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Jake Rogal: I work at an organization referred to as Phrases and Footage, and Connor Schell is the CEO of the corporate. So this factor had already been within the course of after I joined the corporate. And I met with Connor fairly early on, and he mentioned, “Hey there’s this doc doubtlessly behind the scenes on the Olympics with some basketball groups. We don’t fairly know who it’s but, however are you ?” I mentioned after all, sounds superior.
So then it was so what groups, the USA, no brainer, as a result of they’re the staff everybody’s making an attempt to beat, all of the superstars. France misplaced to the U.S. within the gold medal sport in Tokyo; they’re the house nation. They’ve Wemby; that’s just about a no brainer. Canada has just about essentially the most NBA gamers apart from the U.S. on the staff. They’ve Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the most effective gamers within the NBA. They are often compelling. Additionally they don’t have a variety of Olympic expertise in order that was a call of their favor.
After which, the final staff we waited some time as a result of we weren’t positive who we needed to go together with. Greece was floated on the market due to Giannis [Antetokounmpo]. However we actually needed to consider who might actually go far within the match, and Serbia had completed second on the World Cup. They’ve [Nikola] Jokic, clearly, a worldwide celebrity, and so they have a tremendous nation historical past. Germany was floated on the market as a result of they received the World Cup, however finally, the historical past of Serbia basketball put them excessive. So, they had been the fourth staff.
Then it was a matter of getting all of the events concerned, which was FIBA, and the Olympics, USA Basketball. Be certain that everybody’s on the identical web page. So that truly went up all the best way to proper earlier than we shot, which was the spring of 2024. We began capturing in June, so it was actually final minute, however a variety of the legwork and getting the product off the bottom was achieved earlier than I entered the image, however I watched all of the exhausting work that went into it and noticed all of the events come collectively, which was undoubtedly difficult.