still maintaining the serious topic, and think it was entertaining and would not bore an audience.

Of course, there is bound to be some issue, which in this case was the sound. I was so pissed when I finished downloading the video when the audio was horrific. Although I had been editing for days prior, I still finished within the hour it was due. So, this audio issue only had a limited time to be attempted to be fixed. I went back and tried to lower the volume to make it less ear piercing, but unfortunately, I was not able to fix the problem. When I downloaded it a second time, the issue was not fixed, but I had no more time to try again. I had settled for this issue and hope the content itself makes up for it.

I am glad after hearing critiques that other people enjoyed what I had made, despite my lack of editing skills and experience! :)

New Blog and Production Process

Ice Breaker

Production Process: Research & Planning

The blog is back!

When my group sat down to brainstorm ideas for our documentary project, we had no idea what to do. Ana Sofia suggested doing it on fashion, which as I was sitting there in my sweatpants and sweatshirt replied with "I am not too fashionable." Although I knew that the documentary did not necessarily have to interest me, I still wanted to have somewhat of a connection to it, as I also turned down the marching band idea. It was then doing on girls playing hockey was brough up, suggesting this documentary being on me. I was a fan of the idea just did not want to seem like a narcists by making this project all about me. Despite this, I agreed on this idea. It would be fun, engaging, exciting, and not typical topic.

We had done a previous project on a similar project: A podcast on women in sports. We conducted a lot of research for this, so used the case study for outside information. Lucky for us, I was a first-hand source of information for our documentary.

We decided that Eugenia and Ana Sofia would come to my next game to film interviews and b-roll. We brainstormed some people to interview and conducted some questions to ask each subject. 

From this point on, it was time for production!