"Knuckle Up"

The Wisdom of Age Project—Hampton Roads, Va. 2015

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Knuckle Up"

a documentary film by Briggs Watkins

Making the film

About the filmmaker

AFTER THREE LONG MONTHS of havoc scheduling, failing technical equipment, lost footage, and a monstrous blizzard, conducting a documentary about the boxing coach Lloyd Jones has forced me to overcome several creative challenges. One in particular was on the first intended day of shooting where I learn from one of the assistant coaches that Jones had spontaneously left his gym to address other matters. Devoted to not go home empty handed, I decided to film the various boxers in the gym who agreed to share their personal opinions about Jones. I made a conscious creative decision to include the voices of various boxers of different races and ages in order to produce a balanced, unbiased frame of the coach. Ultimately, I edited together three boxers: an older tattooed white man, a young black up-and-coming boxer, and the assistant coach who turned out to be a previous student of Jones. The contrasting personalities of the boxers created an unintentional effect where Jones became more of a positive entity that bettered the lives of strangers through boxing instead of a being a cartoonish boxing coach archetype. The decision proved to benefit the overall documentary, because it allowed the audience to form a mental image of who Jones is before physically revealing him completely. —Briggs Watkins

“If I can show a man he’s traveling wrong, and help him back on the right path, meaning mostly kids, then my living won’t be in vain”

—Lloyd Jones

"Knuckle Up" (7:54)