by Annette Basile
When Darcy Newton, the first-time director and cinematographer who was embedded on the tour bus, returned with 600 hours of video, the filmmakers faced the herculean task of distilling it into a neat 90 minutes. The film’s editors culled the 600 hours down to 18 and the filmmaking team sat and watched those 18 hours together, across two sessions.
“We had almost every live performance filmed in its entirety and talking-head interviews with each member of the band,” Claptrap producer Luca Catalano tells FilmInk. “But what was clear from the 18-hour assembly cut was that the most intriguing, captivating footage was the hours and hours of pure observation.”
So, instead of a standard documentary, with a voice-over narration and a streamlined narrative, Claptrap became an ob-doc – an observational documentary, taking the fly-on-the-wall perspective of a single camera. No voice-overs. No explanations.
“With Darcy being relatively inexperienced with a camera, the early footage was a little bit rough around the edges but as we progressed through the footage and the tour, it improved,” continues Catalano. “By the end, it was essentially unnoticeable, it looked professional, he did get the hang of it. And as we chipped away at the 18-hour assembly cut, we began to notice that the little imperfections in the videography early in the tour gave the point-of-view – the ‘camera’ – its own character. It brought us closer to the band and who they are as individuals off-stage.”
Kingswood, a Melbournian band that has been around for 17 years, rock hard – as evidenced when they play in pubs everywhere from Bowral to Broome. The punters love them, enjoying the indie rock with country influences and occasional reflective moments.
“Darcy was on his own for the entire tour,” Catalano explains. “We had a crew that we put together for the pre-production interviews with the band, and initially we wanted the whole crew to follow the band around the country. But we simply didn’t have the resources to make it work. The only reason it did work was because the band had a spare bed on the bus that they were happy for Darcy to take. Darcy hadn’t had much experience shooting at that point, but we armed him with all the gear we could manage – not a lot – and trusted he would get the hang of it eventually.”
The result is a rocking, rough diamond of a documentary, made with a mere $50,000. But there’s something that Catalano expected that didn’t happen – inter-band friction. While there are the odd moments of tension, Kingswood are not the ‘dysfunctional family’ that bands are often seen as.
“The way that bands on tour – and bands in general – are portrayed across fictional and factual media, I was certainly expecting more ‘drama’ when Darcy first told me about the project,” explains Catalano. “But from the very first time I spoke to [lead singer/guitarist] Fergus Linacre and [lead guitarist] Alex Laska, I understood their deep devotion to their craft and how much playing music means to them… At the end of the day, they all had the passion, drive and the love of what they do to spend six months living on a bus driving across the country playing 112 shows.
“So, despite the moments of friction and discord that happen with any cohabitation or collaboration – let alone both – they were always united on that front. The key to all successful cohabitation or collaboration, really, is commitment to something larger than yourself.”
Claptrap is screening at Cinema Nova as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival on 25th and 28th July 2024. Tix here.
