A piece of my documentary reflection

Documentary Project Reflection

My group did a documentary about what the United States should do in the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Coming into the project, I can go as far as to say that I didn’t know that there was a conflict between the two nations. Honestly, all I knew was that the Middle East was having problems. Now I am definitely keeping up more with U.S. foreign policy.

Part of the reason I ended up with those two was that I wanted to submit a video to C-SPAN and nobody else in the class did besides them. Had we started the process on the first class of the year, then presumably more groups would have wanted to enter the competition. I think that is one way to improve the project. Since our group did most of the work outside of school anyway, it would have been helpful to get the assignment earlier. I could have then gotten ahead of the research and then contributed more. Otherwise, I could have been in a different group that submitted. One way to make groups next year would be to divide up the class, with those who are prepared to put in extra work and want to submit to C-SPAN on one side of the room, and those who just want to do the process mostly in school on the other. Then the big groups could do brainstorming sessions, and each nominate one idea for a vote. Depending on the size of the group, the individuals could vote to nominate a certain amount of them. Then, like we did in Ms. Fillman’s class nominating the CAP Hollywood films, people could rank their top three choices. Because much of filmmaking is collaboration, ranking the top three people they would want to work with would also make sense. Then you could make groups based on similar interests.

Dagger!

I finished my homework just in time to hear one of the greatest (worst) calls of a sports announcer of all time. The Washington Wizards were down by one point against the Detroit Pistons with what I recall was about 12 seconds left on the clock. After the ball is nearly thrown out of bounds, Martell Webster is able to tap the ball to Trevor Ariza for a contested 3-point shot at the buzzer. He puts up the shot, and much to the amazement of just about everybody in the arena and presumably at home, the ball hits nothing but net. Steve Buckhantz, the Wizards play-by-play announcer, clearly thought it went in.

He shouts his signature line, "Dagger!" This one happened earlier this year, but unlike Wednesday, he didn't walk away looking like a total fool.


I consider that a pretty exciting call, and I'd definitely definitely replay this video. Now this coming video of what happens when a "Dagger" goes wrong never gets old. Forget that the Wizards lost the game; this was ten times better than a win!


Now here's what this scene looked like to me. I'm being perfectly honest. I wasn't exactly sure what had happened, but it for some reason just didn't look like it went in. Maybe it's because by the time I was able to process what had happened, I saw no Wizards players celebrating and saw a Pistons player with his hands in the air, as if to celebrate. I caught on what felt like about 15 seconds before Buckhantz, and as a result, I was on my couch dying with laughter. I had totally forgotten that my favorite team had just lost a nail biter.

Anyway, I will give Buckhantz credit for generating a highlight from that lowlight in his life. "The dagger has been retracted," said Buckhantz.