Critical Refelction

 Critical Reflection 

The short film Reaching the Bar explores the emotions of choosing between your passion and your mental health. Through the film, we explore the story of the main character (Brianna) while growing up in gymnastics, as her life gets more difficult given the pressure created by her once-loved activity.

This is a teen drama short film, influenced by the vulnerability many athletes experience in their life. As someone enhances their skills in a sport and moves up levels, the techniques get harder, and pressure to be the best starts building up as well. For our research, luckily one of the members of our group is in gymnastics and she shared emotionally distressing moments in gymnastics as she has moved up levels. Much of our inspiration came from stories of the highest-level gymnasts in her gym. The emotions emphasized in the stories were the ones we tried to present in the older phase of our main character. Additionally, we also took inspiration from different movies/short films that are related to gymnastics like “Game Night” by Joel Fendelman, and “LIGA” by Toby’s Sport. Reaching the Bar incorporates various heavy emotional themes, inspired by personal stories, similarly seen in the production we watched for inspiration. Additionally, we analyze the sharp shots and realistic noises used in the productions mentioned above. This way of filming improves the realism expressed in the production, allowing to make the film as authentic to the experience as possible. 

On the contrary, Reaching the Bar goes against many sports drama conventions, one of them being the lack of success shown throughout the film. As we decided to focus on the brutal truth many gymnasts experience because of the sport. For example, winning a competition or getting over hardships were excluded from the storyline as we wanted to keep the mood of the film deeply emotional. Furthermore, we decided against developing relationships with other characters because of production constraints, since we were limited in filming time. 

The target audience for Reaching the Bar, comes from the main character of the film, as she is a teenage female gymnast. As result, the movie will be targeted toward teen girls ages 12-20 as who participate in a sport or extracurricular activity they've enjoyed since a young age. Our short film reflects emotions they most likely experience through their life as someone who found their passions at a young age, just like our main character. 

The brand developed for Reaching the Bar highlights undesirable experiences in gymnastics, as it engages with people with similar circumstances. Our social media presence on Instagram shows a contrasting view of the short film, as a different aspect of the film is reflected in said platform. This helps us express an easier marketed side of Short film to attract the most viewers possible. The shift between both sides of gymnastics (positive and negative) throughout our content, is an aspect that would be well understood by our target audience as gymnastics has two drastic sides to the sport. 

The Instagram page for Reaching the Bar serves to reach viewers that celebrate both the beauty and the ugly of the sport. As much of our content is inspired by other production accounts like the “Not Okay” movie, and a “League of Their Own” show, both productions with strong social media presence that successfully exposes the character, themes, and lifestyles explored in the productions. For example, we have a few posts that introduce the characters and open the door for the viewer to ask questions to the actors, as well as highlight key moments in the film. The social media does fail to develop the true themes of the movies however, does show an appreciation for the sport and its enjoyers  

The brand of the short film is as well developed through the print component. Before developing this component we research various productions and their components like posters, logos, and postcards. We were mainly inspired by those that don't focus on the actors but more on the look of the film. The front of the postcard shows a person grabbing onto a bar, you can't see her face just her hands, in the back it's a girl's hands with her gloves on for practice. The postcards also are mainly composed of blue, white, and red as they are usual sports colors. Throughout the postcard we include information about the short film, similarly focusing on celebrating the sport through our print component.  

One of the shared interests of our target audience is being athletes, Reaching the Bar also explores themes that appeal to audiences with health interests. Our main character is someone that struggles to keep her mental health in check because of the pressure that gymnastics puts on her. We show her having mental breakdowns and self-doubtful thoughts from her lack of skills in her sport. We did want to further develop the reasons for her mental health (like parental pressure, piers pressure, etc) however, because of casting issues it wasn't possible so we stuck with one example, of comparing herself to others. Moreover, we were able to emphasize African American presence in gymnastics as many media production companies lack diversity when it comes to sports dramas. Even when worldwide known gymnastics stars are people of color. This was one of our goals, to highlight a minority group in the sport and show a universal experience through them. Although Brianna’s storyline doesn't show any culturally specific issues, I and my group believe having a diverse cast shows the culture without having to point it out verbally. 

After working on Reaching the Bar for the past few weeks, I reflect on many of my choices that were done and how I would've done them differently. Honestly, my vision for the film I talked about in my blog, wasn't the one I was able to produce. The sports drama I wanted to show was one with deep emotional visuals and the viewer needed time to reflect on their life. I could be being very critical of the final short film result however, I do like how the other two components turn out, especially the postcard. Nevertheless, Through the project, I was able to learn new things I'll apply to future projects. 

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