On an April morning, Craig Zobel warms slowly out of a tired grog. He’s spent most of the night talking about and conceptualizing a new movie with fellow artists and friends Mike and Matt Chapman, the ever-inventive creators of Homestar Runner. It’s an animation about astronauts. Zobel’s been to space camp twice before, as a kid, he mentions.

The glee with which he speaks about this new work somewhat contrasts the bittersweet tone of his Sundance-screened and Magnolia Pictures-released Great World of Sound. A story of two friends, Martin (Pat Healy) and Clarence (Kene Holliday), caught in the grips of squandering money from unwitting musicians to promote a phony record label, a practice otherwise known as a song-sharking scam, Great World of Sound touches on the human need for recognition, for artistic success and for connection with others.

“I was in the (assistant directing) world, and I was getting offered jobs to First AD these movies that have since been made and come out, and I was turning them down,” Zobel begins. “I was like, “I’m just going to try to make this movie.” I remember talking to my mom, who I thought would just be like, “What are you doing? You need money,” but, she was like, “Okay, but it sounds like climbing to the top of a mountain, sounds like the hardest thing you could possibly do. It sort of makes me scared as your mom. But, you should go do it.”

“And, it is kind of like climbing to the top of a mountain. It takes a really long time. I wrote the first draft of the script in 2001 and finished the script to a point where we knew we were going to shoot it in 2004. It’s 2007, and this is one movie. You know what I mean? It’s been my full-time job since 2004, the fall of 2004 until now. I’ve just been working on this the whole time or working on other things to get enough money to be able to go back to it.”

When Zobel laughs here, there’s an infectious and childlike fantasy that springs with it. A real energy and kindness and kind wonder underneath it. This is a person who’s really happy to be making films, and so when he says next, “It’s kickass. It’s cool,” the full meaning comes across without sarcasm.

Despite the film’s thematically heavy tone, the long process of making the film and serving as its director offered quirky joys for Zobel. “There are six different types of wood panel in my movie, which I’m really proud of,” he starts. “(Production designer Richard Wright) did an awesome job, and nobody ever talks about that. In fact, Creative Loafing was like, ‘Despite the shabby sets…’ and I’m like, ‘No, it was supposed to be shabby sets. I’m really excited by those sets.’”

“We looked at tons of gold records from Google-image searching it to actually going to sites and looking for examples of old school records,” he continues. “We saw how often there were gold cassette tapes, which I just think is really funny. In the background you’ll see a spray painted gold cassette tape next to the record. It was the 80s, and they were like, ‘You went platinum, and here it is on tape too!’”

A mix of both narrative and documentary footage, Great World of Sound also depended on one rather standout quirk. The entire crew had to deceive local musicians, who were informed that they were coming to audition for an actual record label. “All of the crew, we all had to be in character during the documentary portion because we used our production office as the fake record office, the fake studio,” producer Melissa Palmer recounts. “So, that was odd, to have to be working as the producer, our line producer and have all our production assistants pretend we’re actually working at a big record label when really we’re trying to run a movie. We had to escort all of the people trying out through our offices and back to the set to be filmed.”

In order to build a realistic and functional set, production designer Richard Wright had to construct a four wall frame built of one-way glass to surround the shooting stage. Behind these four panels of one-way glass, four camera operating teams, one digital camera per wall and each on a dolly, had to dress completely in black and remain under blankets in order not to be seen by participating and still unknowing musicians. Sound mixer Christof Gebert elaborates: “We were shooting in this weird warehouse during the summer in North Carolina, so I’d say that underneath those blankets it was probably 130 degrees, and these people would be behind there operating cameras for like an hour. When they’d walk out of that temperature, all their cloths and their hair were just drenched in sweat.”

“We had to have really, really bright lights on the set—which I can’t believe that some of the people who came in didn’t realize we were on set,” Palmer adds. “We had to change the F-stop because we couldn’t afford the nice thick glass that the camera could shot through, so that (the musicians) couldn’t see the people on the other side.”

Hiding cameras wasn’t the only technical hurdle, however. Wright also worked with Gebert to plant mics all around the set, much in the manner old Hollywood would have done in fact. “For practicality, we had the two actors, and we put wires on them,” Gebert explains. “It was a big room, and we had no idea where (the musicians) were going to go. So, basically, what we had to do was just plant mics everywhere in the room and mix in the mics depending on where they ended up.”

“Craig spoke with the actors, and they actually blocked the scenes so that the actors would stay in certain areas of the room, so they could keep the other people from straying too far from the microphones.”

Despite the fact that the crew expected in advance a bit of backlash when the participants found out what was really going on, the musicians were overall receptive to the project and the ideas behind it, Gebert says. “Ninety-nine percent of the time—I think 100 percent of the time—everyone was fooled, but there was a point where we’d have to tell them, “This isn’t a real audition. There’s no record contract.” The majority of the time, the reaction was that they were really shocked, but then they were really excited that they were going to be in a movie.”

“Everyone was kind of there to be discovered,” Palmer furthers. “We did it very carefully I think, and I don’t want to say a loving way, but I think we did a good job of debriefing them in a kind way that showed they were good musicians, and we appreciated their input into our movie. I think everyone learned a lot from the experience. We all ate lunch together afterwards and invited them to come back, meet the crew and see the equipment. For the most part, I’d say 99 percent of the people were happy with it, and then the one percent that were not happy with it, we promised that we would not use any of the footage.”

That 99 percent of usable documentary footage would end up with one of the film’s two editors Jane Rizzo. “In terms of editing, especially the doc stuff, the one thing that we did was, at the very beginning, it’s actually very cut-ty. It’s like we’re jumping around with characters. Then as the movie progresses, we actually have the scenes play out a little longer; we stay longer with the auditions. Part of it has to do with, maybe the first time around, you’re not so sure what’s happening, but as the movie goes on, you realize these are real people, and it’s heartbreaking,” Rizzo says.

“The thing that was hard was that with all the auditions—I think it was 76 or 77 people that came and auditioned—all of them were great, so it was very hard to pick which were the best. I’m sure some great auditions hit the editing room floor, but the problem that was there was the issue of pacing of the film. We just couldn’t show the process of the auditions too, too, too many times. So, that’s why we decided that the farther along that it went and the more the audience was just aware of how the audition was going to happen, we just let the people play out and have it be much less cut-ty.

“There were just so many great auditions. I guess maybe it’ll be the biggest DVD extras out there,” she finishes.

On the narrative side of the film’s cut, Tim Streeto began work while Rizzo poured into extensive notes on the initial documentary footage screening. “It wasn’t until there was an assembly of the narrative part that we could weave in the doc footage,” Rizzo says. “We had to stay true to the characters, helping build the characters’ arcs. So, because there was so much stock footage, and it could go in so many directions, we needed to see how the narrative was going to work, find the characters’ story and then cut in the doc.”

“Craig’s idea was to make it as seamless as possible. Here’s the doc footage, and here’s the narrative part. That was the hard part, trying to make it flow and not seem unnecessary in jumping back-and-forth between doc and feature film.”

Zobel also passed along the Maysles brothers and Charlotte Zwerin’s Salesman to both Streeto and Rizzo, and this would serve as an influence for the feel of the edit. When the cut was said and done, it took about four months to pull together, a relatively short-term project, Rizzo says.

For Zobel, however, the project had existed in his mind for so long, and after production, he’d pushed it so long, granted with the help of all of his friends, that the process was anything but simple. And, it certainly wasn’t short-term.

“There’s definitely that day, a couple of days before the first day of shooting the movie, where you’re like, “Maybe we should just quit. Maybe we should stop…’” he says, laughing afterwards in his token manner. “But, because you’ve already set so many things in motion, and there are so many people who are now invested in it, I felt obligated to continue on, even in times where it would seem really, really, really hard. All the sudden there was a lot of other people’s work in this thing, and it’s just not your movie. It’s a lot of people’s movie. At a certain level, it’s wrong to not finish. You’re devaluing the stuff that people did, in my case for free for me, and thought about for a long time and put their hearts into.”

As there were many hands that helped to create the film, so too were there many ideas and messages behind the story. Zobel’s not one to pinpoint those, however. “You present (a film) to the world, and people start reading things into it that certainly were supposed to be there, but the whole thing gets added to by the reaction from it. It becomes a different movie by the reaction that people have to it—which is so fun. That’s why I don’t want to talk about (messages). It’s more fun to listen to people tell me what the movie’s about because I’m like, “Yeah! It is about that. Glad you got that.” It’s really enjoyable to have it grow and become something that’s out in the world and part of a conversation, more than something that you’ve just done by yourself. There’s something really exciting about giving it away like that.”

The one overt message that both critics and audiences seem to grasp onto, however, is the one about the American culture’s focus on fame, and it’s on this topic that Zobel gets a bit on edge, particularly with regards to his own part in that societal obsession. “I remember Pat Healy, the actor, observing, having conversations, thinking about, “Why are we trying to make this? What are we doing? What are we trying to get out of making a movie? Aren’t we following some—“

Zobel stops dead mid-sentence, “Again, I don’t feel like it’s my place to talk out about that. I feel like that’s up to somebody else to dissect.”

Ultimately the answer as to whether Zobel is making film for love of the art form or to fulfill a secret desire of personal recognition is relatively unimportant, and it’s so because of one lasting fact. He made the film without expectation, as he says: “I didn’t know what was going to happen with the movie, and I thought this might be the only chance I’d get to make a movie ever.” That’s not to say Zobel didn’t have hopes for the film. It’s only to say he never approached his artwork with any sense of entitlement.

It’s fortunate here that although Zobel’s quiet about his artistic motives, he’s less so about other set anecdotes that hit closer to personal experience. Throughout the film Martin’s artist girlfriend Pam (Rebecca Mader) produces kitschy crafts, all of which were handmade by the film’s art department. “In one scene,…(Pam’s) making gels candles, which is a job I had in college for a little while,” Zobel says. “I went over to this woman’s house who had all these jars, and she would put potpourri in the bottom of them, glitter and stuff in the bottom of them and pour this gel and put a wick in them, and then that hardens. It was a particularly ugly clear, gooey gel thing with potpourri and glitter in the bottom of it, and I had to go out and actually look for leaves for her. It was dumb!”

“So, I insisted that we have gel candles—which it was really hard for the art department to actually find that gel anymore. That was a craze that came and went, so it is super out of style right now, and nobody does that anymore. They had to buy them off the Internet I think to do it. We don’t feature it in the movie, but they’re funny. They’re green and gold with fake gold doubloons in the bottom. Then (Pam) takes air fresheners that look like rainbows and sticks them in, and it makes them look like a pot of gold.”

Then there are the film’s innumerable chachki chickens, all handcrafted by costume designer Elizabeth Steinfels. “I have two of them, and we sold a couple of them, which was cool, at a garage sale,” Zobel says. “[One of mine] lost one of its eyes. I need to buy some more googly eyes—when I’m really bored one day.”

To expand on this line of film quirks, the recording studio the film crew shot in for select scenes was the same studio in which Johnny Cash first recorded the track “Ring of Fire.”

“(The musicians) learned that song while they were on tour,” Zobel says. “So, they stopped somewhere while they were on tour in Charlotte, North Carolina to get it on a record so that they could get it out while they were touring around more. And, they did it in Charlotte, North Carolina in this recording studio.”

After six years of work, Great World of Sound has finally landed its theatrical run, and in Palmer’s eyes, it did so because landing that run was never the goal of the project. “People who are working on movies, and they’re trying to do it so that they will be famous, or the movie will make a lot of money, usually come out with a product that’s not very good. But, if you’re doing it because of the process of the film, and the art that’s involved while making the film, and you’re doing it because you’re passionate, that’s usually the best type of movie in my mind,” she says.

“There are so many different aspects of filmmaking, and it’s definitely a group process. All the people you bring to the table are a very important factor in creating a good film, and I think that’s one reason why this film was so good. We were able to bring a core group of friends together to get Craig’s dream project done.”

As for Zobel’s final say on the matter: “There are times when you look back at the movie, and you’re just like, “Oh, I kind of like this movie. I worked on it. And, I made it.”

Great World of Sound opens tonight in Los Angeles at select theaters. For more information, visit the site here.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

Show/Hide comment form