Personal Project Process Journal

Youssef Moustafa Personal Project All Star Basketball Program Process Journal September 3, 2012 Day 1: During the summer I had a hard time thinking of what kind of goal and product would best suit my project. Late August, I ended up with two great ideas. The first idea was a guitar tutorial program and the second idea was a basketball tutorial program. After I came up with these two ideas I decided to ask my parents, close relatives and close friends about which idea would best suit the project and me. A lot of them say that a basketball tutorial program would be the better project because sports is more common to people than musical instrument and therefore it would make an even bigger impact on the community than a guitar tutorial. Yesterday I bought a tri pod for camera stability from a shop called Fuji in Hayat Plaza. It was 150 riyals and it was built for all types of cameras. Today I decided to start working on the films and videos and a friend of mine gladly agreed to come and help me in my production. We went to Student Center, which is located at Qatar Foundation. The Student Center is an astounding place that is especially made for students and staff, but also anyone with QF Identification is allowed to use any of the facilities. My friend and I arrived at the sports gym where you could play basketball, volleyball and even indoor football. Since my friend and I are both minors and are studying at Qatar Academy, the security guard understood and was kind enough to let us use the gym. We set up the camera and before we started filming we did our routine warm ups to feel comfortable and relaxed. When it was time to film, I realized I had to improvise what I had to say because I didn’t exactly plan it properly. What I actually did was think of some ideas of basketball drills and tips, just ideas, no specific scripts, camera angles or voice recording equipment to use for better sound. I decided to go with improvisation just to evaluate and reflect whether it was great or terrible. The first video we filmed was the introduction to my Beginner Basketball episode. It took 3 attempts to fix the mistakes. After that we took a couple of videos showing some basketball drills based on the triple threat position and layups. We were filming our 8th video that also based on layups, but the camera battery died during the film so it was not saved. We also couldn’t continue filming because the camera uses 4 AA batteries and not a charger and we didn’t have extra batteries. We decided to take a look at the videos and it was in fact, horrible. The sound was not clear enough, I stuttered multiple times and said some mispronounced words. It was a failure. So we gave up and we are going to do it next time, this time with a plan! September 9, 2012 Day 2: Another year, more challenges await. Today is the first day of school and its also great opportunity to ask questions about the project. My advisory teacher, Mr. Hennard, stated that he would always be available for questions and help which is great. “You should all start on your process journals, yesterday.” Suggested Mr. Hennard. After he assumed that, I decided to start the plan for my video later this evening. I was thinking of all the things that can make a great video, I already had really good camera, but it doesn’t have great sound quality. When I looked back at my videos that we’re filmed last week, it seemed as though I had to shout to get a clear and understandable voice. I searched through the Internet for wireless recorders and I finally found what I was looking for, a Body Pack Recorder. Using the body pack will help you get a clear sound just like talking through a microphone, and the sound will be recorded and saved on the computer. Before I started planning, I had to think of a title for my program. I thought of many headers including Legendary, basketball star, ball king and the list goes on. I then thought of a title “All Star”. All Star is another way in saying Elite, and elite is exactly what I’m aiming basketball players to become. All Star was the perfect title. Next, I tried to think of an introductory video that would motivate and inspire people to watch the episodes and to stay dedicated. Suddenly a quote came to mind “Who am I?” I typed it down and I continued to add to the quote when ideas came to mind and I ended up with this, “Who am I? I had desire, and I prove it with my pursuit. I’m not going to succeed because others say I will, No. I’m going to succeed, because I’m willing to do what it takes. I am going to make it, because I am putting in the time, because I’m pouring in the sweat. Because I wont be denied. If I’m not fast enough, I’ll get craftier. If I’m not big enough, I’ll get stronger. If I’m not tall enough, I’ll be smarter. Some people say its impossible, but the only impossible to me, is failure. Who am I? I am just a guy who speaks what you should be speaking, about yourself. This is All Star Basketball.” In all honesty I was proud in coming up with this quote, it is motivating, inspiring, and every time I read it I just want to grab a basketball and work all day and night on my game. After I made the quote I continued to plan. I needed to think about important points that I should include, most importantly, a script. I learned that improvising in this kind of project would result in failure and that I needed a clear and accurate script before I start executing. I also listed down drills and skill workouts for each episode and typed a script next to each drill on how I am going to describe it. I included descriptions to the triple threat position, rebounding, block outs, layups and jump shots. I will still add a lot more drills, skill workouts and tips in the future, as I am calling it a day after a night of planning.
September 12, 2012 Day 3: Today was productive in terms of collaboration, my advisory teacher wanted to know what each and every one of my classmates are doing for the personal project so that he can give us important feedback to improve our ideas and plans. The advisory sessions during Wednesdays are 25 minutes longer than the normal 15-­‐minute sessions; therefore there is more than enough time to collaborate with the supervisor to improve my project and to get my questions answered. When it was my turn to discuss my project to my supervisor, I told him what my project was about and what I was aiming for. I stated that I want to create a virtual basketball program and build a website to include all of the videos instead of distributing hard copies. I also stated that I am going to create different episodes, each episode focused on a particular skill level for basketball players and even coaches. My supervisors response was, to make all this easier and stress free, you should start by focusing on one particular skill level first then proceed to the next episode. If I focus on all the episodes at first it will be regretful and confusing. The next topic we discussed about was the project’s AOI (Areas of Interaction). I’ve been asked the question a couple of times, “What AOI are you focusing on for your project?” Well first of all there are five different areas of interactions, first is the ATL (approaches to learning). ATL is focused on how you learn best; how you communicate your understanding and how do you know your information. The second AOI is C&S (community and service). Community and service is all about contributing and helping the society positively. “This component requires students to take an active part in the communities in which they live, thereby encouraging responsible citizenship.” -­‐-­‐ world school IB. The third AOI is Human Ingenuity. This AOI is about the human creativity and the ability to create, how we create, and why we create. The fourth AOI is Environments. This area aims to develop students’ awareness of their interdependence and interactions with the environments so that they would learn to accept their responsibilities. The final AOI is Health and Social Education. This area is focused mainly on physical, emotional and social health and intelligence. The goal for this AOI is to lead you to complete and healthy lives. Now that I’ve discussed all the AOIs, its time to choose the AOI to focus on. The best suited AOI for a basketball program is either Community and Service or Health and Social Education. My supervisor concluded that Health and Social Education would have sense to my project than community and service, because my project is focused on a physical sport, you would have to build your body to live up to the requirements. My supervisor reasoned why Community and Service would be an improper AOI for this project is because C&S encourages you to take part in helping the community around you and to encourage responsible citizenship. Yes, a basketball program should help people be better players, but since it is a physical activity it is best suited with Health and Social Education. Now that I got the help I wanted from my supervisor, at the end of the session I had one more question in mind and that is if there is a specific template for the project process journal and he answered that no there isn’t just jock down what happened on this day related to the project. September 15, 2012 Day 4: I decided to continue onwards with the video plan. I am just about done with the script for the beginner basketball episode. What I did include before started on the drills in the beginners program is why starting from the basic fundamentals is important as a basketball player. Even though you are a professional basketball player, skipping the fundamentals will make you an inconsistent and not confident with your skills. I wrote a brief background story about me as a young basketball player learning the fundamentals and what the hard work and dedication made me today. I explained that even if you are part of the elite, the beginners program is still going to help you either way. The program will either remind you or teach you the fundamentals of basketball as an elite player. As proof, this is what I’ve stated “I have been using these drills for the past 2 years and I’ve improved my basketball skills to the point where I couldn’t believe it. I was a bench warmer and an unrecognized basketball player in the past, and now after hard work and dedication, I consider myself one of the best at my high school.” As for the basketball drills, I didn’t write down any of the drills yet on my planning sheet even though I know exactly what to do. What I am going to do is write the script first for each one of the episodes then I am going to list down all the drills related to each episode. That way I wont get confused. The next step that I executed was to write the introduction paragraph for the following episode, which is the Intermediate Basketball. I explained what is going to be presented in the episode and I stated that the drills and workouts tend to get more challenging. The Intermediate basketball episode will be focused on specific skills. There will be multiple drills for each type of skills such as ball handling, shooting, passing, defense on and off the ball, and without the ball. Intermediate Basketball will give you a clearer look at your weaknesses and strengths. October 30, 2012 Day 5: On Sunday, I found an outstanding set of basketball programs, episodes and DVDs online that can be downloaded for free. The program is called Better Basketball or BB as it is abbreviated. The instructor of the program seems to be a professional basketball player or coach of a college team and the supporting cast and demonstrators are young athletes, youngest being 12 years old. The program includes Defense, offense, shooting, passing, post play and ball handling. The program explains precisely bit by bit what to do and what not to do while playing basketball. The defense and offense explains 1 on 1 situation while the passing and post play explains court vision and basketball IQ most importantly. The ball handling video in particular is my favorite one. I used the set of drills and workouts given by the video today at the basketball court and I was improving my ball handling rapidly especially my weak hand. This program will definitely help with a lot with most of my program. After I came home today after the gym, I looked at some more ball handling drills to give me a wider variety of ideas and difficulties so that I will distribute them accordingly by skill level. I came across a video on YouTube made by Superhandles. It is a free workout video with 2 parts both being 6 to 7 minutes long. It is a video that demonstrates high-­‐speed ball handling drills that can be done anywhere from your path way to your garage and that can be done daily to improve ball handling and quickness excessively. November 3, 2012 Day 6: I had some great research information and knowledge in the past few weeks. I watched videos of YouTube to help define for me the basketball workouts and drills appropriate for different skill levels. I found two videos that can be used for the Elite All Star video, 1 video to help me upon the intermediate video, and 1 video that can be used with either intermediate or the beginners’ video. The first two videos I found which would help me in my Elite basketball video are the Dwayne Wade and Allen Iverson videos which are part of a 30 move video series created by a professional basketball player, Gannon Baker. The Dwayne Wade video included different moves such as the spin layup with both feet and off one foot, the double fake then layup or hook shot, and the fade away in the key. The drills shown in the video can be done with either solo or with two people and you will need 2 obstacles aligned in the key for this drill such as a cone or something similar. The Allen Iverson YouTube video explained tips and drills related to strength and quickness. Allen Iverson is a basketball player well known for his vicious dribbling moves causing defenders to lose their balance. He is also known for his finishing ability against big men and power forwards in the paint. As a 6-­‐foot guard he can beat a 7-­‐foot center easily. The video including drills that includes a dribbling move such as the crossover and combine it with quickness and drive and finishing at the hoop with both hands. The finishing moves include normal layups and reverse. The next video I found was the Steve Nash 20 minute workout. This video represents Steve Nash’s workout shooting routines and warm ups to get into the shooting rhythm and groove. And finally, I came across the Michael Jordan DVD program. The video is 35 minutes long and Michael Jordan demonstrates the fundamentals of the game and he also answers questions and explains his own experience when he perceived the game. He clearly explained in the video that mastering the fundamentals of the game is what separates the good players from the great. Being the greatest basketball player of all time, this proved my point that I’ve stated in my All Star basketball program plan. The video includes both offence and defense tactics. I have still not come across a recording device to use to input high quality sound to the camera or the laptop. I asked a few of my classmates whether or not they have a wireless recording device just like a Bluetooth microphone. One classmate in particular said that he knows exactly what I am talking about and he has a Bluetooth microphone with can record sound into any camera, the problem is that he is not allowed to give the device to anyone because of trust. But he said that Mrs. Fletcher in B block may have wireless recording devices that anyone can use since she is an expert with cameras and recording. I will go to her during this coming week to get her support. I understand that the product must have been a quarter done at least, but the way I want to get my product done is to plan everything and research to correct my mistakes from my first attempt. To me this is the smartest thing to do when creating a video, which is trial and error once, and fix all mistakes. November 25, 2012 Day 7: Nov 25 – Dec 1 Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Start Off day Discuss the Ask Finish working wireless permission filming on Continue Varsity Game videos. microphone from Mrs./ the 6:00 Varsity website with Mrs. Mr. Wade pm game for the Fletcher. to use the 4:00 pm Gym until or 6:00 late timing. pm. videos. videos. Also start filming the videos. The table above includes the week plan that I must execute to get the project done. Today is the 25th of November therefore I started working on the website that I will use to include the videos and episodes. I asked a friend of mine what is a good and free website that I can use to create my own site and to include my videos. My friend answered, “You can either use a website called webs.com or wix.com, I myself will use webs.com to use for my project.” Since my friend is using webs.com, I decided to try out wix.com. So far I’ve chosen the website layout which is included in the sports and activities category when choosing a site layout. November 27, 2012 Day 8: Today I decided to go see Mrs. Fletcher who is really good with photography technology as well as videoing to ask her if there are any available wireless microphones and body pack recorders. She responded by asking if I had my camera with me bad unfortunately I did not have my camera on that day. So she concluded, “You can either bring your camera tomorrow and we can see what to do with the sounding system or what you could do is record all the videos you need and include a voice-­‐over which is just as good as talking through a wireless microphone.” After Mrs. Fletcher brought that up I asked myself why didn’t I think of this before. So after she brought that up I decided to go with voice-­‐overs instead of wireless microphones. November 28, 2012 Day 9: After all the trials and errors, the research, collaboration and feedback, I have finally started filming the final videos needed for my final product. I was looking for a PE teacher afterschool to get permission to use the gym when there is no teacher. I found Mrs. Wade and I asked her to get permission and she responded with, “If you get injured keep in mind there wont be anyone there to help or assist you but you have my permission.” So now that is taken care of. After that I kept asking some of my friends and reminding them that I need a camera man and a demonstrator to move and work around with me but it seemed like everyone was busy with their own projects which of course I don’t mind at all. So what I did film today were videos that didn’t need a cameraman or a demonstrator, instead I used my video camera tripod to keep the camera stable. There was a bit of improvisation with one of the video clips because at the fact that I got a calf cramp while I was in a middle of doing a drill. The cramp lasted for about a minute and I was just laying in the ground and despite all the pain I was still thinking about what am I going to do next after this cramp is recorded. Then I thought of a brilliant idea, I will mention in my video that there really isn’t an excuse to not improve at basketball so I thought of the idea to do ball handling workout drills while sitting on a bench and an easy under the basket shooting drill for beginners that doesn’t require jumping. At the end of the day I recorded a total of 11 videos and each between 2 to 5 minutes long and it took a total of about 1 hour and 30 minutes. November 29, 2012 Day 10: Today was the continuation of filming videos and I discovered that one of my friends is all done with his personal project and that he is willing to help anyone with their project, so I requested help and he approved. He was able to stay afterschool until 7:00 pm, which is the usual time I leave school during Thursday’s to play basketball. I also discovered one of my close friends who could play basketball is able to come too, so I picked him to be a demonstrator and a helper to include in my videos. Right after varsity basketball practice that ended at 3:45 pm, we went straight to student center to play basketball and to start filming, since the MPH is already booked later on for football players and teachers. We reached student center at 4:40 pm and we reached the court and asked the security guard if the basketball gym was booked, and he said yes it is booked from 5 until 7. So we decided to warm our hands with some dribbling and shooting for the remaining 20 minutes until the basketball team arrived to practice. Since we couldn’t use the basketball hoops to film some shooting drills the idea occurred to me that in the mean time we could film the ball handling and shooting drills that didn’t require a basket and also passing drills that you could do all by yourself and a wall. As for the ball handling drills, I included movement drills that used all 4 types of dribble moves, which are the crossover, behind the back, between the legs, and the spin. After that it was a mix-­‐up ball handling drill combining all four types of dribbling moves and the coach or a helper should call out a move and then you’re going to have to execute that move and switch sides. After that I recorded stationary dribbling workouts that will get your hands warm and increased grip with the basketball, therefore making you quicker at dribbling. The last videos recorded that are part of ball handling are the different situations where you use the four dribble moves to avoid or get by your defender. Once that is done, I demonstrated the shooting mechanics, both what you should do and what you should not do. Finally in the last 10 minutes of recording, I decided to add some passing mechanic videos both with two hands and one hand. At the end of the day I ended up with 59 videos in total! (Does not fully display all 59 videos recorded on the second day of filming.) December 3, 2012 Day 11: Today I began editing my videos, starting with the beginners’ tutorial. Each separate video clip uses around 500 megabytes of space, which is a lot. The advantage of this is that it uses high quality playback and audio, which is part of my specifications. After including all of the necessary videos for the tutorial, I added smooth video transition to make the video look more professional. As for the audio, I used GarageBand to record my voice and explaining what was happening with each video/ exercise. December 22, 2012 Day 12: After a long break, I finally continued to work on video editing. The beginners’ tutorial has been completed and today’s goal was to complete the intermediate and elite videos. These videos did not use any voiceovers because I got some feedback on the day of the first exhibition that I could just type on the transitions between each video explaining what is happening on screen and how to execute, which I thought was a really good idea, despite the voiceover getting good reviews. The background music was the most exciting part, because the music determines whether the audience will stay attached to the video or not, and so I was going through some of my old song playlists that would inspire or motivate me until now and I found 2 outstanding beats, which were the instrumental mixture of pop/ rap/ and rock beats that were created in 2011. January 2, 2013 Day 13: Today would be the final editing day and the task was to complete the 4th video, which was the motivational video. Since I’m fund of motivating myself through powerful music and videos and also to motivate others to have a positive attitude, I used a lot of effort to create this video and also had so much fun doing it. I used the All-­‐star motivational quote created in the beginning of the project to use in this video. I recorded the quote using GarageBand and included it in the video. I used a very powerful instrumental song in the background by Hans Zimmer, who is known as a musical composer. January 5, 2013 Day 14: It took me three days to export the four videos and each video had an enormous size of 3 gigabytes. The problem with this is that it will take a very long time to upload on YouTube and on the website I created. I have already notified the advisor of this problem on Thursday the 3rd and I received a reply saying send it ASAP. So I had to act quickly and I thought of an idea to import the four videos again, this time not on final cut, but on iMovie. This is because iMovie usually exports small files in high quality. After all the videos have been exported through iMovie, the file size have been reduced from 3 gigabytes to around 500 megabytes, and this was a good chance to upload it by the end of today and to send it to the advisor. Once each video was successfully uploaded on YouTube, I also included the videos on the Wix website on the “Tutorial Reel” page. Website: http://all-­‐starbasketball.wix.com/all-­‐star-­‐basketball