Just short of mid-May, there’s already about 100 hours of material shot and logged about these relocated Rams for the HBO series “Hard Knocks.”

Most of it chronicles the logistics involved in the move from St. Louis to L.A., but there are choice cuts collected from having chronicled the NFL Draft circus, and even more as the rookies gathered for workouts this month in Oxnard.

And all digital diarying might not even get aired.

Coordinating producer Ken Rodgers and director Matt Dissinger admit that the crazy part of this process that leads to the show’s first of five episodes on Aug. 9 is that by the time training camp opens in late July in Irvine, so much more stuff happens that the stories already locked and loaded might get canned.

It’s the hard knocks’ lessons that HBO has already learned about this documentary beast. When all is said and done, there might be close to 2,000 hours filmed for five one-hour shows.

Dissinger and Rodgers left the Rams’ Oxnard camp on Thursday afternoon planning to circle back in late June. This series is already breaking new ground — it’s the first time in 11 years of the series they’ve started filming a team this early. But it’s because there’s already so much going on to document.

This will be the first time “Hard Knocks” has a franchise moving as a major subplot. And the first time they’ve had a team dealing with the No. 1 overall draft choice. The Rams are also the first featured from the NFC West.

First things first, though.

How does this whole shebang actually work?

“We might have the logistics down from having done this so many times, but that doesn’t make it easy,” said Rodgers, who started on the series as a show runner in 2007. “The true challenge of ‘Hard Knocks’ is that we don’t what the story is. People will ask us all the time after an episode airs, ‘What happens next week?’ I don’t know, because it hasn’t happened yet.

“That’s the truth. What happens is not controlled by us. We don’t determine who makes the roster, who gets playing time, who rooms with whom. All we have to do is react, so the storylines become a challenge no matter what kind of advancements we have in technology to do this.”

Rodgers works for NFL Films in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey. He and his crew of about 20 editors take the content sent via a dedicated Internet feed and do their magic before shipping it over to HBO to air on Tuesday nights through early September.

Dissinger, on the HBO team, has a veteran crew of about 32 who create five camera teams, and set up a dozen robotic cameras and monitor their feeds. The later is a job Dissinger started out doing on the team.

It’s all about flying stealth through the team’s movements — even if it’s following a player buying a new home in Southern California and undergoing some sticker shock.

“We’re not as big as a Hollywood production crew but it’s for a basic reason — our No. 1 goal is to make a great show, but our 1A goal is not to impact the football at all,” said Rodgers. “Our crew knows the rhythms of the camp, knows every drill — and knows when to get out of the way, where to go, where not to go,w hat time things happen, when to get the best shots. It’s institutional knowledge that NFL Films has and I’m not sure anyone else could do this better than NFL Films.”

Even with the NFL Network based in Culver City and Hollywood TV edit bays very close, NFL Films and HBO already have their system down to a refined science.

They’ve had experience in Oxnard already, having to come when the Dallas Cowboys were part of the 2008 season. But back then, Rodgers recalls receiving film shipped to New Jersey twice a day to begin logging and editing before it was transferred via courier to New York. In the first days of the show in 2001, there were moments where helicopters were on standby to rush the tape over before the 10 p.m. airing because of traffic tieups delaying the delivery.

They know what they’re doing. The series created by Hollywood music video and TV director Marty Callner and narrated by Liev Schreiber has collected 14 Sports Emmys, including two last week at the 37th annual ceremony for Outstanding Serialized Sports Documentary (over the NFL Network’s “A Football Life” and Showtime’s “All Access”) and Outstanding Post-Produced Audio/Sound. Those were the result of covering the 2015 Houston Texans’ training camp.

Dissinger’s calculations are that for every one hour that makes it to air, about 350 hours were recorded. The crew shooting it rarely sees any of it until it’s on HBO.

Both Rodgers and Dissinger are curious themselves how much Hollywood will fit into unscripted tale, especially since they’re about as far from the entertainment capital spotlight as possible while working.

“The way I feel about it, the big picture story of this season of ‘Hard Knocks’ is a very American story of someone moving West to make it big in Los Angeles, to the bright lights of Hollywood and the sunshine of Southern California – only this time it’s an entire organization doing that,” said Rodgers, who compares it to his own decision to move to L.A. from New Jersey just outside Philadelphia (he’s an Eagles fan) so he could attend USC graduate film school.

“This all feels very familiar to me — move West, follow your dreams. I think that’s going to show through here. This team has made it clear they’re looking to make their dreams come true. There’s a lot of aspirations about this team right now.”

Added Dissinger: “For our purpose, we do hope Los Angeles is a character in this show. I know it’s a little difficult because that won’t be really close to where we are going to be. But we’ll do the best we can to represent it.”

More:

• Columnist Mark Whicker looks at the pros and cons of what the Rams face in allowing themselves to be “Hard Knocks” fodder. • Staff writer Jack Wang finds Rams players are cognizant of impending changes they’ll have to make with the “Hard Knocks” crew around.

MEASURING MEDIA MOMENTUM

WHAT SMOKES

• Tom Verducci’s superbly crafted 5,600-word piece on Vin Scully in the current issue of Sports Illustrated cuts to the heart of what Los Angeles has known for years — the Dodgers’ Hall of Fame broadcaster is just like your best friend. Add in the calculation by Verducci that Scully has broadcast nearly half of the Dodgers games ever played. The franchise began in 1890. Scully started in 1950. It boggles the mind. So, too, is it surprising that for as many long profiles have been written on Scully in his career, going back to a piece by Robert Creamer in 1964, this is the first time Scully made the SI cover (and the second straight week a sports media member has done it, following TNT sideline reporter Craig Sager). As SI’s own managing editor Chris Stone said in a tweet: “Inarguably the most overdue cover in @sinow history.”

• Two years after ESPN hired Jason Whitlock to launch the website TheUndefeated.com, and a year after he gave us the lowdown about how it was going to work before leaving a month after that, the online home devoted to “the intersection of race, sports and culture” that vows to be “fearless but not reckless” at long last debuts on Tuesday by having stories posted to the ESPN site under the Undefeated brand name. ESPN, in many ways, could not have afforded to let this one go away as easily as it did with Grantland.com, once Bill Simmons was no longer running it. A piece about TheUndefeated on CNN.com notes that the “site’s target audience is black male sports fans between the ages of 18 and 35,” which is somewhat news to us. New editor in chief Kevin Merida, who had been at the Washington Post before taking over, is said to be “adamant about attracting strong engagement and generating interest across all demographics.” Columnist Mike Wise, another former Washington Post high-profile writer, was one of Whitlock’s first hires and has remained loyal to seeing this launch happen. “There are countless barbs inside the business about the time it’s taken to launch,” he said. “But given the original seven hired often worried about the site ever formally launching, I’m blown away at the speed at which Kevin hired a genuine staff and kick-started the Undefeated.”

WHAT CHOKES

• We supposed there was some merit in the Sports Emmy voters naming Katie Nolan and her Fox Sports 1 “Garbage Time” show as the winner in something called the category of Outstanding Social TV Experience, but we just aren’t sure — especially if the experience resulted in her tweeting out a photo of herself with the words “HOLY (bleeping) (bleep) YOU GUYS.” Very classy. Those who like her for her spunk and non-filtered approach claim it to be a worthy watch and a fine fit for a channel that continues to seek attention for itself. FS1’s next move under producer Jamie Horowitz is to have Jason Whitlock and Colin Cowherd square off for an afternoon sports debate show starting in mid-June, followed sometime after by a yet-to-be-determined platform for Skip Bayless, who, according to the New York Times, accepted a $5.5 million salary and signing bonus of $4 million to come over from ESPN. Say that again aloud, and the “HOLY (bleeping) (bleep) YOU GUYS” reaction seems much more genuine.