Adrian, Sydney & Regina Talk The Direction for The Band At The End Of The World

This was a born-and-raised pandemic project of Adrian, Sydney and Regina. When everything shut down, we were on tour, stranded in North Carolina. We ended up spending a few months living with Sydney’s family in her hometown down south. We were fortunate to be quarantined together. And we kept writing up a storm and “performing” by way of social media livestreams.

One of these livestreams caught the eye of Prospect Theatre Company. They commissioned us to write a musical for their musical film series. We jumped on the idea, and really wanted to write something that was of the current moment. That was a metaphor for what we were feeling processing this global catastrophe. You can really look at the story and the 3 songs as 3 different stages. Grief: shock and disillusionment with You Have Changed, anger with Radio, and hope with Reach Back. Once we wrote the songs, the story really revealed itself.

We were lucky to be able to make use of the Goodwill Theatre in Johnson City, NY. A historic Broadway-sized vaudeville theatre that’s fallen into disrepair over the years. They are currently in renovation stages, but there’s still so much beautiful dilapidation there. We were inspired by the sad former grandeur of the space and it certainly informed the story.

The Band At The End Of The World-a part of Prospect’s Vision Series, featuring Bandits on the Run

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The technical team at Prospect said “Yes, let’s make it work”. To do many ideas we thought would be too outlandish. But we were pleasantly surprised at how many things from our wildest dreams we were able to execute. During production all COVID-19 measures were taken, of course.

indieactivity: Did you start writing with a cast (You or any) in mind?
Adrian, Sydney & Regina (ASR): We’re a quite tight and established unit as a band, so we knew we wanted to be the cast, singing and representing our own songs. We dove into the concept during the age of COVID-19, so we knew we wouldn’t be involving any other actors for safety’s sake. So we built the film to be set in a post-apocalyptic world, so it would totally make sense for us to not be seeing/encountering other people.

How long did you take to complete the script?
Adrian, Sydney & Regina (ASR): We’ve written songs together for years, and we made a very cheeky silly short film as our Kickstarter video for our debut album many many moons ago, but this was the first time we sat down to write a proper film script, and also our first time we sat down to write a proper script for a musical! Luckily we’re all actors who have been involved with film and theatre projects before, so we at least had a foundation of experience to work with. 

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Our writing process is extremely collaborative. There are 3 songs in the script and each of us was a “captain” or primary writer of each song, and the songs were our primary storytelling touchstones. So it was really a matter of us weaving the songs together into the story in an intriguing way. We met with our director, SRDA, right after we wrote our songs, and brainstormed ideas for how to incorporate them into a story. Once we had that spark of inspiration, it took us a couple of weeks to get the script where we wanted it, and we were lucky to be working in cahoots with Prospect Theatre Company, who have been in the business of writing musicals for a long time. They gave us helpful feedback and had really innovative ways of bringing our vision to life.

When did you form your production company (do you have one?) – and what was the original motivation for its formation?
Adrian, Sydney & Regina (ASR): We formed as a band in 2014, but truly this past year we’ve branched out into really operating as not just a musical group/small business but also as our own production company. On this particular project, Prospect Theater Company acted as our producers, so we had a great guiding force there.

Prospect approached us about working together after the founders saw a particularly theatrical live stream concert we put on in May of 2020, and we got to work cooking up ideas about what we’d do if we were given the financial support and resources to film our own musical. Prospect was instrumental in that and we’re so grateful to them! Currently we’ve been in full-blown production company mode, producing/directing our own music videos for our single releases, wearing all the hats that entails.

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What was the first writing project that you were involved with or that was out of the gate?
Adrian, Sydney & Regina (ASR): This was our first musical/film! But we’ve been writing music together as a band for years.

During the production of the trailer or proof of concept, what scene (that made the cut) was the hardest to shoot?
Adrian, Sydney & Regina (ASR): Certainly the first song sequence, “You Have Changed” was the hardest. It was really important to us to shoot the whole song in one take, so we had to carefully choreograph our movements with our director Srda and our very game and very skilled DP, Bart Cortright. We wanted the stage pretty dark, with the ghostlight being the only obvious source of light, as it would look in a real abandoned theatre, but that posed a challenge for masking shadows with the camera amidst all the movement. And in true film fashion we had an extremely limited time to rehearse everything before shooting, so we all had to be on top of our game! We love how it turned out, a super organic exploration of the space while also telling the story and letting the song shine.

What works better in this latest production that mightn’t have worked so well in the last one you did?
Adrian, Sydney & Regina (ASR): Well, for one, having a really amazing location at our discretion was a really potent secret sauce that allowed us to do a lot of things we’d never attempted in a piece. When Cara (the artistic director of Prospect Theater) first reached out to us about collaborating on a project, she mentioned that she was working with a theater in Binghamton New York and that there was an derelict old vaudeville theater on site that we were able to use — little did we know that the location would for all intents and purposes become the 4th character in our piece.

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Having that amount of space — and such a storied space at that — allowed us to really explore and conjure up an immersive story-telling experience. In one song, we tracked a journey from one side of the building to the other, and shot down in the catacomb-like basement and the sunny entrance-way atrium. That’s an insane journey that wouldn’t have been possible absent a space with such grandeur.

You wrote and directed the film, what measure of input did it take to don these two hats?
Adrian, Sydney & Regina (ASR): When we were developing the script for the piece with our fearless director, Srda Vasiljevic, we started with a basic concept informed by the space, and a set of three songs we had started building during the pandemic. We wanted the end-of-the-world concept to draw heavily on our experience as artists during 2020, when it felt like the world really ground to a halt. Srda worked closely with us to build moments of humanity into the piece and challenged us to find humor in the apocalyptic source material, and for that we owe him a lot of the levity that pervades this otherwise really dark story.

Is there anything about the independent filmmaking business you still struggle with?
Adrian, Sydney & Regina (ASR): We’re all total newbies in this field, so STILL struggling is a bit of a question mark for us. That being said, the industry absolutely mystifies us, especially with the ins and outs of how the community organizes itself through festivals and competitions. That being said, we’re totally enchanted and can’t wait to work on more projects like this.

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Where do you think your strengths lie as a filmmaker?
Adrian, Sydney & Regina (ASR): Until the last year or so, we never saw ourselves as filmmakers. But the more we started focusing on the visual / storytelling side of what we do, the more we were drawn into that world. We found more and more that we had stories we wanted to tell and images we dreamed up to go along with the songs we were creating, and the best way to go about bringing those images and stories into the world was just to go out and start making them ourselves. We joke that 2020 turned our band into a full-blown production company.

There’s a lot to love about being an outsider. Sure, the learning curve is steep on almost all aspects of filmmaking — but it’s not insurmountable. Organizing film productions has gotten us to expand our horizons of collaborators, but we were already building a strong community as musicians and the work of gathering film talents just feels like an extension of that. And because we’re looking at filmmaking from a slightly different angle — how do we represent the themes and feelings of works that we’ve already written? — we take ownership of those aspects in a unique way. We think that really sets us apart from the rest.

Let’s talk finance, how did you finance the trailer for the film?
Adrian, Sydney & Regina (ASR): We were very very lucky. Cara Reichel, the artistic director of Prospect Theater company, came up with a Visions Series (of which The Band at the End of the World was the first project to shoot) as a way to make use of funds and grants that would have gone to Prospect’s 2020 season. She really brought all of this together — the space, the artists, the production unit.

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We brought our director Srda Vasiljevic and PD Bart Cortright onto the project with us, but all other aspects of the shoot were organized and executed by Prospect. Amazingly, Cara was learning on the fly how to carry out a SAG compliant production DURING COVID-19. This was a first for Prospect on many levels and they truly excelled at bringing everything together.

How much did you go over budget? How did you manage it?
Adrian, Sydney & Regina (ASR): To our knowledge, we didn’t go over budget at all. The only unforeseen expense was an emergency rapid covid test when one of NYC’s free testing sites wasn’t able to get one of us our results in time. We lucked out by having a deeply committed team that was willing to be flexible because they were so passionate about the project, and for shooting in a space that we had virtually unlimited access to. We also stuck to our schedule religiously and never went over time.

How important is marketing? Do you think a project can make any dent without it these days?
Adrian, Sydney & Regina (ASR): Every way possible that you can spread the word is super valuable. Marketing is definitely important. A project has to be firing on all cylinders to make a dent, cause there’s just so much content out there. There’s also so much value in grassroots old school word of mouth excitement. Ultimately, it’s like the Wild Wild West right now. There’s no clear rulebook, and in chaos, you’ve got just as good of a shot at getting noticed as the person next to you. But it is a mystery. We wish the best of luck to everyone!

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Can you tell us about your marketing activities on the project – and how it’s gone for you?
ASR: We (as the writers and performers) haven’t been involved in the marketing for this particular project, but we’ve been very impressed by Prospect Theater Company’s reach! From our point of view, it seems like it’s gone well!

What do you hope audiences get from your film after you finally make it?
ASR: We want our audience to have a little faith in their ability to not only survive, but thrive in moments of change. Hopefully our short musical film sparks a sense of hope and curiosity about what’s possible when the world crumbles around you. We’re resilient creatures. We adapt and create. Maybe what’s around the corner is better than what we imagined for ourselves if we’re brave enough to let go and see.

Tell us about how you intend to make your pitch for the feature to the studios interested?
ASR: This particular project is in the can, so we’re not pitching to studios.

Do you have the feature script written? If you have it, tell us about it? How do you expand a short into a feature length script?
ASR: The film ends with a mysterious door knock. There are a lot of things that can happen once that door opens! So who knows, maybe this short could expand into a feature! We’ve got a lot of songs!

What else have you got in the works?
ASR: A lot! For being in a pandemic, we’re staying super busy. It’s been a pleasant surprise! We’re putting out an EP in May, and releasing music videos for each track! The team is extremely proud of these music videos, they all feel like short films. We’re also recording and shooting videos for commissioned songs for other theater companies, and creating custom singing telegrams as part of our ongoing fundraising for our EP. We’re pretty much always on the move, staying true to our name.

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Tell us what you think of the interview with Cara Reichel. What do you think of it? What ideas did you get? Do you have any suggestions? Or did it help you? Let’s have your comments below and/or on Facebook or Twitter.

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