Today in my Criticism class we watched, and discussed, the Nine for IX documentary, Venus vs. The tennis icon took on a years long fight for equal pay in women’s tennis. This is a great documentary, a documentary which, itself, was the beginning of a momentary effort by ESPN to correct a gender imbalance. This was the debut of the Nine for IX series. It debuted as ESPN carried their first installment of Wimbledon, and just a few years from the resolution of this long campaign.
So, if you’re keeping score, last week we went from a 1999 doc produced about a 1968 event, the Olympics, to a 2013 doc today which focuses on parts of the early 21st century career of Venus Williams. Next week we’ll watch a program produced this year.
And, also next week, I think I’ll take some stills from the Venus vs. program and talk for a moment about shot composition. I’ve given the class a primer on critiquing techniques and one of the points is about visuals. That documentary, produced and directed by Ana Duvernay before she’d become a huge hit-maker, has some things to say, visually.
In Org Comm today we continued our conversation on branding, which features a lot of sports commercials, and will somehow go into Tuesday.
My favorite one of the bunch isn’t even a real commercial.
And also this one, just because of how Peyton Manning trades on his referent power, and his incredibly philanthropy through the meaning transfer model …
Don’t tell the students, but all of the star power things we’ve been talking about this week are on an assignment they’ll have to conquer on Tuesday. That’s when we’ll start to see if I’m making any sense.
