"Leadership is Influence, Nothing More, Nothing Less"

   This project was the second featured story that we made. There were improvements made from my last featured story. The goal of the project was to create a featured story with changes from the last one and focus more on getting more b-roll and a wider variety of shots.
   Before the project, I wrote my questions for the 2 interviews, did research on the topic, and planned the schedule for the project. I filmed the two interviews and got B-Roll for my project in the same day and started editing the video on the next Monday. Editing took a while because I had to make subclips of my B-Roll and adjust the levels on each subclip.
   Along the way, I learned a lot about writing a good featured story, like having a smaller story in the entire featured story.  I also learned how to make lower-thirds in Premier Pro, which are the name titles at the bottom of the screen. I learned how to work with deadlines by having my footage before the due date so I had more time to edit it. For differences, I wish I would have been more confident in my story so I knew specifically what B-Roll to get. The B-Roll in my story doesn't really correlate with the scope of the story. I really liked the lighting of my footage; it was white-balanced and well exposed. My voiceover and interviews were clear and loud, so it was easy to hear. For my next project, I will make sure to collect enough footage so that I have plenty to work with. I will also make sure to have my B-Roll relate to the story better (I had to change the focus of my story mid-project, so that is why my B-Roll doesn't relate well). Overall, I liked my first featured story better because the story was better told and the project was a lot more fun to film. However, this assignment gave me more ideas to improve on, which will help me in my next project.

Featured Story

   The concept for my featured story was to tell the story of a coach named Travis Martinez, who coached the OYB Tigers, and the legacy he left on the team after he passed away to AML. He affected the lives of many people, including everyone on the Tigers.

   I introduced the story with the line "most people think that the baseball season is over by the month of October, but for the Olathe Youth Baseball Tigers, October is a special month." it impacted my story by intriguing the viewer to keep watching the video to see why October means a lot to the team. The two people I interviewed, Tara Martinez (Travis's wife) and Doug Beckwith (the head coach) complimented each other in the story because it gave two different perspectives on the "meat" of the story: the legacy that Travis left and how it impacted the team. Tara talked about his cancer and why he decided to coach baseball and Doug talked about the legacy and what the team did to honor him. 

   The questions were a bit challenging to write because I didn't want Tara to feel to feel too emotional while answering the questions or get too in detail. I filmed the video over a weekend with my own camera because I filmed the video a while before the b-roll was due. I didn't have an external mic but there the wind wasn't too strong that it affected the audio. The 4 members of the baseball team who decided to be in the video were very cooperative, and I'm very thankful for that. The voiceover was also challenging to plan because I had multiple answers to the same question and lots of sound bytes to choose from. 

   For my finished video, I really liked the quote from Doug at the end where he talks about what the team learned from Travis. I feel that the quote is a very nice end to the video. However, I feel that I need to improve on my composition of shots because I have a lot of different wide and extreme-wide shots but not a lot of close-ups. I had to repeat some b-roll, which made the video seem very repetitive. Overall, I really like my video and even though I have things to improve on, the product of my video turned out really well.