WITH A WORLDWIDE PAUSE IN THE SPORT UNIVERSE, THE 2020 WORKED AS THE IDEAL STAGE FOR THE GLOBAL PRESENTATION OF THE LONG AWAITED DOCUMENTARY OF MICHAEL JORDAN AND THE CHICAGO BULLS.
With the double impact of being broadcasted at the same time, by the international channel ESPN, and the popular streaming platform Netflix. The dynamics had two variants, the first, in traditional TV, it would be 2 weekly episodes, for 5 weeks, to complete the 10 chapters of this sports “Novel”, and in Netflix, you could watch it one by one, or the completed series, it would be depending on the spectator taste.
A fundamental concept, is the one of alpha and omega, the first episode will talk to us about that relation between the beginning of a project, and the conclusion of the same; it is important when you start a path, be clear on what is the company´s objective, of that effort, in the case of Michael and the Bulls, their objective was from the beginning of the young Jordan career, putting the team in the position to be first championship contenders, and champions later, but the documentary is not only about that, and differently than other movies, the director revealed to us, that the history is not going to be a classic recount of the sporting career of a great athlete, but we are going to integrate the diversity of narratives in a organization with a set of images, interviews, and audiovisual material both historical and unpublished.
The themes of the documentary changed depending on every episode, it also used the personalities of the main characters. We have 5 people starring, one antagonist, and several supporting characters, which helped us to understand the environment, the stakes of every situation, and the perception of the temperament of those linked in the talked matters. A very interesting theme inside the documentary, is perhaps the preponderant atmosphere during that 1998 year, and it was the cultural phenomenon which was happening with the team, and the sport of basketball; we talked about a narrative known to many, and is the one of the big American company, with humble beginnings, optimizing their tools, to forge a corporate structure capable to establish operational systems with an extraordinary performance quality; lets understand well the time when the doc is happening, we are in 1998, this time could be defined as the apex of American culture, economic system, and media power popularity.
This documentary work is also showing the corporate side of America, taking advantage of the 20 years nostalgia cycle, and bringing to the world the picture of what it was achieve by an American association, which counted with several faces in that sport level, but was Michael Jordan the one in charge of taking basketball to the global culture. It could be commented in a deep way the cultural meaning of the icon of Michael Jordan inside the United States, and we will find a even more wide series of conflict, progress, and victories achieved by the American society during his career, but we would extend a lot, and we would enter into delicate and deep topics, such as racism, segregation, and inequality.
Lets focus for a while in the “antagonist” of the series, Jerry Krause, someone who was cataloged by one of the journalist, as somebody with the little person problem, that´s kind of delicate, but it was considered necessary to set the tension in the story, and possibly planned in its time to generate specific streams in the public opinion. Concerning this we are going to present the main conflicts in the Last Dance: 1)Corporations versus labor force 2)Athletes versus Executives 3)Athletes versus Athletes 4) Media versus Executives 5)Media versus Athletes versus Athletes. These 5 main problems, will join us along the whole series as central axis of discussion, and we are deciding who is going to be on the right side of the history.
In the crafting of screenplays, and stories in general, a traditional way to explore a character, is pose the journey of the hero, and in this case there is a special duality, because our protagonist is the team, but also there is an effort to describe the journey of each one protagonist, demonstrating that everyone has faced his road of warrior. In this first episode, it is made the call to adventure, and that adventure takes our warriors to a new place, in this case is the city of Paris In France. Physiologically there are several elements to be studied, even though this work is not searching for establishing profiles of every character, there are patterns of behavior motivated by primary relationships, as the relationships between parents and children, which are always present in sports narratives, and is very nice to have a fresh look to those relations, from the perspective of someone who has been in the magnifying glass of the public eye during a long time.
The idea of “No one will work harder than me”, is a critical moment en the legend of Michael Jordan, and in basketball, because presented a ethical principle of work which it is maintain today, and that was evolving through time, and it deserves respect for the way it is presented in the doc; we find ourselves in the origin story of a superhero, where in the first episodes we see how he got his “powers”, basically they were trying to show the place where Jordan´s motivation came from, to achieve all the things he accomplished, and that we will watch it in the second episode, but in this one first, it is talked to us about the moment when young Michael, express to his college coach, his wish to become the best player in the team, and from that moment we enter in the meat of the sandwich, because the biggest pleasure of the series, is to watch what it would be called later by a Chicago Bull´s fan, “ The Poetry in Motion”; a reason to watch this doc, beyond the excellent storytelling, is the absolute quality in the selection and edition of the pictures of the actual basketball, to see Michael Jordan doing his buckets in the University of North Carolina, in the 1984 Olympics, and in his early days in the Chicago Bulls, is something extraordinary, and we recommended it to you with total confidence.