Project Components

Thats it! I hope you enjoyed the process over the past eight weeks, and my growth over these two years. This class has taught me so many valuable lessons, not just in the classroom but during the creation of the projects. It was a challenge a lot of the time but it helped me grow so much as a creator and as a person. I hope that future students can look at my process and see what to do and what not to do (DOWNLOAD YOUR INTERVIEW ON A HARD DRIVE). It is bittersweet for me to say that this is the last media studies blog, but without further ado, here's my final project:

Documentary Excerpt

First Place: The Docuseries

Print Component- Magazine Article

Striving For Validation: Highlighting First Place The Docuseries

Social Media 

First Place The Docuseries Instagram

Critical Reflection

        First Place the docuseries is an episodic documentary in which the lives of five high school students are highlighted. A poet, mathlete, thespian, athlete, and an engineer. On the surface, It may seem as though the individuals do not have anything in common, however, this docuseries proves that we are all the same in one aspect: competition. The series is made for students, by students, which is a very important element to the series as I myself relate to all of the subjects in my own way, and many other students would relate to them in their own. This made it easy to establish my target audience of competitive, overachieving, high school students from a middle to high social class.

        Because this topic is so close to me, I find the representation of teenagers in the film industry as rowdy, unintelligent, and ungrateful personally offensive. Therefore, I wanted to combat this stereotype. This task wasn't hard because teens are very capable of expressing their thoughts in an eloquent manner and demonstrating expertise in their niche when asked about it. The quotes on the social media component and Parker Astley’s interview from the first five minutes of the second episode of the series show the teens’ deep thoughts. Additionally, I received a lot of pushback from people when I mentioned I would be highlighting the story of a mathlete as it could be “boring” (read more on why I chose the mathlete here). The excerpt from the series proves that you do not have to be the best at math to understand how Parker feels about the competition. The actual topic discussed isn't boring because we are all so similar in the sense that we all strive for success in our own ways.

        In addition to my theory on why high school students would find this topic interesting, I attempted to create a more engaging brand for the series by implementing a cohesive physique. I did this by tying the series together as if the episodes were a video game. The intro to the series is formatted like the loading screen of a game, and in the “soft launch” era of my social media, the subjects are presented as “players”. The reason I chose this was because there are a lot of similarities between playing a video game and competing in high school. Particularly, it makes the audience wonder why. Why do we compete? Why does it matter? In a video game, you beat your high score and get a non existant trophy. In high school, you compete, win, and get a plaque that says “first place”. So what? We beat ourselves up over competitiveness and I thought the video game idea would be a very visually pleasing metaphor to incorporate. 

        Unfortunately, I do not think I succeeded in weaving this metaphor smoothly into the piece as I felt it was missing some of those elements in my print component. I had also hoped to incorporate more pixel art and video game B-roll throughout the episode, not just in the intro. While I was somewhat disappointed by the turnout of the video game idea, the color scheme was my favorite part of the aesthetic elements as it cohesively tied all the episodes together. I loved how each subject had their color but when looking at the bigger picture the colors worked well together. This can be seen in the loading screen as the bar goes up, in the social media where each post is highlighted one color, and even unintentionally with the background of my blog I chose last year (click here to read my blog on the creation of the social media.

        The Magazine component was where I got to be the most expressive of my own experience. This magazine called “Teen Creators” was also targeted towards the same demographic as the docuseries. For that reason, I included a special section called “Think about it!” to promote audience engagement. At the bottom, I simultaneously advertised the Instagram page by saying “Visit @firstplace_thedocuseries to answer the poll”. This will prompt readers to engage in the provided Q&A under the instagram’s highlights. Now, if I had all the time in the world, could easily learn how to code, or knew someone who could code, the dream engagement practice would be to create a small video game that would promote the series but that may have to be an eight week project on its own,

        Creating this piece felt very near to me as I am a senior about to graduate who spent so much time stressing over competitions and being “the best”. Making this made me contemplate whether all those hours were worth it. At the end of the day, those trophies and medals are going to stay in a box collecting dust for years after I go to college. Are we all just seeking validation from adults at this age? Maybe, but I realized that it has never been about the title “First Place”, it's about knowing that I have room for improvement. That room for improvement is motivation, and that motivation is what gives us passion whether it's towards poetry, math, theatre, a sport, engineering, TV production, or... you can fill in the blank on what you’re passionate about.