When the Detroit Lions report for training camp next week, they will be joined by a few dozen new friends.
Shannon Furman, senior producer of NFL Films and director of this season’s “Hard Knocks” series, said a crew of about 35 camera operators, technicians, directors and assistants will be on-site to chronicle the more than 400 hours of footage the show logs each week for the HBO docuseries that will feature the Lions for the first time in its 17 seasons.
Another crew of approximately 35 people will work on the show from NFL Films’ New Jersey headquarters, helping to edit and produce the five-episode series that is scheduled to debut Aug. 9.
“It is like a well-oiled machine at this point the way the project is organized,” Furman said. “We’re constantly talking to each other, but everyone is given an assignment, whether it’s a position group or what they’re working with, and you just kind of cut based off of your storylines.”
Furman said her team will catalogue 400-500 hours of footage or more per week, with five four-person crews assigned to film specific subjects at practice every day and a sixth camera operator shooting general practice action.
Twenty robotic cameras have been installed inside and around the Lions’ Allen Park practice facility, including in each of the team’s position rooms to capture behind-the-scenes footage, and the crew swells to playoff-size with up to 13 cameras at each preseason game.
Furman, who started as an editor on “Hard Knocks” in 2007, talked with the Free Press this week for a question-and-answer session to preview the season and potential storylines that could emerge once the Lions open practice.
The goal, she said, is for viewers to learn “something new about someone on the team that you didn’t know before we got there.”
(Some questions and answers have been edited for brevity.)
You spent a few days in Michigan this spring getting ready for the season. What was the purpose of the trip, and what did you learn about the Lions in your visit to Allen Park?
“We came out to shoot the open, basically, for the show, but when we’re doing that I also like to just go to practice. Nobody’s mic’d up or anything like that, but I feel like it just helps me get a vibe for how practices work, see who just, like, even stands out on the field without wearing a microphone. I just kind of take notes of that. Body language, things like that, so it is helpful to just get out there for a couple of days, and we haven’t had that ability to do that probably since the Browns season (in 2018), to be honest with you, so it was nice to be able to do that, and the Lions were awesome as far as, like, the guys participating in the open. Everyone seemed really excited about it, so it was a good trip. I think we learned a decent amount on that trip.”
So who stood out?
“One of the things I know that we’re definitely interested in is this coaching staff, so I was kind of trying to watch for that. Everyone obviously knows Dan Campbell’s going to be a big figure in this, but he was more mild-mannered, just in what I noticed. Aubrey Pleasant was someone who stood out to me. Defensive coordinator, coach (Aaron) Glenn, he stood out.
“It was interesting, Trinity Benson, No. 17, he had a couple of good days while I was there and then I saw that Coach Campbell brought him up in the presser after that, so I was like, maybe I do know what I’m talking about. I called everybody I know and was like, ‘Yeah, that was just somebody I wanted to keep on my radar.’ Honestly, I would say Aubrey Pleasant, coach Glenn and Trinity Benson were three people who stood out to me in those two days.”
More: Detroit Lions WR Trinity Benson having ‘hell of a spring.’ Will it be enough to make team?
Why is Dan so appealing for the show? What is about him that resonates with people?
“I think just like the past year, people really felt like some of the emotion with him with everything that went on with the Lions. I know people have seen the press conference where he got emotional, and then just seeing the Lions win the game for the first time and the reaction to that, he comes across as very relatable to me. And just somebody that you want to root for. He’s also somebody that, working at NFL Films, that people were familiar with here. He was part of the coaching staff with the Dolphins when we did the show (in 2012). Just as a player in the league, too, he’s someone that we were familiar with. I think that just automatically garners some interest when it’s somebody who’s been around the league in different capacities.”
Amon-Ra St. Brown posted a photo, I believe, of him sitting down with the “Hard Knocks” crew. Can you explain what behind-the-scenes footage has been shot if any so far?
“Yeah, we haven’t done too much so far. Honestly, that came about because we’re doing a feature on him for our feature show, for NFL Films Presents, and we kind of saw it on the calendar. We were like, ‘If we’re going out there to do that, we should probably double up and get some stuff for ‘Hard Knocks,’ too, so we ended up sending an extra crew, so there was probably more cameras than we would normally have on a typically shoot out there that day, ’cause we wanted to make sure everybody got what they needed. But we saw it as an opportunity. I assume a lot of people know his story and his background and his parents, both his mother and father. So we thought that that was an opportunity to meet them earlier. I’m hoping that they’ll be at camp, but we definitely wanted to take advantage of that chance since it was already planned for another one of our shows. So yeah, we spent a day with the family there.
“And honestly, I think we have some stuff in the works for when we get to Detroit, but that’s really all we’ve done so far. We looked into doing some stuff with the Okwara brothers but we decided to wait until we get to camp to do the shoot with them, so we’ll definitely be looking to — we get into town on Saturday, so we’ll be looking to do some stuff between Saturday and Wednesday with some guys, but nothing is officially booked yet.
If I can go back to the beginning, how did the decision to have the Lions on “Hard Knocks” come about?
A. “I think everybody knows kind of the rules at this point to, like, if we force someone. We don’t like to force anyone. But there was some interest from both the Lions and the Jets, I think, which were the two teams that were on the list this year. But there was a mutual agreement, the Lions kind of reached out, we were on board. Whenever anyone seems like they’re on board and wants to do it, we want to do it.”
It makes life easier.
“Yeah. Yeah, and they did their homework. They definitely did their homework and asked around to figure out how the show works and what goes on and if they think they should just — since they’re on the list of being forced — should they just do it? And I think that that was why they decided to do that. It’s been an awesome partnership so far. It’s been great to work with them.”
What’s your sense of how close the Lions were to appearing in past seasons of “Hard Knocks,” or whether they were in discussions at all?
“I think they were in discussions. I don’t know that it ever got close. It’s interesting the way it works. I honestly never know who it is until it’s like, ‘It’s being announced in two hours.’ So you always hear rumors and things like that, and I definitely — like over the years coach (Matt) Patricia was there, I definitely heard the Lions in the mix, but I’m not sure that it ever got real close.”
You mentioned Dan earlier and Trinity and some of the assistants. Who else do you expect to emerge as stars or focal points of the show?
“I really enjoyed my time around the guys on the offensive line when I was in town, which is always intriguing because I feel like with the O-line it’s either all or nothing, kind of. They’re either into it, or they’re like, ‘Please get away from me, we want nothing to do with this.’ But I grew up in the Philadelphia area so I’ve known who (Lions offensive line coach) Hank Fraley is my whole entire life and just, like, I kind of know that he seems like a fun guy just around the building. I didn’t officially get to meet him yet, but he definitely was somebody that I noticed while we were there.
“And then for our open, we did some stuff in the weight room so a lot of the guys from the offensive line participated in the weightlifting sessions for that and they were just fun. Like, they were cracking jokes, they seemed into it, and I’ve read up on them a lot. It seems like they’re definitely one of the up-and-coming groups in the league, so I think that they could surprise some people this year and end up being a big part of the show.
“I mean, the wide receiver group to me is just intriguing. I don’t totally know yet, but it seems like it’s pretty deep and it’ll be interesting to see if they keep six or seven, like how many guys they might keep in that group. So I think that could be an interesting position battle for us there at the bottom end of that. And then you have the quarterbacks. Jared. Poor Jared.”
Again. This is his third time (on “Hard Knocks”), right?
“Yes. But he’s being a really good sport about it. He’s one of my favorite people, honestly. Jared had NFL Films cameras with him for essentially like the first 15 months of his career. He did ‘Hey Rookie,’ and then he did ‘Hard Knocks,’ and then we were still there for ‘All or Nothing,’ and then we were honestly still there when he came back after Coach (Jeff) Fisher was fired and then Sean McVay was hired. Like for Episode 8 of ‘All or Nothing,’ we’re still shooting his first minicamp, so I have a really good relationship with him, so I’m hoping that this is a good experience for him, and that we can really show the people of Detroit who he is and what a great person he is. So those are things that I definitely am hoping come through on the show.”
HBO FLASHBACK: Lions QB Jared Goff has ‘Hard Knocks’ advice: ‘Be careful what you say’
I was going to ask you about him because you mentioned Dan was on it before. Jared. Jason Cabinda had a prominent role when “Hard Knocks” was with the Raiders. Each season is its own entity, but how do you tie those past Hard Knocks experiences into now?
“I think it’ll be interesting. I was with the Chargers the year Jared was in it the second time, so I didn’t get to work with him as closely, but they kind of, I think he made a joke, maybe, about like the sun rising incident. I forget if that was to them. I think he did, though. I think he had fun with it. A lot of times we don’t really totally bring it up. I think Brogan Roback re-appeared, cause he’s Maxx Crosby’s best friend, so Brogan was our third-string quarterback in Cleveland, and him and Maxx are best friends, so they did a FaceTime and he was in it.
“There’s actually an interesting story with Jason Cabinda. He’s a Penn Stater, I’m a Penn Stater, so I knew of him and his story obviously going into camp, and he was the guy every week that like would get cut out of the show at the last minute. It was like, you have the whole show put together and you need to lose one thing and it’s like, ‘Aaah, I guess we’re losing Jason again this week. And we loved his mom, so we had sat with his mom, things like that. So then when we finally got his mom to come to a game and do that, we were like, ‘He’s going to end up in the show.’ But his agent got very nervous because he’s like, ‘Shannon, why are you introducing him in Show 4. What does this mean?’
“And I don’t even know that I’m totally allowed to say this, but I’m going to say it — we thought that all of our longshot characters that we were following that year were getting cut and we were like, ‘We want somebody who’s making the team.’ Like, we need someone who’s going to make the team so we have like a happy story in here, too.’ So Jason was like our guy who was supposed to make the team. He was the one that like they had kind of said to me, ‘No, he’s good. He’s making it. He does everything.’ And that’s why we put him in. When I talked to him after the fact, I was like, ‘We thought you were making it.’ That was why we were like, ‘We’ve got to get him in the show,’ because we wanted a good ending with someone. And then he ends up at the last minute not making it and going to the Lions, so it did have a happy ending for him, obviously, and we were able to document some of that with, I think when his agent called him and told him the Lions were going to sign him to the practice squad, we were there.
“So that was the whole story with him. We totally thought he was making the team and that was why we wanted to get him in, and now here we are going back again and he’s in a totally different role. So he’s definitely on our radar. We haven’t really discussed exactly how we’re going to handle that yet or if we will bring back the old footage. I would guess we would, but I’m not sure.”
Cameras are in all the meetings. You know everything that’s going on so you have a sense of the “bubble guys” and who’s safe and who’s not. How does that change, over the course of training camp, who you’re focusing on and the storylines that you have to build out for the viewer?
“Those are, honestly, they’re constantly changing. And every year it’s different. Everyone is different with how much they share, how much they want to keep secret. You can honestly never guess. Like last year, (Dallas Cowboys coach) Mike McCarthy was actually pretty forthcoming in working with me, which was surprising, cause there were other things that he wasn’t with. But I really like the chance to show people who are just good humans, and whether they’re going to make the team or not make the team, we like to think it helps them get more on tape for other people, so that even if they do get cut, which we all hate that day, too, hopefully it’s helping them in some way.
“But yeah, it is a totally fluid situation. Like last year, we had a running back at the last minute on the Cowboys, Rico Dowdle, broke his hip in the final preseason game and it changed the whole course of what the Cowboys were doing with their running backs at that point, so you honestly can never get too comfortable with the depth chart and where you think certain guys are. It’s very unpredictable from year to year, and we like to have a good mix of what’s going on to tell a story, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Especially any more, too, the practice squads are expanded, so it’s hard. It’s very hard to predict, so we just try and stay on top of it as best as we can.”
Dan said at the end of camp he wants to do whatever he can to help the guys at the end of the roster, make another team if they can’t make the Lions
“If we can do that, we love it because — it is hard for us. I don’t know what people think. I see people saying, ‘Oh my god, they’re there, shooting them getting fired.’ It’s awful. It’s the worst day of my year. I hate it. I know it’s a necessary part of the job, but we become friends with all these people, and you’re rooting for them. Even the Lions, it was the Lions-Browns, the final preseason game in Browns ‘Hard Knocks,’ and every single one of our characters had a huge play in that game. Like I’ve never been a part of anything like that. It was insane, and we went from the highest of highs, thinking these guys all played out of their minds, and they all got cut the next morning, and it was awful.”
What’s the set up in camp? What will fans see of you and the operation in Allen Park?
“We picked out our space. I think we will have a trailer that is almost back where the practice fields are. We have three trailers total, I think, but one, we took over the old COVID testing center, so I think I was told that they were moving that trailer out and we were doing our scout that day and my head of field operations was like, ‘Can you just leave that? We can use that?’ So I think one of our trailers is where they were doing COVID tests, and then I believe we have two others. Everyone kind of gets their own thing. Production has a trailer, camera has a trailer and then audio has a trailer, so there’s going to be three different trailers set up, and we’re right on the Lions facility there, so I think it’s probably back behind the fence but I will know that more definitely when we get out there.
“And then you’ll see us, we all wear kind of like a uniform so we try to blend in as best as possible. So we tried to get the actual ‘Honolulu Blue’ shirts from Nike this year, but they didn’t have enough for us so we stuck with the usual person who makes our shirts and got as close as possible to the blue that the Lions wear. Our logo is obnoxiously large on the back of our shirt this year for some reason. Not entirely sure why, but the color’s pretty at least. You will not be able to miss us. Just a random thing, we wore navy blue for the first time last year instead of wearing white or gray and I think we blended in better than we ever have. So that was just another thing I took note of when we were at Lions practice. I was like, it seems like most people have blue on, even coaching staff. Some guys wear gray and black, obviously, but we went with the blue again this year so hopefully we can stay out of shots as best as possible.”
(Lions president and CEO) Rod Wood said teams ultimately have final edit. If there’s a piece of information they don’t want in a show, it doesn’t get in. What sort of push and pull goes on with that? I’m sure you’ve come across things that have great dramatic value in the past that teams don’t want to air.
“It’s a conversation. Usually me and my assistant director will sit with — it’s kind of up to the team to decide how that works. We haven’t exactly discussed who’s going to do that this year, but yeah, it’s a conversation. I would say the majority of the time the things that end up getting pulled are things that have to do with competitive advantage-type stuff. Some things that maybe we wouldn’t even notice. It’s more about language and the actual plays and stuff.
“More times than not, that’s what it is. I can’t really even remember any examples of something that was crazy that we had to lose, cause if it’s in the news we need to cover it and cover it behind the scenes. Some people, like with the Raiders year, were like they’re not showing the Antonio Brown stuff. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t there to show. Like, we did go with him at one point, we showed it as best we could. But he wasn’t there, so when he showed up, we covered what we could. But we cover what’s happening at the camp. So, yeah. It’s a conversation, like, when we do watch the show together and I will do my best to fight for things that I think really help the story line, and we just do what we can to kind of just make everybody comfortable.”
Episodes air Tuesday, so what is the deadline for getting something into an episode?
“The latest we ever got something into Hard Knocks, back to Antonio Brown —everything Antonio Brown did was on Tuesday morning. So two separate times it was 10:30 West Coast time, he returned to camp after having the helmet issue and we got it in. It was the last minute and a half of the show, they even cleared popular music and somehow we got it in. Do we like doing that? No. I would say in our minds, our deadline is somewhere around the weekend, depending on where the games fall and things. We like to say that either end of the day Saturday or end of the day Sunday is our cutoff, and then if we do off-the-field stuffm we’re usually planning on holding that for a future week.
“But it all has to do with if it’s newsworthy. If it’s something that the national media, that people are talking about, we do our best to get it into the show, probably up until midday Tuesday, I would say, would be the latest we could push. And even with the Antonio Brown situation, it was a very planned-out thing. I had cameras that were shooting — we were breaking cards like every three minutes. So it was like five different people would … ‘You cover his arrival, then go back to practice. You cover him giving the presser, then go back to practice. Break the card.’ So it was just like literally getting the footage back in almost real time to the people back home.”
A lot of people here are excited about seeing their team on “Hard Knocks,” so when camp is all done, when preseason is finished, what do you hope “Hard Knocks” shows both the average Lions fan and the general NFL fan who doesn’t follow the Lions day in and day out?
“My favorite part of the show is being able to humanize the guys that play this game. I think this year we have a unique opportunity with the coaching staff, so if we’re trying to do something a little bit different, I hope that everybody learns a little bit about this coaching staff who, not only were a lot of them former players, they were legit former players, very talented guys who had successful careers. So I’m hoping that we’re able to get into that more than we ever have. And again, just learning more guys’ stories. The show at the end of the day is about football, but if we can help you root for the team that you love, that’s our job.
“We all become — I’m a bigger fan of whatever ‘Hard Knocks’ team I’m with than I am of the Eagles. I’m the worst Eagles fan on Earth, cause I’m going to root for whoever did ‘Hard Knocks’ instead of the Eagles. And even last year, when it was the Cowboys, I’m terrible.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.