Q: How much did you know about Men’s Volleyball before the beginning of this project?
Parker: As a former NCAA D1 volleyball player, I have a lot of exposure to the sport and play it at a very high level. I am continuing to play volleyball past college as a part-time professional. Men’s volleyball is a huge part of my life and I was so excited to have the opportunity to influence change for the game in the world of sports.
Rachel: I didn’t know a lot about men’s volleyball prior to starting this project. I had seen a few matches before, but I didn’t know any of the technical terms or plays that are involved.
Elijah: Zip, zero, zilch. I knew nothing about Volleyball, and far less about Men’s Volleyball. I’ve never been a sports fan. I have learned a great deal about volleyball over the last few months though working on this project. I can differentiate between the various plays. I know what many of the college teams’ names are and what their logos look like. I know about the different conferences and where they are located; A LOT more than I know about any other sport. It’s been insightful learning a totally brand new subject, then applying and using that knowledge in a meaningful way.
Erin: I knew that men’s volleyball existed, but that was the extent of my knowledge. I was very surprised to learn of the growing popularity of the sport and to learn even more about the difference a sport can make in an athlete’s life.
Q: What interested you in joining this project?
Parker: The opportunity to work with the First Point Volleyball Foundation and John Speraw was a huge draw for me. I am so immersed in the volleyball community, and I was super excited to work with some of the most important people in our game today. I also wanted to take on this project because I saw a real opportunity to grow the game I love. Men’s volleyball is such an exciting sport, and this project was a way for me to share my love for the sport with so many people.
Rachel: What made me interested in this project was the idea of getting to travel and do interviews with people in the community.
Elijah: What drew me was the prospect of working on a project that was built around a documentary. Documentaries and sports are two subjects I was unfamiliar with, and it felt like a unique learning opportunity.
Erin: I tend to walk toward the unfamiliar. Since I had not previously worked on a project to promote a documentary or even a sports-related film before, I was drawn to learning something new and taking on this challenge.
Q: Why does this transmedia project matter, and what impact do you hope to make?
Parker: Men’s volleyball is the No. 1 fastest growing sport in the country right now. It is ready to explode, and we are already seeing the impact that our campaign is having. Our documentary trailers have over 100k views, and we have truly exploded on social media. However, the impact that I love to see the most is on a personal level. We have received so many powerful messages on social media thanking us for what we are doing for the sport and how our effort is changing lives. That is the beautiful thing about a campaign like this.
Rachel: We are shedding light on a topic that has a lot of misconceptions, like “volleyball is a girls’ sport.” I hope we inspire the next generation of young athletes to become interested in playing volleyball, and that one day some of those kids get to represent Team USA at the Olympics.
Elijah: This transmedia project matters, because of the impact it has on the overall reach of the documentary Match Point: The Rise of Men’s Volleyball. This project supports the overall goal of bringing awareness to the growth of boys’ and men’s volleyball and can be expanded on further over a longer period of time.
Erin: After spending more than eight months with the Match Point project, I hope that our audience is more aware of the need to grow the sport of boys’ and men’s volleyball. My wish is that through the stories we were able to tell, more opportunities become available for minority and youth athletes and that it eventually translates into broadening their future opportunities to succeed.
Q: What has been the most challenging part of developing this transmedia project?
Parker: The most challenging aspect of this project is managing all the different elements. We have a gaming app, podcast, social media, website, documentary, and video content living at the same time. That is a lot to manage, and it creates a complicated storyworld. However, it is something that has challenged our team to create some amazing content that people are engaging with all over the country.
Rachel: The most challenging part of this project was the lack of knowledge I had about the game of volleyball. I am not an athlete and I had to work at understanding the game and the players better.
Elijah: Getting and using ideas that differ from your own to add to and move the project forward has been challenging.
Erin: The most challenging part of this project has been to broaden the audience of our campaign. It is difficult to reach those who are not already somewhat aware of men’s volleyball and even more difficult to engage with them and show them why the sport matters.
Q: What is something that you learned throughout this process that you will take with you into future projects?
Parker: I think something that I learned from this process is how to effectively tell a story in a multimedia campaign. A consistent brand message across all platforms is essential, but we can’t tell the same stories on each platform. That’s boring and doesn’t create stories that connect and build on one another. We live in a world where extreme media targeting is common. An effective campaign takes advantage of that so that it can present a variety of different stories to the people who are interested in them. I think our team learned this along the way and ended up with a very effective web of multimedia stories.
Rachel: This project has taught me the necessary steps and process required to launch a huge campaign. I learned how to target different audiences on social media and how content can create different experiences depending on which media channel you use.
Elijah: The distance between idea and the tangible real project is only as wide as you want it to be. It also takes many small moving pieces and people working together to create a project with the scope like this one.
Erin: I have learned that you can “EMDD” anything! Taking the skills and techniques we learned through Design Thinking, Transmedia Storytelling, and Human Computer Interaction and combining them all to address a problem space, to market a product, to promote a mission, is extremely effective and a valuable asset to designers.
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