Archive for March, 2012

New Film Musical from Portland Filmmaker/Professor Celebrates the Healing Power of Music and the Landscape of the Pacific Northwest

Emmy-winning filmmaker and professor Dustin Morrow, popular indie rocker Kate Tucker, and internationally acclaimed theatre artist Noah Drew have collaborated on a new feature-length film musical, titled Everything Went Down. Near completion, the filmmakers are currently seeking assistance as a Kickstarter project. To access the film’s Kickstarter page, go to the film’s website, www.everythingwentdown.com, and click on the word ‘Kickstarter’ on the main page.

Everything Went Down follows a young college professor (played by Drew) who has become a shell of a person following the death two years earlier of his wife. Crippled by a numbing grief, he’s shut himself off from the world emotionally. At the same time, a young singer-songwriter (Tucker) has begun to lose faith in the struggle to make a name for herself as a musician. Bogged down by the pressures of turning her art into commerce, she has lost sight of why she wanted to make music in the first place.

Unfolding over the space of a few weeks, the film chronicles the budding friendship between the professor and the singer, as the energy and beauty of her music begins to bring him back to life, and the value of her music to this man reawakens her to the merits of making music.

Everything Went Down is a realist musical in the style of the beloved Irish film Once. Subverting the traditional structure of musicals, in which characters artificially break into song and performance, the music in Everything Went Down is integrated concretely into the world of the film, complementing the narrative, and providing the film with the generosity and compassion at its center.

Additionally, Everything Went Down also meditates on the beauty of the Pacific Northwest. The film was realized through a combination of deliberate, reflective shooting, and the energy and immediacy of documentary techniques like handheld cameras and long lenses.

Star Noah Drew is a Vancouver-based actor, composer, and voice instructor with a long list of stage credits in both Canada and the U.S. The film’s other lead, Kate Tucker, is a popular American indie artist who has released three albums, played at CMJ, SXSW, Bumbershoot, and Lilith Fair, and seen her songs licensed to several major network television series and multiple Starbucks compilations. Tucker’s elegant, haunting songs provide the film with its musical heartbeat. The movie’s soundtrack is constructed largely of tracks from her brilliant new album, White Horses. Writer/Director Dustin Morrow is a media artist and professor at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, where he teaches courses in film production and theory. His films have won awards and been screened in venues around the world.
Everything Went Down is about the healing power of music. Music is friendship – it brings people together, and bonds them in ways that only a shared love of art can. Writer/Director Dustin Morrow is a board member of the innovative Arts and the Quality of Life Research Center, and the producer of Arts at your Side, a documentary for that Center that profiles a number of music therapy projects, including a songwriting program for at-risk inner-city youth and a music composition program for children with spinal cord injuries. Morrow, Drew, and Tucker are great believers in the capacity of art and music to heal people, physically and emotionally. In our injured economy, and in the wake of a decade of arts-poor government funding, it is their intention that this film celebrate music, how it bonds us to each other and makes our lives better. Because without music, and without art, we hurt.

Any profits generated by the release of Everything Went Down will be donated to music therapy programs for children.

The filmmakers are currently seeking finishing funds related to the film’s distribution, via Kickstarter. Funds will go toward mastering the film, pressing and packaging DVDs, putting the film into film festivals, and promoting the film through print, web, video and mobile media. Donations can be made at the project’s Kickstarter page, which can be accessed by going to the film’s site, www.everythingwentdown.com, and clicking on the word ‘Kickstarter’ on the main page.
Questions about the film can be directed to Prof. Morrow at d.morrow@pdx.edu. You can learn more about the writer/director Dustin Morrow at his website, www.dustinmorrow.com. You can learn more about lead actor Noah Drew at his website, www.noahdrew.com. You can learn more about lead actor/composer Kate Tucker at her website, www.katetucker.net. Mr. Morrow, Mr. Drew, and Ms. Tucker are available for press interviews about the project.
Photographs and other press materials can be downloaded from the Press page of the film’s website, www.everythingwentdown.com.
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Everything Went Down
Website: www.everythingwentdown.com
Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/everythingwentdown
Tumblr Blog: everythingwentdown.tumblr.com
Twitter Feed: www.twitter.com/EWDFilm (or @EWDFilm)
Kickstarter Campaign: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1289514220/everything-went-down
YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/EWDfilm