SW9

=Ambition of An Athlete=

Please watch in 720p + Full screen with headphones on to get the full experience! media type="youtube" key="-N6b82YQOdM" height="480" width="853" This piece was created mostly with my Nikon D5000, my GoPro Hero HD 2 and recorded audio with my iPod. This piece was inspired by Philip Bloom's "Portrait of a Boxer" My aim was to give a serious suspenseful story with a touch of happiness of Dean Gaber's passion for soccer, and create a very short documentary about his sport. A huge inspiration was Philip Bloom. I was so amazed by his video "Portrait of a Boxer" I had to try and make a short documentary and use his technique. Philip Bloom creates both short and long documentaries. I don't like making long documentaries though, so I decided to make one that is short, sweet, and would leave the viewer thinking about it in the end. I used my Nikon D5000 for most of the shoot, and my GoPro camera to achieve a point of view effect to bring the audience in. I used Adobe After Effects to edit the video in post production. I edited a song together and added sound effects in a program called Audacity. To finish the video off I put piano chords with the key of E in certain shots and aligned it in Adobe After Effects not Audacity since I wanted to match it perfectly with the shot. I took major amounts of criticism from a lot of people. After I finished the video, I shared it to Amira and her family. There were several things that didn't work about it. Mainly because I was lazy when editing and wanted to finish fast, I made a lot of mistakes. Everyone listed what they thought was wrong with the video, and I wrote that down and made notes. Examples would be, his close up face shot went on for too long that it made the audience feel a bit uncomfortable, the shot at the end with slow motion was not long enough and made the audience feel that they were left with an incomplete feeling, and that particular shot was not aligned, and was titled so it felt awkward to the audience. So I went back to my computer and exported 4 edits/different versions of the video, and showed them most of the videos, I took their votes and picked the video myself according to their votes. The weakest part of this video is hard to emphasize here. However, I think what would've made the video stronger is to include slow motion shots from Dean Gaber's soccer matches. A weak section that would be clear to a professional is that Deans voice was recorded later on with my iPod in a room since it was too windy to record. Something that I forgot to do when recording his voice later on is asking Dean to yell a little bit to make his voice a little bit more real and outside since outside you actually talk a lot louder than you do inside a room. However, that would've added reverb to the recording. A solution to that would be to record it in a studio, but none of us knew where we could find on in New Jersey. I think the fact that I had a story to shoot, in addition to a very beautiful place, helped me a lot with this video. Every one of the shots were all actually disconnected. At the end, you see Dean running to kick the ball. However, we did not shoot all those shots at the same time, we shot them at different times (every 30 mins or so) and then I was able to put that together in post, and I felt like I did a good job on convincing people the ending was all connected. I could develop this video further into a series of short documentaries and maybe connect them all together in one compilation video that would also work as another story.
 * Description: **
 * Analysis: **
 * What were the artistic and/or cultural influences for this project? Who/what influenced either the composition and/or the style. **
 * What materials/media/processes did you use and or experiment with, and how? **
 * How do you think you have responded to advice and criticism during this project (and during the term), both from fellow students and the teacher. Did you actively seek advice? If so, was it useful? **
 * Clearly explain the weaknesses/areas for improvement - **
 * Clearly explain the strengths of the piece – **
 * What could you take through to the next project and develop further? This could be anything, from a technique to an idea, not necessarily just the theme. **