The HBO documentary series “On Freddie Roach” that I have been director of photography on for more that a year is finally going to air on January 20th, 2012 at 9:30pm. I can’t wait to see it. I’ve only seen rough cuts of the first few episodes so far and I’m pretty excited about it.
I can’t divulge too much information about the show until after it airs but I will say we had a great crew and we traveled the world and worked long and hard to bring this story to life. I was honored to work with Film 44, Herzog and Company, Peter Berg, The Malloy Brothers, Matt Goldberg, Justin Cooper, Brandon Carol and Travis Franklin to drop a few names. We shot an incredible amount of footage with a multitude of different cameras. A team of assistant editors worked around the clock siftting through many terabytes of data and getting the story elements to editor Stephen Strout who worked some Avid magic piecing it all together. I’m writing all this all without having seen the show but I have a good feeling about it.
I didn’t know the first thing about boxing when I got this gig but it didn’t take long to realize I was working with some of the best in the world. The story centers around the life of Freddie Roach, a former professional boxer who now trains world champions such as Manny Pacquiao, Amir Khan, Oscar de la Hoya and Mike Tyson. Freddie is also is in a larger daily fight with Parkinson’s disease, most likely induced by his boxing career. I’ve become a fan of the sport of boxing as well as an admirer of Freddie Roach over the course of production.
This show is very real and absolutely nothing was scripted. We woke Freddie up very early and filmed what happened until he went to bed in pure cinéma vérité style. Our crew was small, we shot with available light and tried our best to be completely invisible. We never knew what was going to happen but something interesting would happen every single day and it was our job to capture those moments that only happen once. Thanks Freddie, for sharing your life with us.