30 for 30

I served as location audio recordist on an episode of ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary series — one of the most acclaimed sports documentary franchises in television history.

The 30 for 30 brand is built on long-form storytelling about singular sports moments and the people behind them. Since its 2009 launch, the series has produced over a hundred films covering subjects from Muhammad Ali to the USFL to Tonya Harding. The production quality bar is high — these are proper documentary films, not sports segments.

Location audio on a 30 for 30 episode typically means a mix of sit-down interviews and archival-supplement shoots — on-location work at the sites where the story happened, present-day interviews with the people who were there, and the kind of fly-on-the-wall coverage that requires staying quiet and moving fast. Interview audio is the backbone of the format; clean, full-sounding dialogue is non-negotiable.