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St Albans City FC Content Release Form Signed

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St Albans City FC Content Release Form Signed

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This reflective diary will look back and reflect my experience with creating a documentary from scratch. Before starting this documentary, I was very nervous about making a documentary as it was completely new to me. This whole experience has been very tough but exciting as I was learning something new. Starting from where I had to think of an idea, for me this was one of the hardest parts to do as I find it very hard to come up with ideas out of the blue. Once I thought of an idea I then had to try and gain access to my subjects. I have a work placement at St Albans City Football Club so I thought it would be a good documentary to make around their academy and to do so I spoke with the media manager who introduced me to the director of football, Dean Austin. I sat down with Dean and spoke about what I wanted to do and he said that I could have all the access I need, he then gave me the contact details of the youth team managers and I got in contact with them and we went back and fourth speaking about what I want to create and managed to get them on board.

Once I started filming, I didn’t really find that part hard as I’m used to using cameras at work however what I found hard was thinking about what I needed to film, rather than filming anything I focussed on what would make a great story and started filming from there. Following on I started filming their training sessions and how the coaches prepare their players for big matches and the game that is included in my documentary is an important cup game which they won 8-0. The coaches are from the local area which shows they care about the club and the surrounds of the city.

Coming to the editing process and this is the hardest thing for me to do as I don’t have much experience with editing. I only recently started to use adobe premiere pro. Once I started piecing my documentary together it became clear what I wanted to do with it. I’ve done my best and hoping for a good grade for my first attempt at making a documentary.

To help me reflect I’ve used Kolb’s reflective theory. (Simply Psychology, 2017) starting off with having an experience which was to think and create a documentary from scratch. Following on reflecting on the documentary I feel I’ve done a good job for my first attempt however my editing has kind of let me down as my editing skills aren’t the best. I feel that the content I filmed is good enough to make a story out of and I feel it was appropriate. To gain access was difficult for me as I get nervous asking people for favours however once I asked for access it was a weight off my shoulders and that allowed me to start working earlier than expected as I had such a good response, and I didn’t need to go out and find another subject. What I could do better next time is to try and gain access earlier as that will allow me to start thinking of a story and film earlier. I feel that over Christmas I should play around and experiment with editing on premiere pro as it will allow me to have more experience with editing which should help me with editing easier and quicker.
In conclusion, I feel that I’ve tackled this documentary as hard as I can and I will only improve on the next assignment. I have learnt a lot during this time and it has been very tough but I’ve learnt a lot during this whole process, at the beginning I didn’t even know what was included in a football documentary however the lectures and seminars has helped me massively.

Simply Psychology (2017), Kolb's Learning Styles and Experiential Learning Cycle. Available at: https://www.simplypsychology.org/learning-kolb.html (Accessed: 07/12/2021).

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I like this hook of 50% of players from local area, so story then is how the club academy trying to achieve this, including developing talent inside academy and reaching out to local community in initiatives (after school clubs, local trials etc), trying to uncover local talent. Your good access should help you achieve this, but you need to structure the narrative: what happens in 3 acts of structure, also what is the climax; will there be a journey through your film with some kind of challenge, however small, as climax?

Best
Mick

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• Plan for the next two weeks.

Meet with St Albans coach and sit down to talk about how I want to film the documentary.

talk about how the interview will be structured.

Speaking to different people to nail down a story.

Asking questions regarding the academy about why it’s so important.

Dean stated that he wants 50% of the first team to be from the local area which shows that the academy is very important to the club.

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Week one: I was thinking of an idea that I could do for my documentary, I have no idea of what I could do however I have a work placement at St Albans City FC that I could potentially create a documentary about.

Week two: I’ve got a rough idea of something I could do however nothing concrete. I have an idea to create something around St Albans academy team and focus on the coach. As I work for St Albans I could gain access through speaking to people at the club.

5th October, I was working on a game where St Albans played the Met Police in an FA Cup game and after the game I managed to speak to the director of Football for St Albans, Dean Austin. I asked him if he would be able to help me with access to the academy and the coach to film a documentary. We sat down for a chat and he agreed that any access I need I could have and we then spoke about when I could start filming etc. this is great as I feel the hardest part of the documentary is to gain access to participants. I will now arrange a meeting with Mick Kelly to discuss what I could base my documentary around.