Making the Sports Documentary with Gotham Chopra

The Documentary Life

Sports documentaries have really come into their own as a documentary genre. The truth is that the built-in drama and sometimes off-the-field shenanigans make for some really compelling stories. Entities like ESPN's 30 For 30 series, HBO Sports, Netflix and Hulu's ventures into sports docuseries, all have been making these films and really elevating the stature of the sports documentary.

And so has filmmaker, Gotham Chopra. With his business venture, Religion of Sports, Gotham has been embracing the sports documentary in a way that has really been separating himself from the pack.

And we were fortunate enough to be able to sit down with Gotham and have a one-on-one chat about why sports docs are so popular and best practices for the doc filmmaker to be making them!

Topics Discussed

• how Gotham Chopra came to documentary via early journalism assignments
• How ESPN’s 30 for 30 series legitimized sports as documentary subject
• Why sports makes for such compelling stories
• How to gain access to higher profile sports personalities
• The importance of separating your project from all of the types of content that are already out there

Additional Resources

Watch the Religion of Sports' The Great Brady Heist in its entirety!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I29ZMIOZwX0

Sponsors & Thank Yous

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° Free Music Archive – Special Thank You to recording artist, Dlay who supplied music for this week’s episode of TDL. You too can download his music or other artists’ music by going to Free Music Archive today!

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