The epitome of the grass roots rock revolution, the tale of the band, Zelazowa, is one that David Urbanic endeavors to bring to the screen in this short documentary about the band that did 400 shows during 2006-2007.
Zelazowa is an unsigned band that constantly toured for the last three years, staying in people’s houses, traveling by a van crammed with people and equipment, and living off tips and donations they received at their shows. Because they have no record label, they may not get luxury hotel rooms the way Nickelback does when they tour, but they are free to stop at almost any town or city that catches their interest. This allows them to perform their 400 shows in 47 different states and 10 different countries.
Content
The overall goal Mr. Urbanic seems to have had for this documentary was to introduce you to the band, Zelazowa, and make a personal connection with them and their story. This is an admirable goal, but one that also takes some serious planning ahead of time.
Some might think that a documentary is just about capturing life as it happens, but this really isn’t the case. Life as it happens rarely makes much sense unless you look at it over a three to thirty year time span, wherein you can observe patterns arise. Unless you can afford to tour with a band for much of that time and record most of it, you need to have an angle that you’re aiming for or, more appropriately, a story you’re trying to tell. Even if you do have the time, you still want to have a story you’re trying to tell, and while this doesn’t have to be heavy handed or manipulative, it does have to be well thought out.
Unfortunately, a lot of planning and thought didn’t seem to be put into this story overall, in order carry through this documentary. Instead, Mr. Urbanic mixed together scattered interviews of the band and fans with footage from concerts, music montages of the band acting loony together, and strangely named title cards from the 1920’s without a noticeable plot. While this was might have been done to give the film a stylistic feel, it instead caused it to feel terribly jumbled, more like a college home video, rather than a music documentary.
A good way to approach this for future documentaries would be to think of themes to tell in different sections. For example, the first section would be about who Zelazowa is and why their fans like them. Then a section could cover why they are unsigned, but still choose to tour. Next, the topic of the good and bad elements of touring could be explored. Finally, a conclusion could be made of what is happening in the future. (This last part was included in the end section already, but the rest of the pieces were all over the place.)
Another issue that arose was the selection of some of the interviews, which were strange and given dominance, in spite of being very biased. For instance, in the interview with Zelazowa’s attorney where he talks about how amazing the band is and that despite the fact that they are unsigned, all the professional music industry? people who are shown hear? Zelazowa’s CD really love it. This comes out feeling strangely unauthentic, much like the rhetoric you would hear from someone’s agent or the mother of one of the band members. It is difficult to avoid extremely biased points of view in a documentary, but it is really something to strive for, especially if the views come from people who have VERY vested interests in the documentary’s subjects, like their attorney. This isn’t the same case for fans, as they have no vested interest in bands, so their praise doesn’t seem as unbelievable, nor does it stilt the flow of the documentary.
Despite the issues in the storytelling process (and the technical issues we will get into later), the documentary has enough interesting elements and fascinating people to hold your interest, which is not always an easy thing to achieve in a first documentary.
