The new documentaryGirls Rock!opens this Friday , March 7 in take cities . The picture follow four girl as they hang the Rock ' n ' Roll Camp for Girls , where they hear to roleplay rock music and build up community , form their own bands and do their own songs .
I sat down with filmmakers Arne Johnson ( Producer / Co - Director ) and Shane King ( Co - Director / Cinematographer ) to discuss the film . Check the end of the consultation for info about the porta on Friday , or visit theGirls Rock!Screenings pagefor details about where to see the film , including opening dark festivity . First check out the trailer and then let ’s get to the consultation !
Mental_Floss : Give me the elevator rake forGirls Rock!including when and where it ’s opening .
Shane mogul : miss Rock!is the story of how four girlfriend find out it ’s fine to yawl like a banshie , thrum the hide off a drum kit and be 100 % who they are at the Rock ' n ' Roll Camp for Girls . It ’s opening in 7 city – New York , Los Angeles , Berkeley , San Francisco , Chicago , New York , Portland and Seattle – on March 7 . It rolls out across the country after that .
Mental_Floss : Tell me a little about who you guys are , and what brings you to documentary filmmaking .
Arne Johnson : We both grew up in Portland , though I was actually have a bun in the oven in San Francisco and lived there for my first 7 years before my parents take flight to a commune in Washington . From that point on , we ended up in Portland where I was for my formative long time . We ’ve been friends for 28 years , and along the way have talked a lot about make a movie together , but had n’t really give up a complete labor other than a poor Super 8 mm we did when we were 14 . I got into journalism finally , doing mostly moving-picture show writing , and through that take care a pail burden of docudrama and began to feel like it was the most critical genre in filmmaking . I have it off that documentaries give you , as a filmmaker , an incredible chance to become plunge in your story – you ’re not just telling other people ’s stories , but your own story is being altered as well .
Mental_Floss : What brought you to this subject ? And what issues did you encounter as two work force constitute a movie about a girl - only encampment ?
Shane King : I’m a enceinte fan of Sleater Kinney , and see about the ingroup through them … They all have taught there at least once , and Carrie Brownstein is one of the meeting place MCs at every camp . She also co - write the camp theme song .
As we learned that the camp was about so much more than just girl instruct instrumental role we questioned if we should just back off and let some charwoman filmmakers tell the story of the camp , but the importance of the write up had produce its hook in us and we became very passionate about sharing with the world the tale of the important work these women and girls were dong . We also found that as outsider to girlhood the interviews with the young woman take on an interesting dynamic . Because we had so picayune agreement of their world the girl were like tour - guides for us and therefore for the audience .
Then at the summer camp we were aware that our presence both as man and as filmmakers could be disruptive to the camp so we thought a fate about downplay our impact . First of all we want to ensure not to ruin any of the girls ' precious week at the camp , so we were very deliberate to keep an eye on how our bearing was feign the mass in the room and if we notice anyone either cringing at the presence of the tv camera or playing to the photographic camera we would leave the room . We also let the girls and staff acknowledge that they could ask us to stop shoot whenever they want and we would respect that . There were also certain situations where either we or members of the camp recall it was best not to have men around , so we were make for with two women filmmakers for the week of the camp and they would germinate those scenes .
Mental_Floss : When you were child , what kind of camps did you go to ? How does the camp in the documentary relate ?
Shane King : As a kid the only inner circle I went to was communistic camp , it was really more of a conference for adults to exchange wedlock get up ideas and stuff , but there were a small handful of kids and we did all the regular kind of coterie stuff like braiding keychains out of colorful strip of plastic , catching toad , canoeing on the lake , you know all the poppycock they do in the Friday the 13th picture before Jason testify up . Its relation to the Rock ' n ' Roll Camp for Girls is that it is another avenue in which masses are progress to very conscious alternative about variety of human beings they desire to live in and get hold of steps to do it .
Arne Johnson : I never actually went to a normal summertime clique . In Portland , they have this thing cry " out-of-door school " where you go for a week with your fifth grade division and other category and check about nature and stuff . But it was n’t in the summer . My family lived on a commune for a yr where I was " homeschooled " ( which mostly dwell of swan around with goats ) , so that was sort of like summertime camp . It ’s part of the understanding I enjoyed being at rock refugee camp so much … Though not a participant , I got to see some of those same bail bond and aroused partings with the moving picture work party .
Mental_Floss : order me about Doc Talk .
Arne Johnson : I manage to palaver a pirate radio show from this ramshackle place that was operate out of a closet in the Mission . At first , Shane and I just play music and lecture a lot … for awhile we think we might do an Ira Glass sort of matter , but never quite got it together . We started bringing admirer on the show for variety , and begin to realize that many of them were documentary film producer . All at once , we decided to do a show as a sort of mix ofCar TalkandFresh Air . As we started to officially ( formal in only the most ephemeral sentiency ) organize the show and invite hoi polloi on , we actualize what an awe-inspiring richness of infotainment filmmakers there are in the bay area .
As we were starting out on theGirls Rock!Journey , we settle to practice the radio set show to not only ask about the filmmakers ' films , but to solve specific job we were having . It was like a costless film school . The cool thing was how excited many local leading lights like Henry Rosenthal , Elizabeth Thompson , and Sam Green were about being on literary pirate radio . It was more thePump Up the Volumeconcept than our fifteen attender , I imagine ….
Shane queen : Doc Talk was in many mode Arne ’s and my film school day . We are both a little undereducated ( if you will ) . We have both have Bachelors degrees from a country schooltime , so we had to be creative when it came time to larn about filmmaking . When I need to ascertain something , I often attempt to find a Book of Job teaching it . That has been a very good put-on over the last 10 years . There did n’t seem to be a ton of auditor so the interview turn into very specific questions about problems we were birth withGirls Rock ! . It was a very fun agency to serve San Francisco build up a little more of a sense of its plenteous documentary community and larn how to make one at the same sentence .
Mental_Floss : I ’m a big documentary devotee , as are many of our reviewer . What documentaries or documentarians are you peculiar fans of ?
Shane King : Besides our local heros and Friend like Judy Irving ( Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill ) , Sam Green ( The Weather Underground ) David Brown ( surfboarding for Life ) , Tal Skloot ( Freeway Philharmonic ) , one of the many great unknown docs I ’ve realise of late isThe Devil ’s Minerby Richard Ladkani and Kief Davidson . I ’m also a big fan of Bruce Sinofsky who I met in San Quentin , Errol Morris who I do n’t think I want to meet , and the granddaddy of doc , Robert J. Flaherty .
Arne Johnson : There are a few folks I really love . Some of Frederick Wiseman ’s film are nearly unwatchable , but there are so many great films in his 30 - plus filmography . He ’s the first doc - Divine who showed me that editing can be a poetic exercise , a fashion of carry realism in the way writers do . He shoots a sealed amount of footage and then weaves together intuitive associations that can be arresting . I peculiarly lovePrimateandBasic Training , but his plastic film were only just free on DVD a calendar month or two ago so I ’ve only seen a diminutive percentage .
Fast , Cheap , and Out of Controlis also one of my preferent documentary film . Again , Errol Morris uses the substance of realism to fashion all sort of beautiful dissonances and symphonies . When the movie starts out , you think it ’s going to be poking fun at these goofy folks , but by the death you ’re wrapped into some kind of speculation on who we all are . I imagine in general I ’m draw to this writerly sense of docudrama filmmaking , in all probability because of my background as a author . I have a go at it that docudrama films are being given more room to explore , though there are many critics who ’ve yet to catch up and are constantly harp about a deficiency of journalistic objectivity . No one screams about the new diarist any longer for reporting their immanent experience of historical events , it ’s an erstwhile and dead battle . But images are powerful and people get tempestuous when they feel dupe or unsure what ’s truthful and what ’s not . I ’m not preach for a stark blurring of the bank line , I just think to remove the filmmaker as creative person is cockeyed . The funny thing is , people hold up Wiseman as a completely objective filmmaker and nothing could be further from the verity . Just because he has no narration or audience or anything else contribute to the motion picture , he boil down 100 minute of footage to the icon that matter most to him . What could be more immanent ?
Mental_Floss : If you had an unlimited budget , what documentary film subject would you draw near ?
Shane King : Screw doc , I wanna make a zombi pic !
Arne Johnson : Wow , that ’s a tough one . I actually have a hard clock time think that direction , I ’m a big advocate for staying lean and entail . Even if I had more money I ’d want to stay unencumbered by all of the dross that arrive with tot budget . More hoi polloi , more expensive equipment you ’re scared of harming , more atmospheric pressure to make something amazing , all of that stuff . I think I would utilise the same appendage to any photographic film I made . In fact , with a few notable exceptions ( music licenses ! ! ! ) I actually think our dispirited budget approach on this cinema was a strength rather than a weakness . We had to consider about everything we did cautiously , and improvise solutions that often end up better . Though of course we will drop more money someday than we did on this film , the whole idea of an " unlimited budget " give me the heebie jeebies . I ’m sort of unreasoningly discompose by the idea of waste and excess , so even if that was offered I ’d believably search the World Wide Web for bargains and stuff . Shane likes to tease me about how when we were kid I ’d always get the 12 week - honest-to-goodness doughnut for $ 1 , and be truly mad though they were nearly inedible .
Mental_Floss : In the editing physical process , you sometimes incur a new level emerge that may not have been apparent while you were photograph . Did that happen on this project ? And / or can you talk about the redaction summons in worldwide ?
Arne Johnson : Well , as I mentioned in my rather long - winded answer to the preferred documentary filmmaker enquiry , I like to work somewhat associatively . But Shane and I have a pretty great working system that actually bug out well before we even scoot that permit me to do that . Once we be intimate a fair amount about the chronicle we ’re covering , we do this whole process where we lay out all of the level and musical theme we ’re going to look for , what form of stuff matters to us , all that kind of hooey . So , by the time we ’re done shooting , we have a moderately good idea what we shoot that we desire to use .
For illustration , the four independent girls were admit in eight girls we focused on at the beginning of camp . But by the 2nd day we had narrowed it down to five , because we watched them come forth in ways that exemplified theme we were hearing about from all the girlfriend . So , in many ways , we were already editing .
Again , this is a very immanent process , you ca n’t help but go where your heart and your eye conduct you . Anyone who obstinately stay on focused on some nonobjective concept in the face of their own shifting feel about a subject is doomed to either a boring moving-picture show or a terrible editing process . That having been enounce , there were definitely melodic theme and associatory connections that get along to us afterward . Liz Canning ’s animations , for illustration , which became such a of the essence part of the film , helped us set about shaping some of the internal tensions of the motion picture . We started out trying to do a newspaper publisher cutting , or put some sort of three act structure on the film , and all of those exercises helped in different ways , but ultimately the bulk of the work was us intuitively work through the storey establish on what we had discuss the year before . Shane has a passably different process and can better speak to that . He ’s the veridical editor of the two of us , in fact we ask to calling me the " uneditor , " because I would show him some associative and incomprehensible sequence and then excuse to him what I was taste to get at and then he would somehow magically make that pass .
Shane King : Yes , we knew we wanted the film to be about the transformation of who we focused on . But what aspects of their transmutation to explore and how to balance the stories was an ever - changing process . We drop about a year editing full time and showing versions to friends and our adviser Elizabeth Thompson , who make the docBlink . And then we suppose we were done . fiddling did we cognize we ’d spend the next class and one-half refining the cut and each revision made it much good .
Mental_Floss : What ’s it like releasing an sovereign documentary ? Did you have to snarf up with a distribution company ? Has it been expensive ?
Shane King : We were lucky enough land our first choice for a distributor . Shadow Distribution " pay off " the flick immediately and really consider in it . We are open in more cities than any doc last year , exceptSicko .
Arne Johnson : secrete an independent infotainment is an insanely clock time - consuming and simultaneously glorious experience . We were lucky to find out two fantastic distributors , Ro*co Films International , who operate as our strange electrical distributor and domestic sale agent , and Shadow Distribution , who is handling the domesticated theatrical freeing and has fill in - licensed the domestic videodisk rights .
We actually direct an strange path to distribution , as we had n’t even had our festival premiere when we send the movie to Shadow . The normal procedure is that you attempt to get into some big festival like Sundance and then generate enough buzz that distributors will tender on your photographic film . We knew early on that it was going to take a exceptional allocator to ferment with our moving picture , so we started demand around . Two of our Doc Talk guests , Sam Green ( The Weather Underground ) and Judy Irving ( Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill ) , had both been distribute by Shadow , and talked about " loving " their distributor . We had never see that word used about a distributer ! Other words , which I ’ll leave unspoken for now , were more usual .
Once we looked into the careful way they free films and discover they were in Waterville , Maine , the only distributor we sleep together of that ’s not in LA or NY , we were hooked . We sent it to Shadow and another caller we ’d hear good thing about , Zeitgeist , and Shadow wanted it . Done . That ’s definitely not a typical storey ! One of the only two companies we sent it to , want it .
While frustrating and wearying and overwhelming , the process of opening an indie film is greatly enrich by having kinfolk like Ken and Beth Eisen of Shadow and Annie Roney at Ro*co on our side . Every step of the way when we ’ve been in some sort of difficult place they ’ve backed us up in ways that I ’ll be forever indebted to them for . I consider them all good supporter and desire our relationship stretches long past this movie or any filmmaking for that matter .
Mental_Floss : How did you pick the soundtrack for the movie ?
Arne Johnson : Well , the first criteria was that we want to lay out a lot of great music that boast women , so every note on the soundtrack has the manus of at least one woman on it . It ’s also sort of vaguely source in the early ' ninety explosion of woman in rock , but admit things outside that boundary . Really , it was mostly just bands that I loved ! I had that same excitement you get when you ’re making a mix - CD for a friend who says they do n’t really lie with any classic state . If medicine culture was sort of my " protagonist " saying " Are there great bands with women ? " , this is our admixture - CD in reply . Not at all complete , not even thoroughly all of the women rockers that I make love , like PJ Harvey , Patti Smith , The Pretenders , etc … but a kind of associative slice that set scenes in the movie well .
Mental_Floss : Are there any particular events associated with the premiere ? Are you going to be in any of the premiere city for screenings ?
Arne Johnson : Yes , lots of events !
In Portland , the Rock Camp is hosting a high muckamuck political party and red carpet event around the chess opening , with roller bowler hat escorts and the whole nine pace .
In San Francisco , where Shane and will be for opening Nox , there will be some live music ( women , of course ! ) before the 7pm - ish show , and a party afterwards at a nearby eating place .
In Berkeley , the first matinee ( doors at 10:30am ) will feature live medicine by girls from the motion picture , instrument stations girls can try out rocking on , and other merriment clobber for the price of a movie tag .
In New York , on opening night , NOW NYC will host a dialog box after the 7pm - ish screening about the issues prove in the film . And I ’ll be there on Saturday Nox for Q&As .
In Los Angeles , a big org called WriteGirl is hosting a board on media and girls Saturday night feature women from the music industry . Shane will be there for Q&As on Sunday and Monday .
Seattle is also having some unrecorded music before various shows , and I ’ll be there for Q&As on the eleventh and 12th .
I ’ll also be in Chicago on the ninth and tenth .
Then we ’ll both be up in Portland on the 13th for more Q&As and for the big concert the rock pack is putting on on the fourteenth .
Phew ! There ’s lots going on , and the cool affair is , we organise only some of it . A spate of this is just hoi polloi extremely excited about the moving picture and want to enter . People can check out our websitewww.girlsrockmovie.comfor all the particulars about where / when , etc .
Mental_Floss : Thanks for your fourth dimension , hombre . I ’ll be at the Portland VIP company on Friday , in type any Portland Mental_Floss readers want to say hello !
