“Shoot your Shot” : Analyzing Basketball Documentaries and Capturing the influence of Basketball Programs on Young Women

Abstract

For this project I chose to use the films Hoop Dreams directed by Steve James and Heart of the Game directed by Ward Serrill, and I used Louise Spence’s work Crafting Truth, Documentary Form and Meaning to center my argument. All three martials were selected with the idea for my own film in mind; a film that follows a girls AAU basketball team throughout the course of the season while also capturing the way in which basketball becomes a platform for young girls to prosper. I chose Hoop Dreams for two main reasons; because of its emphasis on the recruitment process and how it connects basketball to education, and because it was the very first basketball documentary ever made, setting the standard for all documentaries that followed. I chose Heart of the Game because I wanted to use a film specific to women’s basketball and because of its strong use of interview to drive the narrative of the film. Both films tracked the team for longer than I planned to in my own film which made me aware that I did not want to follow a team for more than a season. Louise Spence’s work was selected because of the way in which it highlights the influence of the filmmaker, how her or his choices can impact the story being told and which angle it is going to be told from. I also chose this wok because of the way in which it goes into detail on the many different form’s and structures of documentaries, as well as the formal techniques used to persuade audiences or highlight certain aspects of a film. I choose to do in-depth analyses of just two films instead of brief analyses of a variety of films because I felt that taking the time to understand and pay attention to all of the little details of these films would be more beneficial in preparing me to create my own film than simply scratching the surface of several films would have been. This deep dive into these films also gave me a greater appreciation for the time, detail, and thought that goes into creating a full-length film.