Post-Film: "Hawaiian: The Legend of Eddie Aikau"

The title of the documentary, Hawaiian: The Legend of Eddie Aikau was chosen in the mostly likely cause that Eddie imbued what it meant to be Hawaiian. Throughout the documentary Eddie Aikau's love for Hawaii, it's culture and people constantly shine through as major characteristics of himself. Eddied was the embodiment of being Hawaiian from his legendary surfing to his attempt on saving the his fellow crew members on the Hokulea. Eddie Aikau is a legend and guiding spirit on the island and in the ocean. With this in mind I believe the angle of the film was that Eddie was the embodiment of what it meant to be Hawaiian through his love for surfing and helping others.

Knowing that this documentary was created for ESPN's sports entertainment it would be hard to ignore the fact that the documentary had parts that would have been dramatized to elicit a response from the target sports audiences. The documentary would have also been focused around the surfing aspect of Eddie's life and not so much on personal and social life. Filmmakers would have mostly likely assumed the audience watching would have been surfers and understood most of the history behind the sport, they might not have needed to explicitly explain some parts of the movie, like the history behind the Hokulea. Had this movie been produced by a company like PBS or the History channel the documentary wouldn't have focused so much on the importance of the surfing competitions in Hawaii. The documentary also wouldn't have focused to much on Eddie as the main character but rather the view would have broadened to the Hawaiian population and how society changed through the fluctuation of American involvement.Surfing also wouldn't have been as big of a focus, the Hawaiian identity would have been more centered through more perspectives and other large figures in Hawaii's history.

Eddie Aikau the day the Hokule'a set sail

If I was to make a documentary based of the reading, I would have chosen to follow Theodore Roosevelt. My focus would be to follow his rise of power while in the Presidential seat and how he changed the US into a Global Leader. I would do this by highlighting his career and how he "inherited an empire-in-the-making" when he came into office. I would follow through with his expansion and development of the United States Empire, highlighting the fact that he served in the military and understood what it was like in war and understood how to use tactics of force. Only when necessary. The angle of my documentary would be through Roosevelt's love for america and how he wanted to help America be the best it could possibly be and be able to contend with foreign powers, and still retain American values.

Theodore Roosevelt: A Rough Rider