Why We Create Music
"We have this wonderful relationship with the Meta Agency, who came to us with a project for ASCAP, which is the organization that represents, songwriters, composers and publishers; so they are a really interesting people! It was their 100th celebration as an organization, so they wanted a short film to mark the event."
"I wanted to tell this story in a way that everyone could relate to it in some way. At the heart of it is why we as humans make music and feel compelled to write our music down. So I really wanted to tell a dual story here that includes both ANCAP’s milestone and the essence of why we make music in the first place."
"Being a project for ANCAP, we of course had access to some of the greatest song writers imaginable. People like Bill Withers, Amy Grant, Barry McCarney, Aloe Blacc and Lady Antebellum were just some of the fifteen artists we interviewed."
"My idea for this film was to jointly compose a piece with all 15 songwriters. The idea of jointly collaborating with so many songwriters, everybody thought was crazy at first. They thought it was madness because it would make the process so much harder - but everyone did agree it would be a really cool thing to do."
"We travelled all over the country from New York to L.A. and Nashville shooting in all of these amazing recording studios. Each artist was at a different studio, with the exception of Nighthawk Studios where we shot Ella Black, Saving Katan and a couple of others. We also went to Barry McCarney's home studio where he does all of his work. So we were going from place to place, to place meeting all of these legendary people. We would roll in and have about an hour and a bit with them in total, before they would have to go again. So the whole experience was all pretty fleeting really."
"I composed the base sound track and then we had each of the songwriters we were interviewing add to it. We would setup an audio interview for the first 15-20 minutes and then my DP, Tim Sessler concentrated on shooting B-roll of each songwriter working on their contribution to the piece. So that's pretty much how the collaboration worked out. And, that’s how we came up with such great B-roll footage for this film."
"We shot the whole thing with a Canon 5D MIII and a soft-box - and that was pretty much it. Our crew was only three people: me, Tim the DP, and Drew our audio DIT guy. Having such a small crew is really important as it allowed us to be far more intimate with everything we were shooting."
"Every time I go out and shoot with Tim, I tell him what my vision is and then he makes it ten times better.With this shoot, it was no different. I told him that I really wanted it to be intimate and that I didn’t want any wide shots. I wanted them to all be on the 50mm or the 100mm macro. I wanted this piece to be a really intimate reflection of the songwriters and their music process. All of the footage was basically hand held with the Canon 5D shooting RAW and by not overcomplicating things, I feel Tim took this piece to the next level."
"As a music composer myself, this whole project was very special and I feel so privileged to have been part of it. There were so many stand out moments for me personally. Interviewing Bill Withers was totally amazing. I have always loved his music and he is just such a character, so I just loved that whole experience."
"I can’t help feeling supremely grateful for the experiences that I am given as a director. With this project, to learn about their music making process and how they go about their songwriting, was just totally amazing. Being able to take some of that back into my own music creation and by using some of the tools that they use, was an incredibly inspiring opportunity. It was all pretty wild and I have these moments where I think, did I just do that!"
