Following the premiere of his documentary feature Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who at the Kensington Odeon Theater in London, director/editor Paul Crowder was joined onstage by The Who band mates Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend for a Q&A. “I’m thinking this is the closest I am going to get to playing on stage with them, but it’s close enough, related Crowder, who is also a musician and huge Who fan.
That’s why he practically jumped out of his chair when he received the e-mail from Spitfire Pictures’ Nigel Sinclair, one of the producers of the film, saying he was looking for someone to co-direct and edit The Who documentary. “I was just beside myself, I was like, ‘How much do I have to pay to get this job?’ I was really excited about it,” said Crowder.
Sinclair tapped Crowder, whose commercialmaking home is bicoastal Nonfiction Spots, after seeing his first documentary, Once In A Lifetime about the legendary New York Cosmos soccer team, which was featured in last year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
Sinclair had started The Who project with Academy Award-winning director Murray Lerner, who compiled footage and conducted interviews with the principals in the film. When it came down to finding someone to co-direct and cut the film, Sinclair was looking for someone to give it a different feel and he liked the energy Crowder brought to Once In A Lifetime.
An amazing experience
Spanning over four decades, Amazing Journey reintroduces The Who now and to generations to come. The film tells the unfolding story of The Who and how they have straddled the rock world for 40 years. The film features exclusive, never-before-seen interviews with Townshend, Daltrey and others, rare and recently discovered concert footage, artist profiles and more. Following theatrical premieres in London, New York and Los Angeles, and commercial free broadcasts on VH1 and MTV’s hi-def music channel MHD, Universal Studios Home Entertainment released the film on DVD in November. “It’s a very honest film. I wasn’t surprised by the honesty they gave us, but I didn’t realize they would be willing to share so much. They dealt with so much death within the band and so much turmoil in the mid ’70s onwards–it just brought Roger and Pete to this new sort of bonding brotherhood level,” Crowder said.
“It makes for a fascinating journey, which is why I thought the title was so appropriate. Because it really is amazing considering how individual they both were, how they went from where they started, to how much love they have for each other. I found that fascinating as a fan. It was a really nice surprise. I was expecting it to still be a prickly relationship and it isn’t at all. There is always that possibility that Pete will wrap his guitar around Roger’s head–but he’ll do it with love,” he continued with a laugh.
Crowder said that Daltrey hasn’t watched the film and won’t because he lived it but has faith in what the filmmakers did. “Pete did watch it and he thought it was fantastic. He made a special effort to let us know that we did a great job with it. You can’t ask for more than that. I don’t care what the other reviewers think,” Crowder mused. “It’s his story. If he’s happy, I’m happy.”
Not being involved in the project in the early stages posed some challenges for Crowder. Early on when the team shot, compiled and digitized everything, they decided to make it 25-frame HD. But a lot of the film footage was shot 24-frame and then everything had to be delivered at 23.98-frame HD.
“We had an amazing nightmare doing the online,” Crowder recalled. “But we had an incredible HD online editor in Benjamin Murray from Post Works in New York. We had the most difficult online color correction that I ever had to deal with. We had more than 8,000 different clips and sources, an incredible amount of stuff to locate, master and transfer.”
Crowder said he is a big fan of the Avid Nitrus.
“It’s a brilliant machine. And when you have a good operator like Ben Murray, it’s just a dream.”
Crowder is looking forward to applying some of the technologies he used during the project to spots.
“Technically it is always eye opening when you get to the online stage how much more you can do all the time–to know what is available in post so you set up your shoots so you can take advantage of all of those technologies. I see all these things I will get to use in the future.”
He is not working on any spots currently but is keeping busy directing and editing the Morning Light project, a full-length documentary film produced by Roy Disney’s Pacific High Productions in association with Disney Studios. (Roy is Walt’s nephew.) Disney, a sailor, spearheaded the project. The film, to be released in 2008, chronicles the recruitment, training and performance of the youngest and most diverse crew to participate in the Transpacific Yacht Race, a biennial 2,225-nautical-mile sail from Los Angeles to Honolulu.
Crowder said he is anxious to get back into directing commercials. “I love my Toyota Prius. I would love to come up with something really neat for that. I also like the Guinness ads and would love to direct one of them.
“And anything soccer related, that’s another project I would pay to do.”
Review: Steven Soderbergh’s Eerie Haunted House Drama “Presence”
The camera is the ghost in Steven Soderbergh's chillingly effective, experiential haunted house drama "Presence." The filmmaker traps the audience in a beautiful suburban home, letting us drift through rooms with this curious being, in and out of delicate conversations as we (and the ghost) try to piece together a puzzle blindly.
Often in haunted house movies where a new family moves in and starts sensing strange things, the ghost knows exactly what they want — usually their house back. In this one, the presence doesn't have such a clear objective. It's more confused, wandering around and investigating the surroundings, like a benevolent amnesiac. Occasionally, though, big emotions erupt, and things shake violently.
Mostly, they go unnoticed. They observe the chipper real estate agent (Julia Fox) preparing for a showing, the painting crew, one of whom believes there's something around, and finally the family and all the complexities of its dynamics. Lucy Liu (a delightful, wickedly funny scene-stealer) is the mom, Rebecca, a wealthy, successful, type-A woman hyper focused on the success of her eldest, a teenage boy named Tyler (Eddy Maday). The father, Chris (Chris Sullivan), is more of the nurturer, concerned about their teen daughter Chloe (Callina Liang) in the aftermath of her friend's unexpected death.
There is a family drama transpiring inside the house, only some of which will make sense in the end. We overhear Rebecca drunkenly telling Tyler that everything she does is for him. We listen in as Chris confides to someone on the phone about a hypothetical partner being involved in something illegal and whether they still would be if legally separated. We see Tyler often with his head buried in his phone. And then there's Chloe: Sad,... Read More