CRITICAL REFLECTION!

 People love sports, whether it is watching them or doing them recreationally or professionally. Our short film ‘Reaching the Bar’ goes through that mental battle of not knowing how to let go of something that once upon a time it brought you joy. Our short film explores the mental impacts that sports have on you. We chose the sport of gymnastics because it is one of the most mentally challenging sports, comparing everything about yourself from a young age.  

We had a hard time deciding what our short film was going to be about but when we finally landed on an idea; we knew that the first thing to do was research. To start with, we researched some sports drama short films since that is what we were focusing on. Short films such as Game Night” by Joel Fendelman, “LIGA” by Toby’s Sport, and “good sport” were analyzed deeply to get the most inspiration out of them, and while studying these films one of the things that they had in common was that they are incredibly emotional, and they will make you feel something as you are watching. Moreover, the shots used for each film were very authentic to show the authenticity of the sport. Therefore, to achieve and be successful in this sports drama short film we had to really show the different kinds of emotions that playing a sport brings you, whether that is joy, frustration, anger, or sadness. (Research short film blogs)

While conducting the research necessary to make this production is long and time-consuming, it is incredibly important to accomplish. So not only did we research short films, but we also researched some gymnastics movies such as ‘Stick It’ (2006) and ‘Full Out’ (2015). From analyzing these films, we got some viewpoints on how to accomplish some authentic shots of gymnastics.

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The sequence of the video from ‘Full Out’ and the way the shots are put together demonstrates how quick gymnastics really is, to the point where it is hard to watch because there is so much going on which was something we wanted to accomplish on our film, as well as, the sequence from ‘Stick it’ falling over and over because the sport is really about failing over and over again until you get it right, therefore, they are both an accurate demonstration and representation of the sport which is why it was necessary to show some kind of those sequences.

The genre of our short film ‘Reaching the Bar’ is a sports drama, in which the plot is about growing up in the sport you love, nevertheless, as time passes it becomes a mental struggle every day as the main character starts comparing herself to others and starts to ponder why she isn’t good enough. While conducting our research for the genre I came across the sports drama conventions in which it adds drama to a sports storyline, in addition to it tends to capture the more intense aspects of the sporting world which is exactly what we did. In our film, we showed how gymnastics can be incredibly deteriorating for your mental health even though it can bring us amusement sometimes. Nonetheless, we were adamant about incorporating the sports drama conventions. (Research)

Just as research is an important part of filmmaking so is targeting the audience since they are the ones that will be watching the film. Due to the fact that our film is about sports and our main character is a female, we thought that the best target audience for our film was teenage girls to be specific but any teenager really because this is the stage when everything gets serious and the sport you once did as a fun activity is now on that increases the pressure of your performance which can cause some stress. Moreover, the short film is something that most teenagers would be able to relate to it and realize that they are not alone in whatever they are going through with their respective sports. Because our protagonist is a female gymnast, the short film is strongly targeted to the many gymnasts that have gone through this mental battle when you do the sport because gymnastics is not a team sport, you are completely alone trying to deal with the different kinds of emotion that the sports bring out. And because it is not a team sport, it leaves you comparing yourself to your teammates wondering why you can’t do the same things they can or why your teammate might be at a higher level and they’re not; it is mentally deteriorating. Consequently, we would also love for adults to watch this film so they can grasp an understanding of what their kids might be going through with the sport they are playing and have a little more understanding as to why sometimes leaving the sport is the right answer.

For our brand, you can see that we kept it cohesive throughout the entirety of our project. Nonetheless, the brand that we are trying to achieve is that over time a sport can become something that you dislike doing. The message we are trying to pass along is that sometimes it is okay to quit something that it is not bringing you joy anymore but instead, is causing you some mental issues. A lot of times we think that giving up something we once loved, but is causing us pain it’s the end of the world but in reality it's not, it is okay; it takes a lot of courage to make that decision but that is exactly what we want to communicate with our brand; we want to give all the little girls watching the film courage to leave whatever it is causing them to be hurt. The way we show this to our audience in our film is that as the character grows older, she becomes more critical of herself causing her to have mental struggles.

In our film, we can make a connection with a persistent issue today which is mental health and struggles. The main character of our film keeps all her feelings to herself and all her mental struggles which make her mental health deteriorate. In the sports world, this is something that happens every time because it is a common difficulty because of the constant pressure athletes put on themselves. As the film progresses there is a constant sense of jealousy and a decrease of self-esteem. In addition to that, there is also a social issue that in the world of gymnastics sometimes being an African American gymnast means that you have an immense amount of talent which is not true in every case, therefore, our film works to break that stereotype placed in the world of gymnastics as well. Finally, our short film works together to show a social issue and break another one at the same time.