An interview with Adam Anthony, on his film The Maestro, opening The Byron Bay Film Festival on the 2nd of March. Get your tickets and info HERE.
Q- What inspired you to make ‘The Maestro’ (how it came about) ?
I think the first wave of inspiration came after I shot a bunch of time-lapse footage of the city at night. Everything moving in large numbers like traffic and hoards of pedestrians, stuff you see everyday suddenly looked really dynamic. I thought it would be interesting to see things moving at different speeds all at the same time, then started thinking about this amazing character who could control it all.
A big part of that character comes from a cousin of mine who I was really close to growing up. We are the same age and when we were about twenty he just disappeared one day and was found living on the streets three years later. He was taken to a hospital and diagnosed with Schizophrenia. He’s been through unimaginable years of treatment that’s ongoing and is doing really well now but obviously he’s not the same as he was before his illness emerged. I thought about what his day-to-day life must have been like back then, on the surface he probably would have looked like someone you would cross the street to avoid but on the inside he’s one of the sweetest souls you could ever come across who just happened to be going through complete hell at the time.
Q- Tell us a bit about your filmmaking background?
I started making films in high school, we had a film program run by this incredible teacher Mr. Englert who had a serious passion for cinema, I think he also had a serious drinking problem… but he was really great, he took us through D.W Griffith & Hitchcock then got us into edgier territory like Kenneth Anger, Michelangelo Antonioni, Luis Buñuel and we were only like fifteen years old! We’d go out and shoot our own stuff on Super 8, cut it together and all watch each other’s films. I’m certain everything we made was terrible but we had a lot of fun and Englert really encouraged us to go ‘out there’ with our ideas, he was probably the only adult in our high school who did, so he was really popular with all the students. From there I just started making stuff and watching a lot of films. I try to watch at least one film a day.
Q- You are opening the Byron Bay Film Festival! Excited?
I could not believe it when they told me The Maestro was opening the festival this year. I mean film & Byron Bay that’s like my favorite thing in the world in one of my favorite places in the world. I may never come home!
The Maestro: tell us a bit about the making of?
We really didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into with the making of this, it was tough. Shooting-wise, we were a crew of four people. We had virtually no budget meaning no control of our locations, having to shoot around the general public in the middle of Sydney. We made a decision at the beginning to only shoot with available light and capture all the effects ‘in camera’, which made for a rewarding, but long, challenging process. It did get a little tense near the end and I was left with a full understanding that it’s one thing to remain completely passionate about your project to the bitter end when you’re the director making all the decisions but asking an unpaid camera assistant to re-shoot something for the fifth time in the middle of the night, well… they’re going to f*%$ing hate you by the end of it. Fortunately everyone was happy with the results and we all remain great friends! Nate Martin if you’re reading this, I love you buddy!
What’s the film about?
I think it’s about someone who’s day-to-day life is a pretty cold, dark place with a constant barrage of chaotic ‘noise’ assaulting them all the time, noise and voices they would rather not hear. Physically and materially, there is very little they can do about it so they escape internally to a world where everything is in warm vivid color, the ‘noise’ is ordered, structured beautiful music and most importantly, they have some control over themselves and their surroundings.