Script

Our group hasn't officially decided whether or not we want to do a video together or individually yet. Given the amount of time we have left for this class, I don't think we have anymore time to waste debating and this is my script for a video done by me alone.

Going along with the outline I created in my last post, I still want the overall theme to be "heroism." My section of the whole group video is how athletes are utilizing this media. So, I want to start my series out with a bunch of clips of heroes like Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth, you know, athletes that were big before social media like Facebook and Twitter. I want to really put an emphasis on how we reacted to them emotionally and how their talents were what got them the big paychecks.

I want to then use screen recording techniques to help ask the question of how athletes are using their fame in a different way today. There are some positives and some negatives to this idea. I want to really show that athletes don't really even need to have amazing talent to be known or seen as a hero. Shaq, no doubt, has tremendous talent, however-he has created a more personal relationship to his fan base, therefore reducing his ranking as a hero, in my opinion. Other athletes like Ochocinco, who is also using social media and media in general, to really skyrocket his career and keep him in the spotlight-not by talent, but by entertainment. This is where I want to show maybe the downsides of having athletes freely using sites like Twitter. I would like to show different miscommunications coming from this media.

To end my section, I want to take a modern day hero-such as Lebron James or Kobe Bryant and show highlights and interviews as to how they are branding themselves without the help of social media. They may not have as big of celebrity status as say Shaquille O'Neal, but they certainly make money off of their talent still and maintain a sense of humbleness as they do. This, to me, is still heroism...even if it is hard to recognize.

Analytical Defense

    I've been having trouble trying to figure out how to incorporate our project into the big scheme of projects, but I think we've gotten it narrowed down to a perspective that is a little more...thought provoking that our original ideas. First of all, instead of making one long video, we've split up into mini series that will all tie together for the final. The overall idea is Heroism of the athlete-beginning with the background history and how it's evolved in our current culture.
    Aaron showed us this commercial that Lebron James did for Nike that really inspired this view of where we're taking our project.

   This got me wondering what athletes like Michael Jordan are doing these days. I Googled him and found a really cool commercial he did-which then got me kind of thinking of another direction to take this.

   Athletes like him didn't have a way to express themselves back in their day. They didn't have the media to connect with their fans-which made them unreachable in a sense. This could be how they developed their Hero status and media basically came in and destroyed it. That's a bold statement-but it would certainly make for a good argument.
   Basically...what I would love to portray through this project is how media is so developed these days that we no longer have to fantasize about what our favorite athletes are thinking about after a basketball game...we can get on Twitter or Facebook and see what they PERSONALLY have to say. Now, the question that's being asked is...is this a good or bad thing? It's definitely a change...from Heroism to...Celebrity-ism basically. That's all athletes really are these days anyways, which is why we love it when scandals happen-we love to be in the know and we love to hear the latest gossip-we're human. It's just a little sad our one time idea of a hero is now just another celebrity grouped together with such scum as the cast of Jersey Shore and Paris Hilton.