Most concert films document a show that already happened. This one worked the other way round entirely, and then sat for the better part of a decade before anyone put it together as a film.
Daniel opens up about growing up in a musical family, jamming with his brothers upstate on drums and bass, and still playing piano as a release. He talks about the phone call asking him to direct a stage show, his own honest reaction that somebody more versed in live theatre might be the better choice, and the answer that made the whole approach clear. He explains why building the film first and replicating it on stage created something you cannot get any other way, letting actors appear on the video walls while dancers performed their parts live, with no cameras on stage but a show that looked like it was being filmed in the moment. He gets candid about the fact that this project genuinely does not fit an existing category, and the comparison he reaches for when pushed. Daniel also talks about what he brought to a group that functioned like a band, the traditional filmmaking background that freed the others to work on instinct, and what the whole thing means to him now with a decade of distance.
An essential watch for anyone interested in what happens when a form gets built from scratch.
