documentary critical reflection

Friday Night Lightning - A Reflection

    Friday Night Lightning aimed to provide an insight into the Cypress Bay varsity football team as the season’s end approached. As my group was already knowledgeable about the football team and we jumped right into production, the only research that had to be done was a search for the two players’ (Ryan and Joaquin) positions on the team and clips of their best plays of this season. A quick look at their Hudl, a website used by sport teams to compile data and player highlights, provided the information needed as well as short clips of the players’ individual skills. Since we could not get too close to the team during the actual game attended, the Hudl clips were a necessary inclusion to demonstrate why the two players are pivotal to the team, and in turn why we chose to interview them. Additionally, I looked at the football team’s Instagram account to ensure I had the correct win to loss ratio so I could include it in the documentary. Conventions were followed, as necessary documentary conventions such as b-roll, indirect interviews, and voiceover narration.
    My documentary represents the social group of football teams and the issue of unwarranted criticism. Although it is sad to say, it is common knowledge that Cypress’s football team is not the best in the county by any means, making the team the perfect subject for a documentary about criticism. As someone who does not know or care much about football, I have always found it bizarre that people are so judgmental towards the team, since in my eyes they are just a group of teenagers having fun. Friday Night Lightning represents these issues of criticism thrown at football players without knowledge of the arduous work put behind the sport: the long practices, hectic season, and enormous pressure. This obviously applies to all sports, but football was the most easily accessible sport as this project was introduced towards the end of the school’s football season. Therefore, we chose to focus on the team and inquire about the aforementioned hardships.
    Keeping the above in mind, Friday Night Lightning was created. We focused on the two players previously mentioned, Ryan and Joaquin, who both play defense. Their relaxed demeanors allowed us to easily engage with the audience, as they took their time to accurately assess and respond to the questions given, alongside offering questions themselves. The players offered a plethora of information that I would have loved to separate into different segments, but sadly due to the time constraint and lack of b-roll I was unable to include some of the clips I liked. To expand to a wider audience, we originally intended to interview two cheerleaders to get their input as well; however, we were not able to conduct either interview and instead resorted to interviewing our group member Brooke, who is also a cheerleader for the team. We did not want to interview Brooke at first since she knew the answers we were looking for (ex. The team & cheerleaders receive unnecessary and rude comments), but in the end we had to use her interviews due to our lack of footage. We only had two questions prepared for her and settled for one because of the other clip's quality, and I would have preferred to have gotten clips of her at the games for b-roll rather than highlights, but at least we got it done.
    I know that my group could have produced a much better documentary if we had narrowed our focus to a specific criticism or even the dynamic of the team itself. Unfortunately, we jumped into the production too soon and were not able to sit down with Ms. Stoklosa and properly discuss our ideas and narrow them down to a better topic. However, every project is a learning experience and now I know what I need to improve on during upcoming projects, both in this class and in others.