This film tells the story of the 2016 USA Women’s Gymnastics Team.

It shows this tribe of normal young women “going dark” and becoming invisible, both literally and metaphorically, as they step away from other aspects of their daily life, focusing and training single-mindedly 24/7, in relentless pursuit of sporting greatness.

We show the brutal strength and impossible physical ability of the team, building a breathless sense of repetition—working on full-body strength, skill and ability training on the mat, traveling to competitions, living and breathing their sport, over and over again.

The USA Gymnastics Women’s National Team will be one of the world’s most followed teams in 2016. Every four years these young athletes rise to meet the world’s massive expectations.

However, this group of young women have yet to prove themselves on the world’s biggest stage: the upcoming Olympics in Rio. Soon they will be on the minds of everyone in America as they go for gold.

These films were developed to be a hypnotic, unseen portrayal of gymnastics, capturing not only the physical but also the psychological side of the sport. We worked with the US Gymnastics Team to carry out in-depth interviews, which informed and developed the ideas in our script. We wanted to capture the sense that these were normal young girls with impossible toughness and impressive strength, so we chose to film ideas that helped to build a bigger world around their training. A fluid documentary-style approach was used to capture the brutal strength of the girls, as well as the softer, more gentle lifestyle moments. It was important to capture the unique rhythms felt by a gymnast as she moves. Throughout the film, dark, sullen lighting was used to create a sense of disconnection, and to help to convey that the girls were working elsewhere together. A soft, dreamlike shot that we