Craig Zobel
(Credit: Clayton Chase/WireImage.com)
Fortunately, there's still good old-fashioned word of mouth. People see the movie, they like it and they tell their friends to see it. So far the method has proven successful for the underdog flick which screened to enthusiastic audience response at major film festivals like Sundance and South By Southwest.
During its festival run this tale of two well meaning blue-collar guys (frequent TV guest stars Pat Healy and Kene Holliday) working as music industry talent scouts for a shady record label also received rave reviews from The New York Times and industry trade paper Variety.
Accurately hailed as an authentic indie, the Southern-set movie mixes a scripted narrative with documentary-style audition scenes in which the lead actors play off real aspiring musicians who don't know they're being filmed. (Kinda like "Borat," only without any mean-spirited mockery or raunchiness.)
Zobel spoke with Metromix about the challenges of low budget filmmaking, the mania of Sundance and his ongoing connection with animated Internet shorts.
Where did the idea for "Great World of Sound" come from?
When my father first moved to Atlanta to be with my mother he got a job as a record industry talent scout. After doing that for awhile, thinking he was helping people out, doing something good, he started investigating and realized the [records] weren't getting delivered to anybody or even made. That's when he quit. I'd heard the stories for a really long time and it was attractive to me because it was my dad, I know him to be a good man, he's not an evil bad guy. It got me thinking about people who come off as abrasive, the used car men type who are out to scam you, oftentimes they convince themselves they're not doing anything wrong—or they don't know they are. The initial idea was to try to make a movie where you could see the scam artist getting scammed.
Did you ever consider setting the story in an industry other than music?
The talent scout scam happens in acting and a lot of fields. I liked and ran with the initial concept of music but I definitely thought a lot about the parallels, even in filmmaking.
Have you had experiences like that so far in your career?
Not in a way that's a perfect correlation but I've definitely encountered people in the movie business who I've had some really terrible experiences with, and really wanted to quit. In fact, I was kind of pushed into making the movie by David Gordon Green [director of acclaimed indies "All the Real Girls" and "Undertow"], who is a producer on the movie and encouraged me to keep going. I'd gotten pretty jaded.
What kind of budget did you have for the movie?
The budget was $80,000. It was very very low budget. I asked everybody to work for free. I think people were into what the movie was about, and maybe some of them I guilted into it. Hopefully everyone is proud they worked on it at this point. We shot in two production periods, because I knew I couldn't get people to come out for four weeks in a row unpaid. So I split it up.
So there were two separate two week periods of filming?
Yeah, and it actually turned out to be a good idea for the movie. The first half was all of the auditions. The actors were able to do that and it informed their performances. It also helped in finding the sound of the movie, how people talked.
You didn't tell the people who auditioned what was happening until after they performed, what was that process like?
We had to explain what we were doing with the film and what the "song sharking" scam is in a more general sense. Everybody tried to be as delicate as possible and invite [the auditioners] to be a part of the film. We wanted to be respectful of how hard it is to audition for something. Even if it was uncomfortable we'd answer any questions they have.
How many of them agreed to let you use the footage?
I would say 90%. Some people were concerned the auditions were too personal or they said something they didn't want other people to see, so we didn't use it.
It sounds kind of risky, did you have any backup scenes in case the auditions didn't turn out well?
Yeah we wrote a whole script, just in case. We were spending money and I wanted to have a movie at the end. Nobody knew if the auditions would work. Maybe one day I could feel comfortable with a three page script and totally improvise the whole thing, but not right now.
At what point did you realize the film would actually "work"?
I didn't know if the whole movie was going to work but there was stuff during the auditions that was kind of magical. That's a credit to the people who auditioned. I was excited about it while we were making it. During the scripted stuff, Pat and Kene were amazing. Everybody in the movie gave me the gift of really strong performances and cared about it a lot. The Sundance screening was when I was like "oh, wow, people thought that was funny." It was awesome.
Had you ever been to Sundance before?
I had been before as just a film-goer. It was a wild ride. There's a reason I'm not an actor, at all, and the amount of press I had to learn to do the first few days was stunning. I was just really tired the whole time. I went there thinking "whatever, there are movies here with ridiculously famous people and those are the ones people are going to try to acquire. I'm not going to think about business, I'm just going to enjoy myself and have a good time." Even going in to it with that attitude, every conversation the second or third question would be "so any bids?"
The distributor that bought the film, Magnolia Pictures, releases some movies simultaneously in theaters, on DVD and on the TV network HD-Net. Are they doing that with "Great World of Sound"?
They're not, but I think that's a cool idea. Honestly, with little movies from a business standpoint it just makes more sense. We aren't making enough money to make it sustainable the way it is now. It's broke, let's fix it.
Do you have another project lined up already?
I'm trying to get another Southern movie done, sort of a comedy. Hopefully it will be more official soon. It seems like it might happen, as much as anything seems like it might happen.
Will your future projects have the same mix of scripted and unscripted elements as "Great World of Sound"?
I don't think I'd really make a film the exact same way again but there's another film I'd like to make about underground DIY punk music. I'd like to actually go to punk shows but bring actors and have scripted scenes.
You're one of the co-founders of [flash animation site] Homestarrunner.com, do you have plans to keep that going along with your movie career?
Absolutely, I'm really eager to do that. Once the movie comes out and thing settle down, there's a bunch of new ideas we all have.
How did you decide to get involved with Internet shorts, was it just a way to get your work out there?
Yeah, initially. After a certain point it was more like "I want to do it this way. We like it as an Internet thing." To me, it's like, what's the difference between a TV show and an Internet video? I don't DVR stuff, I don't have cable. I'll watch "30 Rock" online. But I still watch it. I think the world is changing and everybody will get more and more used to it.
