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Jake Rogal: I work at an organization known 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 mentioned, “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 mentioned in fact, sounds superior.
So then it was so what groups, the USA, no brainer, as a result of they’re the staff everybody’s attempting 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 probably the most NBA gamers in addition to the U.S. on the staff. They’ve Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, among the finest 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 staff we waited some time as a result of we weren’t positive who we needed to go along 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 world celebrity, and so they have a tremendous nation historical past. Germany was floated on the market as a result of they gained the World Cup, however in the end, the historical past of Serbia basketball put them excessive. So, they have been the fourth staff.
Then it was a matter of getting all of the events concerned, which was FIBA, and the Olympics, USA Basketball. Make certain everybody’s on the identical web page. So that really went up all the best way to proper earlier than we shot, which was the spring of 2024. We began taking pictures in June, so it was actually final minute, however lots of the legwork and getting the product off the bottom was achieved 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.
