Kalistani Major History

[Doc]

"BandStand in Orean" Opens in Kaliburg
Movie completed ahead of Schedule is inaugural Triumph for Republican Studios
Kaliburg, Ananto
August 31, 4770


Still Clip from the Republican Stuio's new Concert Film "BandStand in Orean"

The first movie produced by the new Studio, "BandStand in Orean" was released to a sold out audience in Kaliburg's National Theater last night.  When the announcement went out over KRTVN Radio that tickets would be sold to the concert movie last week, the station was flooded with requests for information from fans of the Band.  Two years in the making, BandStand was unsure if the movie would ever see the light of day, but following their introduction to Editor Yayel Schmidt, the film and soundtrack hit the fast track to completion.

"This movie," said lead singer Gail Black who attended the premier with band mate Eddie Lincoln, to a packed audience, "It was a labor of love.  Me and Eddie had this film crew following us around Kaliburg and Orean for like two weeks.  We dragged them everywhere...  to get coffee, to go meet gangs of strange people who all seemed to love our music many times more than folks back home did...  The tour was a lot of fun, but then we were left with all this raw footage, and we were like 'Ok...  we have 22 hours of footage here, and we need to make it how long?"

The final cut of the movie, which clocks in at just over two and a half hours, has an intermission in the middle, designed to allow people to use the restroom or go get refills on popcorn and soda at the concession counter.  The movie features more than an hour and a half of recorded highlights of the show, some full songs and many smaller clips, and about an hour or incidental footage taken on the streets and in the clubs and bars of Orean.  But the film takes a coherent, temporally organized direction, such that many people in the audience were surprised at how short the film really was.

[Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BfnXX7EvhM]
Show Openers Las Piedres Blumas from "BandStand in Orean"

"I mean, I checked my watch when the program began," said fan Christine Howard, "and like two and a half hours had passed, and I was like, 'I mean, I want more!'.  I felt like calling the baby sitter and telling her we were gonna stay and watch it again.  But I had exams in the morning, so I'll have to go again later this week."

The movie follows BandStand and fellow "Frog Clique" members Las Piedres Blumas and Ghost as they prepare for the show in Orean, Anarchist Communes, Lodamum.  Clips of the show are intersperced with incidental footage of the bands engaging with different people and doing different activities around the city.  At one point, for example, Black met with a group of men who said they were part of a Gay militia.  "The meeting was kind of strange," said Black in the film, as she was describing the meeting with her bandmate Lincoln.  "These guys said they had never heard of BandStand before, until one of their comrades came up and said 'Oh she's that girl from that one groups I was telling you about...' And then all these guys were like 'OH OH...  It's you!' and they all wanted to take their pictures with me to send to their partners and mums..."

One technical challenge so much footage presented, which Schmidt was able to help the band overcome was the fact that there were three complete sets recorded along with the rest of the stuff.  Black explained, "It looked cluttered on the page, when we tried to make it coherent, but there's these three bands, Ghost and then The Flowers and then us.  How do we show footage from all three bands in the same movie?"  She explained to the crowd that the Editor really stepped in here.  Schmidt performed a little trick by interspercing footage of members of the bands going about Orean together, to provide connections between the discrete clips of the bands themselves.  "It all made sense when we saw how it came together, and we are all friends anyway, so there is a lot of stuff of us doing things together, you know?" admitted Black.

One example of this overlap technique happened at a local restaurant.  Lincoln apparently discovered a chicken restaurant where they claim the meat is fried but there is no breading on the chicken.  The comical scene involves him eating dinner in front of frontman for Las Piedres Blumas Dave Yardley who is clearly disgusted by the event, though Lincoln remains oblivious.  "This chicken is quite tasty," said Lincoln, "But I can't quite work out how its fried.  I mean...  was it fried on a skillet or something?"  Yardley, who is a vegan, just looked at him and asked "How should I know, man?  How can you even eat that?!"  Lincoln licked his fingers and simply shrugged.  "It's good man.  Try it."  Yardley just looked both nauseated and more than a little put off by the suggestion.

"I liked the little incidental footage they have in there," said first night viewer Vernon Forerester.  "It kind of let us catch our breath between the amazing clips from the concert, kind of letting us settle down, just to build us back up again for the next song."

"This film stands out," said Director Phill Johanssen, "Because many concert films I've seen tend to take a somewhat long view of the concert footage.  I mean, they often adopt the perspective of the audience at the show.  You may get one or two close ups, but generally, the cameras used to record the concert footage are very specialized, and very heavy, and they are not the same ones used to record footage of the band off the stage.  But BandStand, whether it was because they just didn't know the conventions of making concert movies, or because they couldn't afford to have several different kinds of cameras, they had all the footage shot with the same type of cameras.  As a result the quality of the film and more importantly the sound is consistent throughout.  And they used the best cameras to record even the most mundane interactions throughout the town."

"BandStand in Orean" is not only a documentary of the tour's show in Orean, but also a documentary of a town which is undergoing major social and political changes.  For example, the movie chronicles the early days of drug usage in Oreans.  Some locals told the band that they wanted to show them something interesting, and were taken to a hash bar.  There, the bands discovered ODEN branded hashish and various kinds of Kalistani product being smoked there.  The people at the bar cheered the Kalistanis as they took hit after hit from the local glass pieces at the bar.  "I can't believe they are smoking all that and haven't passed out," said one Lodamese patron of the club, while another agreed and said "They smoke like its just air."  The end of the scene depicts the Kalistanis bidding farewell to about two dozen completely stoned anarchists.  In most scenes in the movie, Black almost always had either a handrolled cone or a glass piece filled with ODEN herb.  At one point she laughed and called it "a little bit of home." 

As Black says, "I can't even tell if this town has a government."  Lincoln laughs and answered that they were Anarchists, so probably not.  "I mean, I know Anarchists can govern.  But I mean: is this a part of Lodamun or something different?"  Lincoln shook his head.  In other parts of the film, we can see daily life of the people just going about their business, and nearly all finding them distracted by the Kalistanis.  "Oh, you're the band from Kalistan?" they would often ask.  And then they would pepper the band with questions about life in Kalistan, and compare it to life in the Communes.  "Things are getting better here," many of them would admit.  The film depicts working people just going about their lives, and suddenly they wind up in a Kalistani Movie about a famous band.  And nearly all the people were generous to the Kalistanis and genuinely sought to impress them with the Communes.  "Their lives are just ordinary, you know,  exactly as one would expect," said Black, "an yet, they still found ways to have fun and enjoy life, and that really made the trip for us:  meeting these people who really do seem to have a zeal for life."

[Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ra0iBKjK1g]
BandStand delivering the high Energy show closer, "My Friends"

Overall, "BandStand in Orean" is destined to take its place in the pantheon of excellent Concert Movies, marking a return to the genre for Kalistan.  And it is more noteworthy for the fact that it was completed by the Studio so quickly and is still very good.  Much of the movie will strike most Kalistanis as both very familiar and also quite strange.  "Many things seemed not quite right," said Lincoln at the premier.  "For example:  there was a whole culture that wa into hip hop and racing cars and so forth, and they had these just crazy looking tricked out vans with spoilers the size of aircraft wings on the back and painted these really brilliant vibrant colors.  And they all wanted to give us a ride in these extravagant vans.  But, you know, in the context, it all sort of made a lot of sense."

"BandStand in Orean" will likely remain first run in Kaliburg for more than a month, and the demand for tickets to see the film in Kaliburg has created a reservation backlog of 4 days already, as people get in line to see the sold out film.  Over all, a very enjoyable time will be had by all.