Kalistani Major History

[Doc]

Republican Studios to Release New Concert Film about Ska Tour in Hutori
"Skankin Hutori" takes fans to ska Tour in Northern Latitudes
Sulari, Suldanor
July 20, 4900


Poster for "Skankin Hutori" , the latest release from Republican Studios

Last fall, three Kalistani Ska Bands joined ska/rock legends The Gang to take Hutori by storm with the ARC Records' "Skankin Hutori Tour". Together these four groups, The Gang, Red Tone, The Interrogators, and Smoked Salmon, barnstormed through the Kingdom of Hutori over 40 different shows, including weekly Saturday Matinees, and culminated the Tour over New Years' Even 4899, partying well past when the year flipped to 4900. Republican Studios was there to film the visit to the Kingdom and record the sold out New Year's Eve show in Acton Adelia Hutori. The Studios have just completed final edits on the Film, and have ensured fans that the 189 minute film will be an Immersive Experience! While full of footage and music, the film is more a documentary of the tour than a concert film specifically, and really captures Kalistani Music at the height of the latest Skapunk craze of the late 4800s.

"We shot the footage over four months in Hutori," said Director Alfred Ezekiel Delgado, "and had unlimited access to the bands, not only as they performed, but also backstage and when they were having downtime. The film I think really gives an idea of what it is like for these bands on the road, and while it is very hard on the musicians, to sing the same songs night after night, its also a tribute to their love of their music, their appreciation for their fans and their professionalism that they do it all with aplomb."

The film documents these four bands at the pinnacle of their fame. While The Gang has been well known for more than a decade, the other three bands have all risen within the last four or five years, and have ridden the wave of popularity that was sent stratospheric by the victory of Red Tone at FOMAT XIII. "Besides being great musicians who clearly have a lot of fun hanging out with one another and singing backup for one another and doing guest guitar work and so forth on each other's sets, these guys are also very close friends," said Delgado. "They were clear, they've been through a lot of joy and pain and exhilaration and exhaustion over the past four years, and it was obvious that they felt that they could lean on one another."

The movie details the deepening friendship between Red Tone's Monica Pella, who is a class of superstar in The Republic in her own right, and Interrogator Amy, the lead singer of The Interrogators. "She's so like a big sister to me," said Amy in one of the interview segments in the film. "I really look up to her and see how she has everything together for herself, and she's a lot of fun to hang out with, and she's like my best friend. In the whole world."

Pella, who was with Amy during the segment, was visibly tearing up as her tour mate complimented her, "Oh Amy, that is so nice of you to say. We are sisters, for real, not even like sisters, but totally like actual sisters..." Pella gushed about how Amy's energy and dedication is sometimes what gets Pella out of bed in the mornings. "Like, some days when we have rehearsal, but no show, and I am hungover, there's Amy right there, first one on stage ready to go. I mean, how can I complain about a hangover when she drinks and smokes and does everything else just as hard but she's always ready to go, to play, to jam or whatever?"

The movie also depicts some of the excesses the bands engaged in during their visit to the fellow ODEN Nation. "They got a whole bunch of extra sh-t here that we don't have in Kalistan, for sure," said Smoked Salmon's Jimmy Jimenez, who was in the process of chasing some sort of powder with a double shot of Hutori Whiskey. "If we did this stuff all the time we wouldn't be able to even stand up, let alone play music, so thankfully, the road manager cuts us off..."

The scenes of the life outside of the stage on the road are relatively brief compared to the actual performances. During the course of the movie, highlights from the Acton Show are inter-spliced between footage and scenes which might occasionally appear to be part of a blooper reel, but were left in the show to depict the ups, and occasional downs, or playing music on the road. For example, in one scene, during a The Gang set, lead singer Kevin Budnig is seen pogoing on stage to a ska break, and a trap door latch gives way under him. When he comes back to the stage, he continues through the trap door, and disappears from view. The band who sees Budnig disappear into the hole which opened up on the stage immediately stop playing, just at the moment that Budnig, who is still holding the mic, exclaims "What the f--k?!" And the crowd erupts in laughter. The band are then shown laughing at Budnig after their set and telling him that he has "...gotten a bit tubby in [his] old age."

For the most Part, the concert footage is spread over all four bands pretty evenly, and focuses more often on collaborations between the bands than on sets that they do alone. But there are special moments captured on this film that can't be duplicated anywhere featuring individual bands. For example, in the final scene of the Movie, following the triumphant second encore, Hutori's own The Gang tells fans that this might be the last show The Gang ever plays in Hutori, and then, with visible tears in their eyes, The Gang breaks into a surprise third Encore, where they play "RockStar," the song that they sang when they represented Hutori at FOMAT. The crowd rushes the stage and cheers wildly for their countrymen, showing them a lot of love by dancing and singing along, and as the last chords of the song ring throughout the arena and Kevin Budnig raises his mic in salute to his audience, they return the salute with a deafening roar that could be heard a mile away from the Arena.

Another example is the featuring of individuals in the bands: there are lots of interviews and expository conversations about the band members themselves, as a lot of attention is usually paid to the charismatic leaders of the bands, and the Film also wanted to cover the brass sections and the rhythm sections as well. But in the end, we tend to always have our focus drawn back to Pella, Budnig, Interrogator Amy, and Borne, the lead singers of the four groups. And this is played to great effect throughout the program. For example, as the closing credits roll, the four bands say good bye to the hundreds who turned out to see them off as they board a KalAir flight back to the Republic, but the footage ends with a close up freeze frame of Monica Pella blowing a kiss to Hutori.

Check out Six from Red Tone's Bekennial Hutori show, featured in Republican Studios' "Skankin Hutori" below and then see the full movie in theaters all across the Republic, opening Friday.

[Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz3GLItcrp8]