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Jake Rogal: I work at an organization referred to as Phrases and Photos, 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 stated, “Hey there’s this doc probably behind the scenes on the Olympics with some basketball groups. We don’t fairly know who it’s but, however are you ?” I stated in fact, sounds superior.
So then it was so what groups, the USA, no brainer, as a result of they’re the crew 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 crew. They’ve Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the most effective gamers within the NBA. They are often compelling. In addition they don’t have lots of Olympic expertise in order that was a call of their favor.
After which, the final crew we waited some time as a result of we weren’t certain who we wished to go together with. Greece was floated on the market due to Giannis [Antetokounmpo]. However we actually wished to think about who might actually go far within the event, and Serbia had completed second on the World Cup. They’ve [Nikola] Jokic, clearly, a world celebrity, they usually have an incredible 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 crew.
Then it was a matter of getting all of the events concerned, which was FIBA, and the Olympics, USA Basketball. Ensure that everybody’s on the identical web page. So that really went up all the way in which to proper earlier than we shot, which was the spring of 2024. We began capturing in June, so it was actually final minute, however lots of the legwork and getting the product off the bottom was finished earlier than I entered the image, however I watched all of the arduous work that went into it and noticed all of the events come collectively, which was positively difficult.