From the outset I always wanted to do a commission. Over the summer I had been writing down ideas that I thought of. However when the commission was talked about in the unit briefing it mentioned that it would have to be working for a company, which made me second think it. However after looking at the other options I thought the commission makes by far the most sense for me personally. One of my ideas from the summer was talking about the evolution of women’s football and how over the last few years it really is taken seriously among the media.
With this idea I emailed all of the WSL1 and WSL2 (the top two tiers of women's football) clubs and talked through my ideas for the project and also let them know that even though I came to them with the idea, they would have the power to change what they did not want as well as tell me what should be filmed etc. I ended up having a good conversation with three clubs; Millwall, Liverpool and Watford. Millwall was the first to reply and did seem interested in the project, but then they suddenly stopped replying to my emails and even after attempts to see what was happening, nothing materialised. Liverpool said that they would check questions and ideas with the club, after sending these to them they never ended up responding.
Watford however, really liked the project and we had a great email discussion, firstly with Helen who is in charge of the marketing at Watford, and then Ed who is a general manager at the club. They were very interested in my idea and suggested that I come to the Watford vs Arsenal cup game on the 16th of November. I had started planning for this idea and it all seemed to be going well until the unfortunate announcement I mentioned earlier. Watford announced they would be being demoted to the third tier meaning a video showing the evolution of women's football may not make much sense if they are dropping down. At this point I was worried, as all my ideas were now pretty useless and I had no company to work for as they said they could not work on the project because of what was happening to the club.
I had to think quickly on this one, because I felt we could still create a great video, but the subject would have to significantly change. I decided to respond saying we could do a “week behind the scenes” where we show what the club does on the build up to a game as well as any possibly community work the club does to help the local area. Thankfully they really liked this idea and I got working on this straight away. I knew this had put me on the backfoot but I decided that it was just a small hurdle and I could get around it. After a few more emails back and forth with the club we decided upon a shoot week. This would be from 27th November to the 3rd of December. This would be the build up to the London bee’s away game on the 3rd of December.
This was when Helen who I had been talking to previously handed me over to Ed who was the general manager of the club who could let me know all of the information about the club. After emails back and forth with Ed, he let me know that Watford Ladies train on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and then the game itself on the 3rd of December. This means four trips up to the club over the week which was not too bad for me. I started to get together the script for the piece and I sent it over to Ed who told me to change one thing. I had one question asking the players what attracted them to Watford as a football club, Ed suggested that this may not be a great question for the current difficulties that the club is experiencing. After I had adapted the script and sent it to Ed he was happy with it and I proceeded to work on travel plans and also on storyboards.
I also was trying to make sure that I had as much information on the club as well as how I would get tickets for the game, where the training ground was, as well as which players I could potentially be interviewing so that I could do a little bit of research! After emailing Ed, he said that the training ground was Harefield Academy (UB9 6ET) from 8pm-10pm each day. Ed said he would also supply the tickets for the game, all I needed to do was email him the names of who was coming. I am going to leave a couple of days to organise who will be helping me before I submit the names. We will also be going to the hospice on Thursday 30th at 1:30pm in South Bucks hospice in High Wycombe. Player and manager interviews will take place on the day and Ed will assist us with that, and on the day we will be able to see who is free to talk. Ed has been a great help in arranging all of this and I am really excited to get it started!
I have created a schedule that I want to work with to be able to make it to Watford in good time and giving us ample time to set up.
Wednesday. Leave home around 3pm, collect whoever may be helping me with the project and then head to Kings Langley. I hope to be in the area by 5pm but usual M25 traffic will probably mean it is closer to 6pm. Then there will be time for a quick dinner and I want to arrive at the training ground for 7:30 pm to set up and talk to Ed.
- Thursday. We will be visiting the hospice at 1:30pm so we will have to leave earlier, probably around 11am to make it there in good time. After the hospice I may use the opportunity to get some drone shots of the area as the club said they have used them before and I think it would look good. We then may have some time to kill as training does not start until 8pm, so we may find something to do for the hours in between.
- Sunday. The game starts at 2pm, I hope to be at the ground for 12:30 so I can get some of the build up to the game and capturing some of the atmosphere. I will get the 10:29 train to get me there for 12:30.
No comments:
Post a Comment