Tuesday 26 April 2016
Profile
Figure 1. Messenger,
Kent. (2014). Sheerness middleweight Oli Edwards says the sky's the limit ahead of his first bout as a professional at York Hall on December 5 [Diagram] Available at: http://www.kentonline.co.uk/sheerness/sport/fighting-talk-from-new-pro-23556/ [Accessed 26 April. 2016].
Contributor: Oli Edwards
Occupation: Professional Boxer
Age: 21
Story: Oli was robbed at knife point when he was a child (8-9) which traumatised him and had a major affect upon his life, changing him into a timid scared child, who lacked self confidence which led to him becoming a victim of constant bullying throughout childhood. Due to this childhood experience, it has been the catalyst for leading Oli on an unexpected successful path as a professional boxer, as a form of atonement for what he yearned for when he was a child.
Having phoned up Oli and having a brief conversation about if he would be interested in having a portrait documentary created about him, i arranged to meet up with him over at Minster Golden Gloves boxing gym in sheerness where he trains, so that i could find out whether or not his history and reasoning for getting into boxing, would make for a good interesting narrative structure that an audience might potentially want to find out about.
The purpose of this meeting was to:
1:Talk to Oli in order to asses if his story would make for an interesting story that an audience might want to hear about, plus if it has a narrative structure (beginning, middle, end)
2: Have a brief scout of this location to see how it is laid out, plus what takes place at the gym, as hopefully a lot of the scenes would be taking place at this gym.
3: If he agrees on going ahead with the documentary, finding out his availability and training schedule.
During the session, i had a talk with Oli’s partner who told me a lot of interesting stories of Oli’s past which was very good, and helped to paint a picture of Oli’s journey. At the end of the session, this helped me to ask Oli further questions about his upbringing, why he got into training, and what drives him to be a professional boxer.
I was also able to note down the training that Oli does, and the locations of where he trains at.
Because at the moment Oli is training for his 3rd professional fight that is coming up on the 5th of March, he mentioned it would be best if we conducted filming after his fight, as i would want to film him in more of a controlled environment, allowing me to stop and start training and get him doing additional scenes, which would interrupt his training.
As for the name of the portrait documentary, i'm not too sure what it will be called at this moment.
Conclusion
Having met with Oli and have a brief talk with him, what i need to now do is:
Arrange a proper pre interview meeting with him so that i can further elaborate on his history of being bullied, and how this made him want to get into boxing.
Arrange to shoot his professional boxing match on the 5th of March, incase there’s any footage that i might want to use in the portrait documentary of that night.
Although it is very early to be committing myself to any filming before i have finalised the narrative structure for the portrait documentary and style, however, incase there’s any important moments that happens on that night of the event, i do believe it would be best for me to go and document that night incase i miss anything important.
