It doesn’t feel like this world that we are only documenting and can’t relate to, it feels like there are borrowed learnings there from the people whose stories we’re telling in a way that makes it feel connected to our own.
You know the people you meet who feel so instantly familiar? To the point where you have a hard time placing them in the timeline of memory, like where they actually came into your life? Taylor Sharp and Holland Gallagher are like that for me.
The two best friends have been working together since their days at UNC at Chapel Hill, and started Blue Cup Productions soon after. I worked with them for the first time covering their series Hoop Portraits in early 2021, actually almost exact five years ago. I went back to find the emails and originally recommended to Taylor that another friend write about the series because of their G League background, but that person ended up getting shingles, so thank goodness for that (sorry).
I met Taylor and Holland for the first time at Salt Lake City All-Star, while they were shadowing Mac McClung for The Break. I remember choking up in the back of Mac’s presser after he won the Dunk Contest, feeling simultaneously happy for him and happy/proud for Taylor and Holland, smiling huge and creeping around the same room with their cameras.
We talked about how they met, both of them being multi hyphenates and the balance between the pressure and necessity in this biz of being one. We also talked about the level of care involved in their work, how personal and professional worlds tangle especially in up close documentary work that in their case has lasted for months, even years, and involves all the people in an athlete’s orbit.
Plus: Processing rejection, staying creative, whether there’s space for genuine and sustained connection between athletes and media, the transactional nature of “cultivating contacts” in the NBA ecosystem (gross) and the joy of genuinely connecting (the best), being an observer vs. being a conscience, the biggest surprises working alongside athletes like McClung, Scoot Henderson, and Matas Buzelis; and the vulnerabilities to be aware of when working with young athletes.
