Liam Richards - The Making Of A Fighter from Simon Partington on Vimeo.
Above is the completed documentary on boxer Liam Richards by me and Edem King.
I'm proud of this piece of work because I think it has a professional feel to it as we took inspiration from shows such as Sky Sports 24/7 and UFC Primetime as well as All Access. Through doing research on programmes and documentaries on sport we quickly noticed similar shots that all directors like to use. There are a lot of slowed down shots and close ups of the fighters faces so we wanted to include this in our piece.
24/7 is also very good at showing fighters personalities in the feature, this makes more entertaining viewing and allows the audience a chance to get to know the fighter better. We were very keen for Liam to be himself on camera and let his personality come out. You can see that in the documentary in the parts were he is looking into the camera and blowing kisses. In the interview he comes across as very natural and relaxed, which is a big positive as we didn't have to retake any questions or even edit down his answers as everything he said was relevant to the question and interesting.
I think we use the soundtrack well. In this kind of programme instrumentals are usually used so you can intercut with soundbites or voiceovers, which is what we did with the former. Without lyrics in the track it makes the viewer focus more on the image on screen, which is ultimately the most important part.
It was a shame that we couldn't have more control over the lighting as we shot all in one day. In hindsight it would have been better to try and get Liam in the gym by himself when we could have experimented with the lighting around him to get some different shots and nice cutaways.
Another way we could have improved is again really down to time management. If we had filmed for example 3 sessions we would have a lot more footage to play with and could have varied the shots more.
A disappointing point is when accidentally used the same cutaway twice in questions following on from one another. We didn't notice this when we proof watched it and it only became apparent when we were writing the DVD.
I really like the mix of still images with video footage, it breaks everything up nicely and offers variation. Plus the images from his last fight were taken brilliantly by Patrick Bethel and fitted in perfectly with the theme of the piece.
