SEATTLE — There are 35 extra people at training camp with the Seahawks right now. Brian O'Connell’s hope is that the guests from NFL Films don't stand out.

“We worked really hard so that when you’re out at practice the crew blends right in,” said O’Connell, the director of broadcasting for the Seahawks and conduit between the team and NFL Films for Hard Knocks." “They’re wearing Seahawks shirts, their lanyards are blue like the staff lanyards. When you look out at the field, you can’t pick them out easily.”

It’s not about hiding anything — the players know when they’re being filmed. It’s to make sure the Seahawks’ participation in the HBO show that will follow them through training camp isn’t a distraction.

“We went through four months of planning to get to a point where it would become seamless,” O’Connell said. “The last thing we wanted was any impact on the team.”

The first episode of “Hard Knocks: Training Camp With the Seattle Seahawks” will air Tuesday. O’Connell’s work began months ago in March when the Seahawks got word that they’d be featured in the series for the first time. A crowd of directors, production assistants, technicians and others have descended upon camp since, and after sifting through hundreds of hours of film, fans will see the first of five final products.

Episodes will air on HBO and stream on HBO Max every Tuesday evening from Aug. 4 to Sept. 1 as "Hard Knocks" crews follow the Seahawks through camp, three preseason games and a joint practice with the Tennessee Titans in Nashville, Tenn., on Aug. 21.

O’Connell, who has worked in the NFL for three decades, said it’s the biggest production he’s been a part of. It’s a “once in a career opportunity.” Before the premiere, O’Connell and Pat Harris, the senior director for “Hard Knocks” at NFL Films, offered insight into how each episode comes to life.

What’s happening at training camp

Six players, coach Mike Macdonald and an assistant coach are mic’d up for every practice.

"Hard Knocks" has two dozen people at practice. That group is made of six, four-person crews that include a director, camera operator, audio technician and production assistant. Another 11 people, in various equipment, production and technology management roles, are spread around camp.

O'Connell has been the main conduit between the Seahawks and NFL Films throughout the project. In addition to brainstorming ideas, he's been tasked with monitoring what makes it into the show.

“There are certain things that the club doesn’t want to include, whether it’s specific to individuals or from the team side, that would give a competitive disadvantage,” O’Connell said. “(My role is) making sure that we’re portraying the team in a great way, but also not giving away things that could help out other teams throughout the season.”

O'Connell sees a screener of each episode before it goes out. But the conversation about what NFL Films is capturing and if it will get included happens around the clock, so there aren't many surprises.

"There's so much information out there … if they say 'Hey, we shot this,' sometimes it's like, yeah, we should look at that before we get to the final review," O'Connell said. "I'll look at it and determine whether other people in the organization need to see it, or is it good enough that we're, you know, OK to let it go as is?"

With technology developments in recent years, NFL Films is working with robotic microphones and cameras. That filming and recording tech has been set up in all of the position meeting rooms, the team meeting room and Macdonald’s and John Schneider’s office.

O’Connell and NFL Films emphasized that there’s no attempt to hide when the crews are filming. The robotic cameras require operators, and O’Connell said there are no hidden cameras.

“NFL Films is unbelievable,” O’Connell said. “They’ve done this for 20 years and there’s no way that this would be allowed to continue if they weren’t as good as they are.”

Editing the show

It’s a team effort to whittle 300 hours of content down to just 55 minutes. The bulk of that work happens at NFL Films headquarters in Mount Laurel, N.J.

Harris, the senior director for "Hard Knocks," explained that a team of production assistants works through the evening to log that day’s footage with various codes. Producers start putting together rough segments as early as Wednesday or Thursday, but it’s over the weekend that the episode truly starts to take shape.

Harris saw the first cut of Episode 1 late Saturday night, but what fans see in the first episode could change a lot between Saturday night and Tuesday afternoon. The crew will continue to fine tune what was put together over the weekend, and if something relevant is captured between then and the cutoff Tuesday, it’ll get included in the show.

“At a certain point we say, ‘All right, if nothing groundbreaking happens we can tentatively put a period on the show’ late Monday night,” Harris said. Conversations about Episode 2, which has new producers and showrunners, started last week.

The "Hard Knocks" team works to include scenes up until the last possible moment, which sometimes means adding in moments from the same day the episode is set to air. The Seahawks screen the episode on Monday and are typically notified of any last-minute changes.

“We think the show is as up to date as we can be logistically,” Harris said. “That’s one thing that we’re very prideful of. That we’re able to be truly telling the story of camp.”

The NFL Films team wraps up the episode on their end Tuesday afternoon and then sends it off to go through HBO’s internal process.

Seahawks: 'We’re embracing this'

It’s never a given that teams will be enthusiastic about participating in "Hard Knocks."

“Coming off the Super Bowl, they could’ve been uncomfortable or nervous … but they kind of said the opposite,” Harris said. “They said ‘We know who we are and we’re confident in who we are.’”

That’s the exact message that a clip showed Macdonald giving the team. He said he’s thinking about "Hard Knocks as a “gift from the football gods.”

“I am one of the most awkward guys in the history of America,” Macdonald said to the group. “I used to worry all the time about what are they going to think about me and I don’t want to say the wrong thing. Screw it. It doesn’t matter. OK? All I am worried about is creating the best football team that we can possibly create. And I want to make sure that we’re us all the time. That’s all I care about.”

O’Connell said the organization cares deeply about the show representing what makes the Seahawks different.

“We want this season to be unique to us,” O’Connell said. “We’ve been working on coming up with ideas and things that, really starting with Episode 1, will make the show look a little different than it has in other years.”

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