Assignment # 2: Scene Analysis

Vince Carter
Beyond the Glory

The documentary I chose to analyze is titled Vince Carter, Beyond the Glory. In telling the story of Vince Carter before leaving the Toronto Raptors, this documentary highlights three dominant topics. These three main topics include: Vince Carter’s journey from childhood to his success as a star player on the Toronto Raptors, Vince Carter’s brother and his struggle to stay out of jail, and Vince Carter’s agent “Tank” Black and his betrayal of the Carter family. The scene that I chose specifically was part three of five. This scene discussed all three topics.
The documentary does various things in terms of its approach to capturing Vince Carter. First, the scene covers each of the three dominant topics one at a time. By doing this, it is evident that there are a few areas that the director wants to discuss or get across to the audience. By choosing a few main events in Vince’s life, it allowed for the creator of the documentary to expand on those topics and made it easier for the viewers to remember and understand specific pieces of the documentary. The greatest aspect of the documentary, in my opinion, was having Vince Carter himself speak numerous times throughout the film. While the documentary showed various pictures and videos of Vince, Vince appeared directly afterwards providing his insight on each depiction.
In terms of video making, the director of Vince Carter, Beyond the Glory, did an excellent job of getting his or her point across by constantly displaying new pictures, videos, and interviews to hit home each event. For example, in this scene in particular, the narrator talks about Vince’s immediate success with the Toronto Raptors while a picture of Vince on the cover of Sports Illustrated is shown. Then a clip of Vince at the dunk competition is viewed, Vince speaks about the dunk competition via interview, his cousin Tracy McGrady speaks and a picture of Vince’s Rookie of the Year award is displayed, all in a matter of two minutes. Slow motion video clips are included in the documentary along with interviews from his former teammates, mother, step-father, brother, and Toronto Raptors coach Butch Carter. The documentary excels at providing the audience with a whole view of Vince Carter’s life by dividing events into small yet detailed fragments, how Vince Carter became infatuated with basketball, his college basketball career, and his time as a Toronto Raptor. The fragments then piece together at the end of the documentary to give the audience a large picture of Vince. Through the directors efforts, including music and sports commentators voices, the documentary pumped up the audience, allowing them to feel how Vince felt during his basketball games.
As a whole, scene three presents Vince Carter at his peak of success in terms of basketball but at his lowest point relating to let downs and stress off of the court. This scene is effective in furthering the documentary overall by explaining how and why Vince came to be who he is at the end of the film and how he got there. The scene simply adds to the story of Vince Carter by extending details on to what had been previously stated in the documentary. The videos and interviews in this scene allowed me, the viewer, to feel the excitement around Vince in North America around his arrival to Toronto. The dunk competition footage especially, followed by Vince himself commenting on his preparation and emotions during that time, helped to push Vince’s story to a new level. Basically, the entire documentary shot a part of Vince Carter’s life in story form and this scene was a segment of the story that needed to be told to complete the film. I truly enjoyed every aspect of this documentary from the upbeat music to the basketball videos and especially the interviews of Vince and his family and friends.

RG