The Making Of A Fighter

Simon and I finished recently the editing of our group project which is a featurette based on the professional boxer Liam Richards, who is from  Melksham in the West-Country.

The documentary is titled Liam Richards the Making of a fighter and it covers a range of topics which are situated around the sport of Boxing. Liam talks about what inspired him to take up the sport in the first place, to how he prepares for a big fight mentally & physically and finally offers some advice to anybody interested in the sport.


The documentary itself was inspired by the HBO fly on the wall documentaries which are called 24/7. The series have featured the likes of Ricky Hatton, Flloyd Maywhether and Manny Pacqiauo.

Below is a trailer for one of the examples of one of the featurettes

• Reflection on the project as a whole (what worked and what could have improved the standards of the documentary)

I felt the project was edited well although,  I  felt that in the terms of a modern day documentary there were significant standards which we could have improved to make the documentary more interesting and appeal to a wider audience.

The owner of the contender gym is a man named Mark Kent. Mark is a certified trainer and a former boxer, he comes from a very detailed boxing background  and as he has an influential presence within the boxing community, at the moment he trains Liam for his up and coming fights and has worked with many professional boxers such as Mike Tyson and Joe Egan. It would have been good to get his views on Liam as a fighter and what he thinks it takes to make it in the sport I also think it would have given our documentary some stability in terms of more of a varied opinion on the sport rather than just Liam's views.

While reflecting back on our documentary I felt that Liam could have given some demonstrations of the basic boxing skills to the audience i.e. the stances/positioning how to punch all of these things would have taken the viewer away from just the interview and would have made the documentary more advanced in terms of content.

I felt the photo sequence worked well with the soundtrack and also the shots of Liam warming up for a day at the gym where also aligned with the soundtrack for a good effect.

We were able to find one of Liam's Fights but weren't allowed  to use it in our final video due to copyright issues. I personally would have loved to put some of the footage in our final documentary I felt some footage from one of Liam's fights would have made the documentary more interesting as I feel it would have taken the viewer away from the scenery of the contender gym and onto the professional world of the sport. When Simon attempted to film one of  Liam's fights he was unable to due to another production company having bought the rights to film the final fight

I recently saw a Spike Jonze documentary titled Torrance Rises. The documentary was based on the Torrance dance group  the documentary was based on the dance crew who featured in the  Fatboy Slim music video praise you. it followed the dance crew as they prepared for their performance at the 1999 Mtv Video Music Awards.  As a pair of documentary makers when reflecting on our efforts I felt we both could have employed these techniques on our documentary. Simon & I could have followed Liam around  so the audience could have known him more on a personal level we could have filmed him in his day to day life through work as a Plumber and as a family man at home with his long term girlfriend and children and how he prepared mentally and phyically in the weeks leading up to the fight.


I would have liked the featurette to have been more presenter lead with a voiceover as i felt this would add a better structure to our documentary and it could have told the story in a more professional manner it also would have given the audience more of an understanding of the structure of the boxing workouts.

• Things I have leaned during the process off production

1. Planning, Preparation and Production = Progression

Always to plan our work in advance. That way if anything goes wrong we will have enough time to rectify our mistakes. Our featurette was very basic and if it were planned accordingly we both could have been more inventive with the storyline. We would have had more footage to play with and wouldn't have used one of the same cutaway shots twice due to footage becoming limited. We also would have been able to add a storyline element to our production.



We could have filmed

• Liam at work
• Liam at home
• Parts of his outdoor workout routine
• Liam demonstrating some signature boxing moves
• An experts view's on the sport even one of the female trainers/boxer to show equality in the sport

• The Final Fight

As we were unable to get the rights to film his final fight due to copyright restrictions, to get around this I would have taken one of the edirols to the fight and recorded the sounds, the commentary and the ring announcer. Then we could have added the pictures which were taken by Patrick Bethel over that way the viewer would have still been able to get a detailed description of the highlights of the fight due to the audio. Then  I would have recorded the post match interview/reaction with Liam afterwards.

In my opinion its good that  we were able to film such great guy as and I think it was good to make these mistakes erlier on in that way we (Simon and I) know wot to avoid doing and what to improve for future refrences.

Below is our finished production


Liam Richards - The Making Of A Fighter from Simon Partington on Vimeo.