Creatively Depicting the Creative Process
Director Discusses Making of Andrew Bird: Fever Year
Think about the hardest year in your life, professionally, physically and personally. Think about what it would be like if someone made a movie about that year.
Now, imagine that the subject of that movie is your long-time friend, and that you are the director. Meet Xan Aranda: that’s her. Andrew Bird is that friend, and Fever Year is that film.
Aranda is a consultant, director and producer affiliated with Kartequin Films, born and raised in Chicago. Bird is a multi-instrumentalist and singer, hailing from the same area, known for the multi-track looping technique he uses during his solo live shows.
Fever Year is Aranda’s award-winning directorial debut, a documentary picture that offers the viewer a peek into Bird’s creative process shot at the height one of the most difficult years of his life.
Aranda explained that both her friendship and previous collaborative experiences with Bird equipped her with an insight and understanding of his unique creative process. “He just wasn’t comfortable with other people,” she explained.
“You know when really well-intentioned people try to put you in clothes that just don’t work for you? It’s kind of like that.”
Before Fever Year, Bird and Aranda had previously collaborated on both music videos and live show captures.
When Bird requested Aranda make a feature film about him in 2009, she initially said no—but a bike ride home that flooded her thoughts with long-brewing ideas made her reconsider, realizing she’d had a mental image of what a feature film about her friend both should and shouldn’t be.
The two then had a discussion about their individual visions for the project, and decided to give it a shot.
Aranda said she knew from the get-go that making a conventional documentary wouldn’t be fitting for Bird’s music or personality. “I really didn’t want to create something that was statistics-driven,” she said.
“I didn’t want to just cover the ‘Where were you born?,’ ‘When did you first pick up a violin?’ kind of facts—you can see the film and get on his Wikipedia page if you want to know that stuff, but I didn’t want to draw you a map.”
The film features interviews as well as ten songs performed live, narrowed down from 36 songs shot over two days at shows played at the Pabst Theatre in Milwaukee. It features collaborations with Minneapolis-based musicians Martin Dosh, Jeremy Ylvisaker and Michael Lewis, as well as Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent.
While having an intimate relationship with the subject of the documentary you are shooting has its pros, it also has its cons, on both a technical and personal level.
“It was challenging because Andrew and I have sort of have this short-hand between us that doesn’t really serve an audience really well,” said Aranda, explaining that the two often struggled with finding ways to re-visit and re-tell experiences they were both familiar with.
Additionally, the two struggled with finding and agreeing upon the appropriate level of privacy and intimacy. “We needed to get to this level of formality that helped the viewer,” Aranda explained.
Beyond that, there comes the challenge of capturing the reality of a friend struggling, and in Bird’s case, being that friend. Bird, having complete ownership of the film, shut the entire project down for four months after receiving the final cut for approval.
“I’m not really sure what happened, but I think he was really surprised because there were some things in his life that were really real and really large and now were on record,” Aranda said. “I think it was just too much, so he panicked.”
The two came to an agreement that the film be released exclusively on the festival circuit—including making an appearance at the New York Film Festival, and a slew of others this fall.
Fever Year is not set to ever be released on DVD, but will be released into the living rooms of 25 groups who support Aranda’s upcoming work Mormon Movie on Kickstarter by Sept. 28.
“I hope people will make an effort to see it on the big screen, with good sound and good visuals,” Aranda said. “Showing up is a big deal.”
Andrew Bird: Fever Year / Sept. 19 / Film BOX (Quartiers POP – 3450 St. Urbain St., 3rd Floor) / 9:00 p.m.
