One Perfect Day is one of the most richly
detailed and unique films to come out of Australia
in recent years. The rave culture, let alone the
Australian dance culture, is something that is
often overlooked in films, with the odd film or
two marking the total of the genre. While One
Perfect Day is something much deeper than
simply a film about the rave culture, it's based
around the people involved with that culture, and
our club-headed Marty Friedel took some time out
with Phil Gregory, the Executive Producer, and
Paul Pirola, the sound designer, from One
Perfect Day to discuss the film and the
upcoming DVD.
Dealing with rather heavy issues involving drugs,
death and adult themes, One Perfect Day
originally received a classification of MA by the
Office of Film and Literature Classification. This
decision was appealed, and won, reducing the
classification to an M rating, creating a much
wider audience. Gregory comments that "we felt
that this was an inappropriate rating particularly
given the nature of other films that I've seen in
recent history that were rated M or PG that I felt
were bloated wall to wall with gratuitous violence
and yet here's a film that's more of a portrayal
of real life and real life situations that was
painted as a really dark story that got an MA
rating. I just didn't think that there was
relative fairness and of course an MA rating would
mean that we wouldn't be able to get the film out
as widely as we could, particularly to those under
15." Luckily in the appealing process, nothing was
removed from the film.
Rated M for Death Themes and Drug Use, the world
of drug culture seeps onto the screen, where
younger minds can witness drug misuse and it
raises the question of what influences such as
One Perfect Day can do to these minds, even
though this is definitely not a pro-drug film.
Australian production company Lightstream Films,
founded by Phil Gregory, Paul Currie and Charles
Morton, have a philosophy of making films that
portray real life stories with universal themes
and accessible characters. Some may see One
Perfect Day following in the footsteps of
films such as 8 Mile carrying an anti-drug
message, however this was not Gregory's aim. "What
we wanted to make was a film that presented the
real world, and a real world where people are
going to be presented with choices and have the
opportunity to make the decisions themselves and
be equipped to make these decisions themselves,"
Gregory comments. "They choose to say 'yes' in
certain situations and there are consequences with
saying 'yes', and that's what the film deals with."
Obviously for a film containing drug use, there
would need to be scenes involving actors under the
influence of drugs. Four of the film's key
characters, Alysse (played by Leeanna Walsman),
Emma (played by Abbie Cornish), Trig (played by
Nathan Phillips) and momentarily Hector (played by
Andrew Howard), are under the influence at one
point or another during the film, and one must
ask, where does the "influence" come from? Gregory
laughs, "it wasn't like they were going around
taking pills just for the experience. They watched
footage of other actors from programmes which
showed the effects of drugs."
Now the words 'drugs' and 'Hector' lead on to
another topic. Now if you've seen the film, then
you would be familiar with Hector's chest-shaving
scene, a scene which left a few audience members
stunned, asking 'where did that come from?' "It
just seemed like a good representation of a quirky
social phenomenon," Gregory comments. "On one hand
something quite light and humorous, but also an
inside into the bizarre and twisted personality of
Hector - vain to the extreme, but vulnerable at
the same time. So it helped to depict his bizarre
character on one level and also to provide a
moment of levity."
Accompanying One
Perfect Day's February
2004 release date was a promotion going
hand-in-hand with Two Tribes, one of Australia's
largest dance parties which saw huge international
acts such as BT and Hybrid reaching Australian
shores over the first quarter of 2004, too
including Marty's home of Adelaide for the first
time. Not only was this great advertising but also
gave clubbers around the country the chance to
party like in the scenes from One Perfect
Day. Such extravagant and massive parties,
such as those illustrated in One Perfect
Day, required the staging of real parties, at
the Salt Mines north of Melbourne, TranceZenDance
and the at Kabuki 3.0, with the last including a
performance by international DJ Paul Van Dyk.
"When you have a party there's a very limited time
where you will be able to re-shoot it," explains
Gregory, "so a fair bit of pressure comes with
having set up a real event and then being able to
shoot the best quality footage in a limited amount
of time. These are real events with a cast of a
full audience. There's also something elevating
about that - on one level the pressure, but on
another something uplifting." The grand finale,
starring between five and six thousand partying
extras, was filmed in Melbourne between 11pm and
2:30am, just prior to Paul Van Dyk's performance,
and was shot in several takes during that period.
"We had just a few hours to get it absolutely
right," remarks Gregory. "But even so, that's a
pretty big deal with all the things that were
going on, you know electricity problems, problems
with projection - you had to get it right because
we weren't able to go back next week and get
another five or six thousand people there and do
it again."
Tommy Matisse, a character in the film played by
Dan Spielman, changes from a classical musician to
a deck spinster, and it can be seen that these two
genres are actually closer than they first appear,
similar to how groups such as Orbital and Hybrid
have shown us. As a requirement for his character,
Spielman needed to be able to play the violin as
well as play on the decks in front of an audience.
"(Dan) trained with a guy called Nigel McLean to
learn the violin, and had quite an aptitude
according to Nigel, he picked up on it pretty
quickly, and learned real DJ techniques from
Richie Rich. It was pretty intense learning," adds
Gregory.
When watched in a well-built and well-mixed
cinema, the 5.1 soundtrack is nothing short of
amazing, leaving you breathless. With sound being
such an important and vital character for One
Perfect Day, the sound engineering needed to
be precise and dedicated to providing the ambience
and environment of some pretty intense situations.
Gregory notes that "essentially it's a musical
story - the story of a musical journey where music
and Tommy's gift for sound is fundamental to the
story line and from that very foundation it was
essential that the sound was able to perform its
own role in telling the story. I think that's the
essence of it, equally as important as the
dialogue, and supporting the dialogue in telling
the story. In Tommy's world sometimes is the
things he doesn't say but he hears."
Paul Pirola, One Perfect Day's sound
designer, comments that "there were certain
aspects of the sound that have definitely been
structured with the screenplay and the film's
narrative, the whole concept of "Tommy Time", and
that character's ability to hear things that other
people take for granted - that sort of thing has
definitely been structured into the screenplay,
and in the original screenplay there was actually
a lot more of that sort of stuff." Rather than
leaving inspiration for sound design to the
editing room, most of the ground work was done
prior to production, with Pirola onboard from the
beginning. "I have been able to have input on all
aspects of the sound," comments Pirola, "so when
we then went to the shoot we had a pretty good
idea of what we wanted to achieve. Certain aspects
of the sound needed to be constructed before they
started shooting, so a lot of it wasn't an
afterthought at all."
"In a way what we wanted to try to portray was a
very good classical muso, very good at coming up
with weird sounds, and then very good at that
phase into electronic music, so in a way my
experience really brought the sound effects to the
film, and David Hobson, the classical composer,
brought the classical elements and Josh Abrams
brought a lot of the electronic elements. The
three of us combined our skills and created the
electronic soundscape," explains Pirola. The
sounds that Tommy hears are those that others may
simply overlook, such as a cricket's chirping
slowed down. Gregory explains that this phenomenon
is actually based on fact. "Someone compared the
sound that they make with their life expectancy
with comparison to humans, which is about 10,000
times shorter than a human being, and so slowed
down the audio to match the life span, just to use
this an example. Anyway, we tried this and that is
what we heard and it was simply amazing - this
rich choral sound. So that was embedded in the
storyline because it was based on fact."
Accompanying a film looking at the clubbing
culture is, obviously, a killer soundtrack. "The
rave, or the dance music, most people experience
in a stereo environment and we wanted to make it
as much of a cinematic experience as possible and
offer something that people might not have had the
opportunity to experience before," says Pirola,
"There's probably a few dance DVDs that are out
that are made in 5.1 but we really wanted to push
the 5.1 boundaries as far as we possibly could. So
when all of the music was being put together there
were artists all over the world doing the
soundtrack and they always delivered us all of
their components. So they would deliver us the
percussion beats separate to the pads separate to
the piano, so that kept the integrity of their mix
but I was able to take that and spin it around the
room or add sub-bass to just the beat trying to
get a clean feel."
One Perfect Day succeeds admirably
including plenty of rare and exclusive music in
the film as well as on the 2-disc CD soundtrack.
Scenes such as that which utilises Lamb's
Gorecki work beautifully and seem too good
to be true. When asked if the screenplay was built
around "musical moments", Gregory commented that
"tracks (that were) used in the film have been
placed to give the strongest emotional beats to
the story. So in the case of Gorecki it
just fits that particular sequence beautifully."
Gregory goes on to comment that "David Hobson's
original score is essential to the whole film.
There are threads of it in the beginning of the
film which then, at the end, becomes a big
collaboration with Paul Van Dyk. In that respect
the score forms a bed for the musical journey.
"It was always our intention as filmmakers at
Lightstream Films to make films for the world
really, not just films that would only ever really
be seen in Australia, which a large number of
films are to remain here as it has never been
their ambition to travel, particularly in that
comedy genre where its easier to explain local
humour. This particular film has universal appeal
to make it universally understandable with
production values that are equal to those around
the world. And that makes what you can do within
the budget very difficult - we have an English
actor in Hector, we shot in London, and music was
one of the easiest things for us to use to create
a fully international piece with such a broad
palette such that we're able to tell the story.
"Lou's voice in 'Gorecki', for example, there is
nothing like that in Australia, so we just had a
wider template. I think it has added significantly
to the appeal of the film being able to have a
broader range of music to choose from, the broader
range being international. It was a long, and at
times quite arduous, journey, as most of it is
unreleased or been recorded exclusively for the
soundtrack, and Gorecki is not in that
category, Gorecki is actually a licensed
track. But the Robert Smith/Cure thing,
Pictures of You, that was re-recorded by
Robert and remixed by paulmac exclusively for the
soundtrack, others such as Rob Dougan's powerful
track One and the Same remixed again
exclusively for the soundtrack. Then there is
commissioned music for example Orbital, which
really adds a "can't see anywhere else, can't get
anywhere else" kind of value to the film.
"It enhances the
experience and provides better
value for money when they buy the soundtrack. We
were a bit over the concept of having a
compilation of licensed tracks which seems a bit
common place, and in a way a bit of a cheap shot,
with this being neither of these two," laughs
Gregory. "Well we don't think so anyway. David
Hobson did an amazing job too, venturing into a
two year journey for David. He was constantly at
it, and it became a real labour of love. One of
the great moments of the film was watching the
making of the film and watching when David Hobson
and Paul Van Dyk meet in a studio for the first
time, how quickly they found common ground, trying
to work out how exactly they will be able to
combine forces for the film and work on a
collaboration."
One of the greatest problems faced with creating
such an international compilation for a soundtrack
is to do with licensing rights. "Some of (the
tracks) are unreleased tracks which makes things
very difficult. We went digging into libraries,
and got in contact with management companies to
get artists to agree to have their unreleased
tracks included in the film. With normal licensing
you would ring up a record company and organise a
licensed track. But these tracks weren't even
licensed so we had to draft up licensing
agreements. It was just a matter of getting people
engaged in the process. We needed to make sure
that the artists, and ourselves, were happy with
the music to have it go public. Some of this music
is recorded but the artists don't want anyone to
hear, or others just haven't found their place on
a recording yet but they still wanted the track to
be released."
Then there's the problem of being unable to score
the rights to tracks that you desperately want to
include. Gregory comments that "I thought that was
going to be the case, but it wasn't in the end. I
mean we tried some people but we weren't able to,
however that was in the very early days. I mean I
could talk about specific artists that we would
have liked to have had, such as The Chemical
Brothers, Faithless, Radiohead or Silverchair, but
for various reasons you just couldn't get through
to people - sometimes they were in the middle of
12 months of recording and weren't taking any
calls, other people, in the case of Daniel Johns,
he wasn't very well. But generally speaking we got
as good as we could possibly have expected. We've
been supported along the path by some great
talent, and this journey has been very
overwhelming and rewarding."
New recordings, such as those from Groove Armada,
Paul Van Dyk and Fatboy Slim, were also acquired
for the film. When asked what the process of
acquiring these tracks was Gregory replied by
saying "Firstly we had to make a connection with
their management to make sure they were prepared
and wanted to be involved in the project. And then
with Paul Currie working with the artists it
becomes a creative collaboration with the
musicians composing the music as it needs to be
able to deliver Paul's (Currie) vision both of the
film and the scene for which it was made for. So
it was a personal thing between the director and
the musician, with FTPing used as the main global
transportation network, with a fair few phone
calls - a bit of a back and forth process,
finessing and getting it right."
Lisa Gerrard, one of the most underrated
Australian acts in Gregory's opinion, was signed
up for vocals on the soundtrack. "Paul (Currie)
approached her and they spiritually connected with
the project," explains Gregory. "She connected
with the story and what it was trying to achieve,
as well as a vehicle for her." Gerrard's vocals
can be heard on TV Screen Memories with
composer David Hobson, as well as Orbital's One
Perfect Sunrise, which will soon be available
in a full nine minute version on their new album
Blue Album.
One of the common debates in the DVD world is to
do with Dolby Digital vs. DTS. There is no better
man than Pirola to ask about his preference to
this debate. "Well from a practical point of view,
(I prefer) Dolby Digital, because it appears on
the film (print) and there are no extra discs that
can get lost or misplaced. From a listening point
of view, I have sat in a theatre with a film I
mixed and switched between SDDS, DTS and Dolby and
it is extremely difficult to hear a difference.
There is perhaps something psycho-acoustically
that I might perceive as being some sort of a
difference, but I really strain to try to pick it
up. That is at least in cinema. The algorithms for
DVD are different to those in cinema, so with DVD
I haven't actually sat down and A-B'ed, as the
Dolby Digital algorithm is quite different and the
quality on DVD is much higher than what goes out
with a (film) print.
"When making a film there are licence fees to
produce it in Dolby or DTS. And off the top of my
head, the DTS is around $10,000," Pirola explains.
"We looked into the number of cinemas that had
only DTS playback capabilities compared with Dolby
and it was felt that that money was better spent
elsewhere. It would have had a bit more of a
digital coverage if we did go DTS, but most
Australian films only go out in Dolby. I'd like to
think that if it did go to a Hoyts chain that did
only have DTS that if we did supply DTS that it
would actually make it there."
In preparation for the audio on DVD, Paul Pirola
reworked the audio slightly to build a better
soundscape for a home theatre. "Because the film
is so loud I didn't really want to use any
compression so I basically manually rode levels
around to try to avoid any further compression,
and just a little bit of EQ in some of the quieter
moments to try to overcome the general domestic
household noise," comments Pirola. "I actually
burnt a copy myself and took it around to hi-fi
stores and chucked it in heaps of different
systems to make sure that it was suitable for all
systems from the small little satellites to the
bigger systems, so hopefully it will come up well."
The One Perfect Day DVD promises to be an
absolute ripper following on from Chroma Media's
stunning interactive website. "I think you can
expect the Chroma Media people to be very involved
in the production of the DVD and that the idea is
to provide extraordinary value with behind the
scenes, making of, interviews, outtakes, music
from the film," explains Gregory. "We've certainly
been producing all the way through the filmmaking
process to be able to provide a fully featured DVD
with as much rare appeal as the soundtrack has."
One Perfect Day hits home on DVD from
September 9 in both a single disc, and a dual-disc
Special Edition featuring an exclusive 10-track
CD. The massive two disc CD soundtrack is
available now from music stores everywhere.
Read the review
here. LINK : http://www.dvd.net.au/goto.cgi?news.cgi?id=4674
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