"Love Is..." - My SLTM Experience

courtesy of my blog: http://cjferrara.blogspot.com/

Just as Sean and Christine Fitzgerald have devoted 2011 to making a short film every week for a year; I seem to have devoted much of this blog to telling everyone how amazing their films are! Well, as of Tuesday, July 26, 2011; I can take a little credit for their awesomeness, with the premiere of "Love Is...", the first SLTM Films Musical!
Here's how it happened : So, we're all getting into the films, and supporting S & C as well as all of our friends who appear in the films. I believe I started it with an off-hand comment, "When you guys do a musical, you know who to call." Sean, in fact, was almost in the debut production of "Legend of St. Nicholas," before personal business took him out. That's when we met. At least that's when I first remembered who he was. It's a long story.

ANyhoo, a big part of Project 52 is that they randomly select different genres of film each week. Apparently, other people had asked what would happen if they suddenly got the call to do a musical. Their first step was to call me.

Sean and Christine usually write, cast, rehearse, shoot, and edit the films during the course of a week. They realized that there was no WAY they could include writing a song, reheasing, recording, and filming a musical in that time. They asked me to have a song ready ahead of time, just in case this should happen. My schedule was getting tight, and I was finding myself unavailable for shoots and meeting times. (I was almost in The Return, but my job gt in the way.) Plus, I was planning vacations towards the beginning of the summer. So it was a good thing to plan ahead.

Sean had this idea of doing a sort of 21st Century version of "Telephone Hour" from Bye, Bye, Birdie; only with couples singing to each other on webcams. That's all I had to go on. So, I played with some ideas. I used a song written for an abandoned project, an Opera version of Orwell's "1984." It would have been, probably, the only love song, called "Just for a Moment." In the opera, it would have represented Winston and Julia's hectic lifestyle of working, and going about their business pretending not to have their relationship, until the moments that they meet in their secret annex. The riff for the song combined two contrasting accompaniment patterns that intentionally didn't go together in order to create dissonance until a very neo-classical, and tonal refrain. In the rewrite, the dissonance would have been the couples' relating what was going on in their life, and the refrain would be them expressing how much they missed each other, and how good it was to be with them, "Just for a moment."

Sean nixed that idea. Fans of SLTM Films may have noted how his work tends to be dark, and at times creepy. Often, in fact, that's what I love about them. He wanted the musical to be much more upbeat. I also wrote the song with 2 maybe 3 couples in mind. I didn't want it to be too complicated. No, he said. He was thinking more along the lines of 5 couples. We also discussed these couples representing different kinds of love; "Aspects of Love," if you will. We'd have a married couple with a family; a dating couple taking their relationship to the next level, a couple just starting on their first date, a father/son couple, and a platonic frienship. Oh, yeah, and one of the couples should be gay.

I got back to work. I decided that the more positive thing to focus on would be the fact that they are together, sort of... over the internet, where they could really see each other and connect. The song was now called "Good to See You." I took the contasting riffs, and changed it to a peppier rhythm, but keeping the modern chord structure of the original. I also omitted the lovely chorus, and rewrote a new bridge.

I sat down one evening while judging the NYSSMA solo festival, and dealing with a large number of no-shows; and improvised some lyrics. Christine had commented on how "beautiful" my lyrics were in St. Nick; and I seemed to think that these lyrics would be rather matter-of-fact and ordinary.  So, I felt a little pressure to get all poetic and stuff. I jotted down some ideas, and made a mental note NOT TO LOSE THEM. We scheduled a time to meet so I could play the song for Sean and Chris.

Now here's the part I haven't even admitted to the Fitz's. I lost them. The morning of the meeting, I frantically searched my house for where I had put my notes, and when I couldn't find them, I frantically tried to remember what I had written, and re-wrote the lyrics to the song. They came over, I played what I re-wrote, and they loved it.

Over a discussion about the dating couple who meet via Match.com, we wondered if this was really common enough to include, and I mentioned that my brother-in-law met his wife in a chat room, and it turned into an online relationship of a few years before they met in real life, and eventually moved in together, and got married. They liked that story better, and asked me to change that part of the song. We also started discussing the real production issues involved. Where would these people be chatting from? What locations would we need? Would we need Extras? I brought up the fact that if we HAD extras, they should sing as well. In fact, in true Long Island Musical fashion, the extras in each location should all be the same people hamming it up in the background. This led to the idea of having a "Greek Chorus" who would lead us through all the relationships.

I knew that if we were going to rehearse this, some people would learn by rote, but some people would need a score to follow. So I set to work on writing a score. It was easier than usual because of the repetative accompaniment. But I had a problem. I LOST THE DAMN LYRICS AGAIN! So, again, I frantically re-wrote the lyrics as per our discussion; re-wrote the online couple's part, and wound up with, I think, better lyrics than originally done. (Listen to the preview, you'll hear the differences.)

So, Sean and Christine had auditions, and chose their cast. The one minor change was that our Father/Son would become a Father/Daughter. We got the scripts and scores together, and had our first rehearsal. They picked up on the song very well. Sean, Christine and I encouraged input from them about lyrics, melodies, harmonies, etc. It was REALLY a true collaboration, which I loved. My favorite part of staging "St. Nick" was collaborating with the director, producer and cast to tweak the show and make it work better on stage, and, I feel, make it a better show overall.

So, I get a call after our first rehearsal, and Christine has this idea of having a prelude to the song which would A) Set up the theme of the film, the many types of love; 2) serve as the beginning of the film, in lieu of dialogue; and D) give our talented chorus more to do. (I actually hadn't really arranged their background parts yet.) We stayed up, chatting on Facebook about ideas, searching for poignant quotes that would sum it all up. Finally, my wife, Paula, chimed in. "Why don't you just say what each relationship is like. Something like... 'Love is comfort... a familiar face....'" She then laid out the whole prologue, lyrically. It was like that scene from that dumb musical when they just come right out with the perfect song. I tweaked it to fit the melody, a little bit, but mostly, what you hear in the film is what Paula wrote.

We then rehearsed more, arranged harmonies, tweaked the form of the song somewhat, and finally, we were ready for recording. We called a friend, Bill Herman of Paradiddle Records and asked to use his studio. With the rental of the studio, we were hoping to keep the recording session to under 8 hours. We did it in 4 1/2! It was almost perfect. I was so proud of everyone. Recording the instrumental tracks was perfect in the 2nd take! After mastering, and editing, we had our soundtrack. We now had only to film it.

They shot it over the course of week 29. 10 different locations, 5 of which ALL featured the chorus, over the course of 6 days. And by Friday, July 22, it was wrapped. And finally.... Here it is....



I am so proud of the cast and creative team, and all the hard work we did to bring this to fruition. It was suggested by the actors that this story isn't done... This is just the start of a bigger musical based on these characters. Where do their relationships go from here?  I totally think that musical could happen. We'll see...

Thank you Sean and Christine for this opportunity. May this not be our final collaboration! And you, Reader, GO SEE THE OTHER FILMS!!!! Share them with your friends, and Subscribe to SLTM. You won't be sorry!