TV Documentary roundtable: ‘The Greatest Night in Pop,’ ‘Queens,’ ‘Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story,’ ‘Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity’ [Exclusive Video Interview]

The talent behind several documentary films and series that are trying to become contenders at the upcoming Emmy Awards sat down with Gold Derby to discuss various topics including the documentaries that made them want to get into filmmaking, the recent docs that wowed them, what poses the biggest threat to documentaries and what music they’d like to hear as they walk on stage if they should ever win an award. This was all part of Gold Derby’s Meet the Experts panel on TV Documentaries that included Bao Nguyen (“The Greatest Night in Pop”), Chloë Sarosh (“Queens”), Gotham Chopra (“Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story”) and Dorsay Alavi (“Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity”).

You can watch the television documentary group panel above with the people behind these four projects. Click on each person’s name above to be taken to each exclusive individual interview.

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While Sarosh didn’t single out a specific documentary that made her fascinated with the genre, she bring up that she grew up on the movies of David Attenborough. “What I particularly love is the idea of crossing mediums. I love the idea of blending our genres and making something for a new audience that maybe hasn’t felt that much like natural history for them to this point because we need to reach those younger audiences.” Chopra immediately brought up the 1994 film “Hoop Dreams,” which was also cited by Nguyen. Nguyen also singled out the 2007 film, “Up the Yangtze” from Yung Chang. “I hadn’t seen many Asian-American documentary filmmakers. When I heard his Q&A, I was like, ‘Oh, he looks like me and we have a similar background. Maybe it’s not so hard.’”

In terms of documentaries that blew their minds, Alavi singled out the Oscar nominated film “Four Daughters.” “I thought that was incredible. I thought it was very powerful and excellent in how they decided to structure the documentary and use what they didn’t have. It was very innovative, gut wrenching, difficult to watch but it was one of my favorites this year.” She also cited the Oscar-winning “20 Days in Mariupol,” which was quickly seconded by Sarosh. “It’s incredibly hard to watch but that’s so important sometimes and, probably like everyone here, then I have to go and watch a bit of trash and make up for it,” Sarosh admits.