For the Love of the Game is a 15-minute documentary highlighting what the culture of soccer is like in Spain. Filmed completely in Valencia, Spain, this short film shows the actual atmosphere of everyday soccer. People of all ages and backgrounds give depth into what it's like to grow up in Spain with and fall in love with the game.
Uniforms and logos are an essential part of sports teams and are created with the intention of representing the city and state of their respective teams. More than a uniform: How culture influences the creation of Arizona sports logos and jerseys presents a look at the conversations and processes undergone before teams are able to unveil their new threads. Four local professional teams are involved with this project: Phoenix Suns, Arizona Diamondbacks, Arizona Coyotes and Arizona Cardinals. Members from each of the organizations were interviewed, in addition to Greg Fisher of Fisher Design. Information was gathered from each of those interviews in addition to research done on the history of each of the team’s uniforms. The information was then created into a documentary that consists of visual and verbal components. The film highlights how each team attempts to represent Arizona and its culture when it comes to what they are wearing on the field, court or ice. The interviews capture the mindset of creative teams as they explore growing new ideas and looks, in addition to a historical delve into two of the team’s debuts in the 1990s. Many of Arizona’s sports teams have much more behind their logos and jerseys than meets the eye. The project taught me how adapt broadcast skills into documentary style storytelling and how important visuals are for longer features. The interviews showed that so many things are taken into consideration when designing a sports logo or uniform and the process can take either months or years to finally reach fruition.
A guide to implementing empathy in crisis communications
This is a multimedia project that is comprised of a short form documentary, a digital article and a reflection essay. The main part of this thesis project is a documentary shot, edited, voiced and produced by Nicole Shinn. The documentary focuses on the CROWN Act, a piece of legislation created in 2019 meant to ban natural hair discrimination. Since 2019, the CROWN Act has passed in over 14 states and 10 cities, including Tucson and Tempe, Arizona most recently. The six minute and 30 second long documentary seeks to educate people on the CROWN Act, what it does, what natural hair discrimination is, how this act has been impactful in Arizona and what national implications it has for legal protections against natural hair discrimination, as well as social acceptance of hair that is different from the Eurocentric standard. The documentary is accompanied by a digital news style article. The article focuses on the stories of a natural hair stylist in Tempe, and two activists in Tempe and Tucson who were instrumental in getting the CROWN Act passed in those cities. The article looks further into why natural hair is so important to the Black community, the struggle Black Americans have faced regarding this discrimination and how members of the Black communities in Tucson and Tempe worked to fight for the right to express themselves through their hair free of discrimination. Lastly, the reflection essay is meant to preface the entire project. To give the viewer a better understanding of how and why I pursued this topic and these mediums for my thesis/creative project. The reflection also walks through what I struggled with, what I learned and what this project means to me and other people that look like me.
For my Barrett The Honors College thesis creative project, I created a website called Destination Arizona. In short, it is a log of every “destination” I have visited in the state of Arizona. These destinations include hikes, drives, trails, mountain peaks, waterfalls, caves, lakes, arches and more. In total, the site features 182 destinations, which is a number that surprised me greatly. I was stunned to find out I had been to that many places in the state. To log all these destinations in a way that completed the project and was useful for people to potentially use, I created an Airtable that is filterable based on numerous parameters of each destination. For example, Camelback Mountain is a peak in Phoenix that is a short but hard hike at 2.5 miles round trip. It requires a car to get to as the road is paved. In the Airtable, you can search based on all of those descriptors. Another example would be the Barnhardt Trail. It is a trail located near Payson that is long in terms of mileage (13.1 round trip) and hard in terms of difficulty. The road to get there is dirt, and therefore requires an SUV, but not a truck or jeep, to get to. This is another example of how refined the search on Destination Arizona can be. Let’s say you want to go to a lake that is near Prescott. You can find all of them via The Chart. Or a cave that is out in the East Valley of Phoenix. You can find that as well. Accompanying The Chart is the The Maps tab, which is simply a visual of everything that is on The Chart. If you’re wondering where exactly something on The Chart is located in the state of Arizona, chances are it is on one of the maps. Two maps exist on The Maps tab. One is a log of everything on The Chart that is not just simply a drive. It is the top one. The second map is a log of almost every destination on The Chart that is just simply a drive, hence the blue routes you will see when clicking on it. There are a couple on the chart that are not on the second map, as Google Maps only allows for 10 layers – or in this case drives – to be shown on a given map. I tried to pick the 10 best/most important for the second map, though. Additionally, three other tabs exist on the website. One of them is the Secret Spots tab, which has six places I am not permitted to put on the chart for various reasons. I was able to show the images of them to help assist some in finding them, but it’s as much help as you will get from me. Additionally, some of the spots, one will simply not find. They are just too hidden. Another tab is the Bucket List tab. While I have 6-7 pages worth of Google Docs of places I’ve still yet to go to in the state, I was able to narrow down that list to 10 places that are very much worth sharing. If I complete anything on the Bucket List tab, it would probably be one of the best days of my life. Finally, I included the Disclaimer tab. While The Chart does its best to prepare people for what they may expect when traveling to a destination (what the drive is like, what kind of car is needed, how long and hard the hike is, etc), I wasn’t able to go into great detail on each destination. Additionally, very few of the articles posted on the website to accompany featured destinations mention what wildlife one may encounter when traveling to a destination. The Disclaimer tab gives a good summary of all of these things, but most notably the wildlife aspect. Remember, in Arizona, if you’re not in bear country, and then you’re probably in rattlesnake country, and if you’re not in rattlesnake country, then you’re probably in bear country. Don’t that let trip you, though. There are very few places in the state that are not considered rattlesnake country.