Documentary progress

Our Documentary has come along way. It is getting done slowly but surely.

We had numerous amounts of problems with the documentary, one being that a member of our group dropped out of the course and left us hanging. The worst part of this was that he was going to be our main character in the documentary. We were going to follow his progress and participation as an outsider trying to get involved with cheerleading.

To a certain extent i am glad this didn't work out. Having him getting involved with cheerleading would have almost made the documentary a comedy rather than something a little bit more serious.

Now we have taken a new angle. We have decided that maintaing a central character was a good idea, but rather we will look more into her life and examine cheerleading as a part of her life. Our subject, Emma Podbury is a full fledged cheerleader. Her circle of friends are in cheer, her career is it cheer and her hoby. Everything she does is CHEER. Even though this has become a massive part of her life and her identity, Emma still questions whether the physical pain and drama that cheer has put her through is worth it all. She continues to face many challenges even at home, where she lives with former team mates. From this we can examine the sub-culture that cheerleading has become. How far are people willing to go, to feel apart of a group and community?

We have already had one shoot with Emma and we were able to get the first interview down. We were able to draw out some of the dramas that Emma is facing and have categorized them into sections so that we can start to form a documentary. There are three conflicts that we can see would be interesting to our viewers. One being her conflict with her former team mate, employer and student Jess Nugent, another being her conflict with her house mates who were on her previous team and lastly her conflict with someone who is on her current team.

Our next shooting will happen next week as we go and watch Emma train with her current team. this will be a good opportunity to get some interesting and active footage of actual cheerleading.