How LeBron James' The Shop: Uninterrupted shoots in actual barber shops

GQ

Director Rob Alexander discusses everything from camera placement to people getting haircuts in the background to prepping celebrity guests to choosing locations for the HBO talk show from LeBron James. "The way it works logistically in the actual space is, first, understanding who’s going to be in the room," he says. "That’s its own process. Once we’ve established who’s going to be in the room, we think about what matters culturally. What are all these people who are sharing this space going to be excited to talk about? Then it’s about literally looking at a space and determining the most attractive space where if you sit here, and you sit here, and you sit here, and you look here, and you look here, and you look here, how do I make that the most visually appealing? And then how close can I be, but at the same time, respecting someone’s space. Because we want them to feel comfortable and excited to share, so it’s about creating an environment that’s incredibly safe, inviting, there’s no pressure, and you’re allowed to breathe. So it’s a choice for where our cameras are positioned—sometimes we’ve had up to 10 cameras in the room, but we don’t want the cameras to be up in your face. It’s the same thing with our lighting: We don’t want it to be overpowering to where you’re constantly squinting your eyes. We make choices with long lenses and how the lights feel in a minimized space where people can be open." As for prepping the conversation, Alexander says: "I will say this: There’s a beautiful balance between incredibly raw conversation, but at the same time, there’s a very clear agenda for us internally about what we want to talk about. We’re excited for the talent there with us to talk about it, so there’s a lot of time spent essentially building a roadmap for the conversation. This is where we want to start, this is where we want to end, we want to make sure we address this, so we prepare maybe 15 to 20 topics and supporting questions for each of them. We like the show to work in a way where we just sit down and go, but at the same time, we want to make sure it’s engaging in addition to hitting the agenda. A lot of that is done in post, but we want it to be engaging for Mav and PR as our leaders on set and for all the talent that’s there. We want them to look forward to talking about these topics and I actively communicate with them throughout the show to follow up on different points or places we want to go."