Press & Distribution Materials for the Film
BL AC K METAL
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BL AC K METAL
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Synopsis After a career spent mining his music from the shadows, the actions of one fan create a chain reaction for the lead singer of a black metal band.
Te c h n i c a l Genre: Drama Running Time: 9 minutes Shooting Format: Hi-Def Aspect Ratio: 2:35 Sound: Stereo Production Company: Candler Productions, LLC Producers: Kat Candler, Johnny Mars, Kelly Williams Writer/Director: Kat Candler Director of Photography: Andrew Droz Palermo Editor: Duane Graves Cast: Johnny Mars, Heather Kafka, Lowell Bartholomee
Inquiries For Screenings, Kelly Williams KellyGWilliams@gmail.com 512.296.8209
For Filmmaker, Kat Candler KatCandler@gmail.com 512.771.5863
Contents D i r e c t o r ’s S t a t e m e n t
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Cast & Crew
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Screenings & Awards
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Articles & Interviews
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Additional Photos
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D i r e c t o r ’s S t a t e m e n t Making movies you’re always looking for characters and stories you haven’t seen on screen. For some time now, I have been intrigued by the metal world. Back in 2011, I started writing a film called Death Metal that explored a death metal guitarist dealing with the guilt of a teen who murders his teacher in the name of their band. I was curious about how what we put out in the world as artists comes back to us through audience interpretation and reaction. I had spent months researching everyone from Judas Priest and Slipknot to Stanley Kubrick. I am always interested in the aftermath of tragedy, and the idea of responsibility and the notion of “artist’s guilt.” Even if an artist wasn’t holding the gun, is he or she still responsible? And even if they aren’t, how heavy does that inevitable guilt weigh? For how long? With Black Metal, I was intrigued by the theatrics of a band on stage versus their reality off-stage, especially in older musicians who have families and children. How do they want to be represented getting older? Or when they become parents? What kind of conversations do they have with their kids about what they do? In researching and producing the short film, Black Metal, I’m grateful to the musicians and enthusiasts in the Texas metal scene. Don’t let the tattoos, piercings or leather fool you--despite appearances, they’re some of the warmest, kindest people you’ll ever meet. Hail Texas metal!
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Cast & Crew
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Kat Candler Writer/Director/Producer Kat Candler’s award winning films have screened at Sundance, SXSW, Slamdance, San Francisco International Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival, The National Institutes of Health and on PBS. She’s been a participant in the Tribeca All Access and IFP Emerging Narratives and Rough Cuts Lab. Candler’s screenplay Love Me was produced by Dolphin Entertainment and Anchor Bay Films or a 2013 release. She’s in development on two features, Nikki is a Punk Rocker and Hellion. Kat is a film lecturer at the University of Texas and founded the Women in Cinema student organization at the University of Texas.
Filmograph y 2013 Black Metal, 9 min., (Writer/Director, Sundance) 2012 Love Me, Produced by Dolphin Entertainment (Screenwriter) 2012 Hellion, 7 min., (Writer/Director, Sundance, SXSW, LA Film Festival) 2012 Saturday Morning Massacre, (Story by, Los Angeles Film Festival) 2009 Love Bug, 6 min., (Writer/Director, Chicago Int’l Childrens Festival) 2008 Quarter to Noon, 14 min., (Writer, Director, Producer, PBS) 2006 Jumping Off Bridges, 90 min., (Writer/Director/Producer, SXSW, PBS) 2003 Roberta Wells, 7 min., (Writer, Director, Slamdance, PBS)
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Ke l l y Wi l l i a m s Producer Kelly Williams is a producer and film programmer. He is the Director of Programming for the Lone Star International Film Festival and the former Film Program Director at the Austin Film Festival, where he was awarded the International Film Festival Summit Excellence Award in 2007. He has produced numerous award-winning short films, including Kat Candler’s Hellion (Sundance 2012). Recently, he produced the feature films Holiday Road, Cinema Six and Pictures of Superheroes. He is currently producing Candler’s latest short film Black Metal and the feature film Pit Stop directed by Yen Tan, both of which will be world premiering at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. He is a 2012 Sundance Creative Producing Fellow.
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Jonny Mars Producer/Actor, Ian Jonny co-starred and co-produced Paul Gordon’s 2010 SXSW hit, The Happy Poet, which went on to be the only American independent film at the 2010 Venice Film Festival. He recently premiered his directorial debut, the feature documentary, America’s Parking Lot at SXSW. He also produced and starred in Spencer Parson’s Saturday Morning Massacre, which premiered at the 2012 Los Angeles Film Festival this summer. As an actor, he recently appeared in Kat Candler’s Hellion, Hannah Fidell’s A Teacher, Yen Tan’s Pit Stop and Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess.
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Heather Kaf ka Actress, Rose Heather Kafka began what would become a successful career in acting in 1978 at the age of 6. Since then, she has played “Chloe” on MTV’s Austin Stories and Leatherface’s sister “Henrietta” in the Michael Bay remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. She also starred as “Diana” in Bryan Poyser’s Lovers of Hate which had competed for Best Narrative at Sundance 2010 and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. Most recently, she can be seen in Spencer Parson’s Saturday Morning Massacre, the Zellner Brothers Kid Thing, David Lowery’s Aint Them Bodies Saints, Yen Tan’s PIT STOP and Kat Candler’s Black Metal. She is currently in production on Cameron Nelson’s Some Beasts, in preproduction on Dylan Pasture’s Prove It All Night, has just wrapped on Terence Malick’s Untitled Project V and is also in David Gordon Green’s Joe starring Nicholas Cage.
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Andrew Droz Palermo Director Of Photography Andrew Palermo began his career with a wildly successful music video for White Rabbits’ Percussion Gun, and went on to write and direct the short film A Face Fixed. Since then he has served as director of photography for several projects including You’re Next, a 2011 Toronto International Film Festival selection purchased by Lionsgate, V/H/S a 2012 Sundance selection purchased by Magnolia and two short films which both premiered at 2012 SXSW The Gathering Squall, and Man & Gun. He also shot A Teacher, a narrative feature by Hannah Fiddell and Kat Candler’s short filmBlack Metal, which are both set to premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Currently, he is co-directing a documentary with his cousin, Emmy-winner Tracy Droz Tragos, about impoverished families in rural Missouri presently titled Rich Hill, and is now prepping his narrative feature-length directorial debut One & Two, which is supported by the 2011 Sundance Institute Producer’s Lab.
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Duane Graves Editor Duane Graves was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. After receiving a degree in TV/Film from Texas A&M in Corpus Christi, he directed the critically-acclaimed documentary Up Syndrome, an intimate portrait of his childhood friend that was born with Down Syndrome. The film won several awards at festivals across the country including Slamdance, and is currently available through Hulu. Teaming with college peer Justin Meeks, Graves then co-wrote, directed, and edited their debut feature The Wild Man of the Navidad, a shoestring drive-in horror film that premiered at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival and later released internationally by IFC Films. The pairs’ sophomore effort, the Kim Henkel-scripted Boneboys, premiered at the 2012 Fantasia Film Festival. Graves is currently in post-production on their third feature film, and the dark western Red on Yella, Kill a Fella.
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Screenings & Awards
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Sundance Film Festival Official Selection
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Past Screenings Sundance, Park City, 2013 Cinema East Film Festival, 2013 Dallas Int’l Film Festival, 2013 Cinema East Film Festival, 2013 Sundance, London, 2013 Little Rock Film Festival, 2013 Calgary Underground, 2013 Chicago Movies & Music, 2013 SXSW Film Festival, Austin, 2013 Rooftop Films Summer Series, 2013 DeadCenter Film Festival, 2013 Omaha Film Festival, 2013 Maryland Film Festival, 2013 Independent Film Fest., Boston, 2013 Sarasota Film Festival, 2013 Chicago Underground, 2013 Lighthouse Film Festival, NJ, 2013 Free State Film Festival, 2013 San Francisco IFF, 2013
Future Screenings Northside Film Festival, Brooklyn, June 19–20, 2014 Cool Connections Summer Shorts, Moscow, July 10, 2014 Guanajuato International Film Festival, July 20–26th, 2014
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SXSW Film Festival Narrative shorts
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Dead Center Film Festival Best narrative short
Short Sighted Cinema Editor’s Choice
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San Francisco International Film Festival Shorts Program
Hill Country Film Festival Best Actor, Jonny Mars
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Dallas International Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, Shorts Program
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A r t i c l e s & I n t e r v i ews
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P a r k C i t y ’s Harmonic Convergence Va r i e t y M a g az i n e Deborah Sprague, January 10, 2013 One of the more intriguing entries in the short film category is “Black Metal,” a crowd-funded, nine-minute foray into the extreme genre that gives the work its title. Director Kat Candler, who earned kudos in the same category this last year for “Hellion” (which she is in the process of expanding to feature length), explores the extreme music scene from the p.o.v. of a singer trying to balance his family-man existence with the dark arts—an effort made more difficult when a teenager shoots and kills a teacher, and invokes his band as the motivation. “I was not really a part of the black metal scene by any means,” the Austin, Texas-based Kat Candler says of the project. “But I got to be fascinated by it, and by the dual existence people lead on and offstage. What mainstream attention it does get is negative and really off-base. The image that’s out there just doesn’t jive with reality. These are regular guys with families, kids, jobs… they’re just sincerely committed to this music that outsiders find really scary.”
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Direc tor Kat Candler on Her Sundance Selec ted Shor t Film, Black Metal Revolver Magazine J. Bennett, January 15, 2013 The 2013 edition of the annual Sundance Film Festival, which is going down in Park City, Utah, starting on Thursday, will be extra grim and frostbitten this year with the inclusion of Black Metal, a 9-minute short film that’s directed by UT film lecturer Kat Candler. The short film features music from Pallbearer, Horned Almighty, and Vesperian Sorrow. The film follows the leader of a black metal band as he copes with a murder committed by one of his fans. We recently had a chance to chat with Kat Candler. Read what she had to say below, and then go and check out the trailer for Black Metal. Revolver: What was the inspiration for the Black Metal short? Kat Candler: I became pretty fascinated with this idea of “artist’s guilt” a few years ago: How an audience reacts to something an artist puts
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out into the world and then how that reaction can come back to haunt them. I looked at the film A Clockwork Orange and how it was then pulled from theaters in England after a series of copy cats. I looked at thehe whole Judas Priest case. I did a bunch of research into various bands and movies… My stance is that responsibility lies with whoever holds the gun or the knife, but inevitably as a human being it’s hard to shake a feeling of guilt. I also felt like I hadn’t seen the metal scene on screen in a more humanistic light. I wanted to see the theatrics onstage and then more importantly the reality offstage. I’m much more interested in the human element of a metal scene that’s very fear-based and horror-based and what those musicians look like at home, with their families, their children, going to the grocery store. I wrote a feature film that dealt with both of these ideas. It went through a bunch of drafts and will continue to go through more. With the short film, I knew that I wanted to make something this last summer on the heels of our other short film, Hellion, and so I pulled out the first act of the feature and whittled it down to a 13-page script. That iss where it started. Hopefully we will have a bigger film later on when I get back to writing. Revolver: How closely does the finished film resemble your initial idea? Kat Candler: That 13-page script got shaved down to a 9-minute film. So we lost a few scenes that ultimately were not necessary. I have to say for the most part it is definitely what was in my head. We were pretty detailed with how to shoot the show and the house… I had both a style and look I was going for. Luckily, I also had a fantastic cinematographer, Andrew Droz Palermo, who has mostly shot music videos and a few horror films and a really amazing Production Designer, Yvonne Boudreaux. We
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all talked a lot about the look early on. I sent them a bunch of videos of live shows. I loved that red drenched look. They pulled it off beautifully. I tried pretty hard to do my research and talk to a bunch of folks in the scene and go to black metal shows. I discovered some pretty fantastic bands in Austin and in Texas. Ultimately, I wanted to be pretty respectful and honest about how I put things on screen. I completely understand how guarded and cautious folks can be about their world. I get it. I’d be the same way. Revolver: How were you first exposed to black metal as a music genre? Kat Candler: I was never a metal fan growing up. Even though I worked at the college radio station, was friends with the boys who ran the metal show, and went to support all my friends in bands every weekend. But it I was working at Book People in Austin when Lords of Chaos hit the bookshelves in the late ’90s. People started passing it around and talking about the Norwegian Black Metal scene. At the time I was really into true crime reading Helter Skelter, In Cold Blood, Bully… so my ears definitely perked up. With that said, I was aware of the Norwegian scene for a while. But not until several years ago did I really get into metal. My husband, who’s a total music nerd, started buying all kinds of records and books and pushed it all on me. I finally fell in love with heavy metal. The more I got into it, the more the idea of bringing it to a screen materialized. But to be honest, I’m more of a death metal, thrash-metal kind of girl.
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R o a d t o S u n d a n c e 2 013 All About Indie Filmmaking Jane Kelly Kosek, January 17, 2013 Indie Filmmaking: Tell us about your film. What inspired you to make it? Kat Candler: I am fascinated by how an artist is blamed for a tragedy and then how they deal with public blame. Which is what the film is about. Indie Filmmaking: What do you love about your film? Kat Candler: I love that it’s radically different from any other film I’ve made. I love that it was a huge challenge in researching and developing a world that was outside of myself. I loved shooting a black metal concert. Indie Filmmaking: How long did it take you to make your film? Kat Candler: I’d been writing a feature about a heavy metal band for about a
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year. I wanted to shoot something last summer so decided to create a short out of the first act of the feature script. I wrote many drafts of that little 13-page short. Then in July of 2012 we shot for five days. Post-production lasted for six months up until about mid-December of the same year. Indie Filmmaking: How did you finance your film? Kat Candler: We financed through crowd funding, private equity and grants. Indie Filmmaking: What was the most challenging part of the filmmaking process and how did you overcome it? Kat Candler: I think the most challenging part (which was also the most fun part) was the research in trying to get the world right-- especially one that’s pretty foreign to me. It’s a lot of time having coffee with folks in the metal community, interviewing them, watching concert footage, reading interviews, books, going to rock shows … trying to immerse yourself in a world so you can be as authentic and respectful on screen as possible. Indie Filmmaking: Tell us about your experience getting into Sundance. Kat Candler: We played our short film, Hellion, at Sundance in 2012. We weren’t expecting to get in at all so it was a complete and utter surprise and really out of the blue whenever we got the call. This year, we knew when the calls came and so for about a week or two leading up I was physically ill with anticipation. No lie. My husband almost made me go to the doctor because he was just so worried. It’s crazy the pressure we put on ourselves. I had just gotten off a plane when I got the call. I screamed and cried. My dad was sitting next to me and I could tell how proud he was. That’s gold. Indie Filmmaking: If you had to make the film all over again, would you do anything different? Kat Candler: Nope. I had an amazing crew and a fantastic cast. I wouldn’t
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have gained all of the little lessons, little mistakes, and the knowledge I learned without going through the process in the way we did. And even with all of the warts and all of the flaws, it was still magical. Indie Filmmaking: What’s next for your film? Kat Candler: We will do the festival circuit and I will go back to the feature script with fresh eyes. I hope to make that after we make the feature version of Hellion this year. Indie Filmmaking: Do you have distribution? If so, when and how can people see it and if not, what are your hopes for the film? Kat Candler: We don’t have distribution at this point. But it will be available during the ten days of Sundance through YouTube. Indie Filmmaking: Can you provide any advice to other filmmakers who dream of getting their films made and into Sundance? Kat Candler: Tell unique stories that we’ve never seen on screen before.
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Black Metal Review Smells Like Screen Spirit Dan Simpson, January 17, 2013 In arguably his greatest dramatic performance to date, Jonny Mars is incredibly convincing in his portrayals of both aspects of Ian’s life. Mars plays the lead singer of the black metal band with blood-curdling authenticity, while also being incredibly tender and empathetic as a loving family man. In other words, Mars goes from being someone I would not want to run across in a dark alley to someone I would love to have as a close friend. It is Mars’ performance as Ian the family man that really makes Black Metal work. In Mars’ hands, Ian is sculpted into a real person, thus putting a human face on the discussion about the entertainment industry’s role in perpetuating violence. Not to get all meta on you, but Mars’ performance in Black Metal serves as a reminder that the members of black metal bands are merely acting a part—this is something that rabid black metal fans should keep in mind when worshiping the fictional stage persona of their pale-faced heroes. Writer-director Kat Candler’s Black Metal comes from the rarely (at least that I am aware of ) portrayed perspective of an artist who is blamed by proxy for a murder. Regardless, Black Metal does not take sides; instead, the film prompts many of the right questions while purposefully leaving them all unanswered. But of course, with only a nine-minute running time, Black Metal does not have the time to delve deeper into the issues. Like Candler’s equally masterful Hellion, Black Metal plays like a succinctly edited teaser for a feature-length film that leaves us wanting a whole lot more. Hell, yes! Give us more Black Metal!
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Additional Photos
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About the Book This book was designed by Justin Hernandez. It was typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro and Futura. Printing was done on Red River Matte 50lb Premium Paper in an inkjet printing process. For more information about the either the book or the designer, please contact Justin Hernandez at Justin@JustinHDesign.com