The Warrior (view this story)

Details

Category: Feature
Media: Video
Turnaround time: More than a day but less than a week

Description of story

Mike Lopez has been the San Diego State Aztec Warrior for the past three years. After graduating with a degree in political science, Mike is faced with giving up the job he loves so that the shield can be passed on to a current SDSU student.

Feedback requested

General reactions to the flow and execution of this as a character driven piece, please. Thanks for looking!

Gear used in production

Canon 5DmkII
24-70mm, 70-200mm, 1.4 TC
Sennheiser lav
Zoom H4n
Rode Video Mic

7 comments - Login to comment

Rep: 8
Alexandra Bahou March 1, 2011, 2:56 p.m. permalink

Hi James!


This is a wonderful story. I love how you explained the reason behind the 'revealed' mascot. His passion and character are infectious. Very neat.


Stylistically, I absolutely love the sequence of him suiting up and I would have liked to see that right after he worked out. It would have helped build the mystery a little more in the beginning before getting to the bulk of the storyline.


I may have opted out of the back-to-back cuts of his facial expressions/horn blowing. It just was a little jarring. I would have focused on tight, steady shots of his facial expressions moving sequentially to him lifting, maybe a wide shot of the equipment sprawled out around him. Same goes for the arena. I know he was probably running all over the place, but anticipating the action and letting him move in and out of your frame is very effective.


A lot of your shots were beautiful, and I think the story flowed well. You can get a good sense of his passion for the school. It might be neat to revisit him when he's training the new Aztec Warrior! haha.


Anyway, that's just my two cents. Overall, it was a lot of fun to watch :o)

Rep: 15
Submitter
James Gregg March 1, 2011, 6:25 p.m. permalink

Thanks for your thoughts Alexadra!  You touched on a few points that I was thinking about during the production of this.  The jump cuts were something that I thought about very early and decided to experiment with using them consistently in an effort to dictate pacing. The thinking was to break the rules across the whole piece as a style choice instead of just an event of sloppy editing, but I consider it a risk. I wanted to keep the energy in the piece up, and I was worried that some of the sequencing would be too drawn out.

After I was done with it I considered the bulk of the material around the arena a lot as well.  In the field, he was definitely tough to keep up with!, it was a real challenge to sequence when I couldn't tell where he was going to go next, save for the part where he makes his way up the stairs, taking photos with folks.  With the horn blowing in the arena, would you have stuck with just one?
Finally, the getting ready sequence was one of my favorite to shoot, and I really considered putting it out front.  I guess I was just concerned that it would take a while to make the reveal and I might bore people?  It also helped me get to the loop back at him leading the team out, which I was hoping would be a good way to end.  Is there a different way you would have wrapped the piece?  Thanks again for the time and comments.

James

Rep: 141
Colin Mulvany March 1, 2011, 7:46 p.m. permalink

Well done James.

Adding to Alexandra's excellent review, I'd maybe take another look at the audio levels in this piece. The horn is jarring. My wife asked me "what the hell was that" from the other room as I viewed it. 

One thing I like to do before I output is I play the video through at normal volume with my eyes closed. Just listen to the audio. When you come to a bump or a clip that needs a volume adjustment, stop and make the fix. Then one more time  through just eyeing the audio level meters. I try and mix everything to ping right around  -6db on all the clips.  

Rep: 21
Peg Achterman March 1, 2011, 7:57 p.m. permalink

Chiming in on Colin and Alexandra's reviews here. I'd say the jump cuts are OK if they have some motivation -- to kind of jar the viewer, etc. I had a boss who said 'break the rules, but do it with authority so it doesn't look like it was a mistake!" I'd do that in the pacing. The costume part where it was was simply out of order -- we do want some chronology as viewers. The people talking about him were talking about him leaving, but you have him suiting up here at the end -- might have shot just the opposite - taking the suit off. 

Also -- the BEST line in the whole thing was "can't have a fat man in a skirt" -- you might have led with that. 
There you go......
Nice profile piece all-in-all

Rep: 15
Submitter
James Gregg March 1, 2011, 10:19 p.m. permalink

Absolutely about the horn Colin, thanks for the details about checking the levels, I'll try that for sure.

Rep: 15
Submitter
James Gregg March 1, 2011, 11:20 p.m. permalink

@Peg, 

Thanks a lot.  I'm glad that you picked up on the fat man in a skirt, I was hoping that would come through!

Rep: 10
James Nix March 9, 2011, 3:53 p.m. permalink

Hey James,


I'll second Peg on the fat man in a skirt comment ... I laughed out loud at that.

I thought the way you opened it worked really well. I'm assuming a lot of people know this is about the mascot before they click play, so that worked nicely, especially followed by the transition of him walking out of the gym as him/walking into the arena as the Aztec.

Nice work! 

Cheers

James

Login to comment

Likes

You must be logged in to like this story