Imagine a piece of art that combines multiple mediums of creativity ““ film, dance, physical art and music ““ into one cohesive entity, forming an elegant metaphor for life. “What About Me?” is an all-encompassing musical documentary that tackles the world’s “big” topics with cultural gusto, and it fits the sizeable bill.
Directors Duncan Bridgeman and Jamie Catto traveled to more than 50 locations over the span of seven months in the creation of “What About Me?” and returned from their trek with more than 1,000 hours of footage. As a follow-up to the directing duo’s double-Grammy-nominated documentary, “1 Giant Leap,” their primary musical excursion into the unknown, Bridgeman and Catto wanted to make “What About Me?” a more personal experience.
“First of all, the music is amazing. That is the primary focus of the movie,” said Isha Varma, president of Maximizing Potential Abroad, a student charity organization at UCLA. The film is coming to UCLA’s Charles E. Young Grand Salon in Kerckhoff Hall in association with MPA and Project Butterfly on Oct. 23 at 5 p.m.
“This movie reinforces the idea that we as the human race are all the same, no matter where we live, no matter what your media is telling you. We are all motivated by the same emotions that we deal with on a daily basis throughout the world,” Varma said. “The film is very centered in that respect because it goes around the world and connects all these abstract ideas through the universal languages of emotion and music.”
While films are usually edited in a way that caters to story and dialogue, the structure of “What About Me?” relies solely on its soundtrack for direction.
Sans script, Bridgeman and Catto embarked across the globe in a quest for inspiration and universal truths. An ex-pop music producer and seasoned rock-band member from London, Bridgeman was up for the challenge. He and Catto collaborated on 15 basic musical backing tracks before they embarked on their excursion, each track transitioning into the next seamlessly to create one giant, untouched musical canvas.
Over the course of their filming journey, they layered musical improvisations from artists from every corner of the world onto those back tracks, in effect creating a huge mash-up of a soundtrack comprised of a spectrum of eclectic beats and melodies.
“The experience involved taking creation out of the studio, out of its usual place, so that has a big influence on what you do and how you do it,” Bridgeman said. “We would go around to people’s houses, have a cup of tea, record some music. … We made it more of an everyday experience. Ninety percent of what I do is done on my laptop, whether it be in the middle of the jungle in Ghana or an apartment in New York City.”
From rappers in Japan to acoustic guitarists in Iceland to tribal music men of Hawaii, “What About Me?” runs the gamut of untrodden cultural and musical paths. The title of the film reflects the philosophy that Bridgeman and Catto ascribe to, the foundational theme of connectivity through creativity and, on a more frank and raw note, the ability to admit to collective insanity as the human race. According to Bridgeman, “What About Me?” harnesses its guttural life force from the notion of “surrenderism” ““ the ability to surrender to ourselves, in all of the raw, neurotic, obsessive-compulsive glory that is the human condition, and really embrace so-called “faults” as a beautiful part of the collective human experience.
“The thing that we set out to do was to show how we are all linked in our collective madness and our dysfunctional behavior,” Bridgeman said. “How people deal with those moments where everything isn’t at peace ““ that’s how we define ourselves and how we can relate to each other.”
Including interviews with prominent minds around the globe such as Eckhart Tolle, Bob Geldof, Stephen Fry and Deepak Chopra, Bridgeman and Catto also sought the opinions of people on the streets of New York City, South Africa, Egypt, China and a cornucopia of other locations on a number of worldly topics.
The film is saturated with discussions of God, sex, death and money, and incorporates an avant-garde soundtrack to the melting pot of mediums.
“One of the big messages in the film is the idea of personal suffering and how we are all bound by it, whether it be greed, or sexual desires, or feeling that we’re not beautiful enough or a fear of death,” said Rich Ferguson, vocal performance artist and “What About Me?” musical contributor.
“What’s so great about what (Bridgeman and Catto) have done is that, when it’s all said and done, they have this beautiful thing where people all over the world have collaborated together to make this piece,” Ferguson said. “It really reinforces the message that people everywhere can unite to enlighten us about what’s going on in society.”
An innovative work of living art, “What About Me?” creators traveled the world in search of answers to the unanswerable. The result is a snapshot of the human condition, understood through the language of music.
“I think somewhat consciously that I started playing music as a backhanded way of getting people to listen to what I had to say,” Ferguson said. “I love music and I love the feeling of being inside music, being surrounded by it and being a part of it. I live for that.”