Bill and Turner Ross, two brothers from Ohio who now call New Orleans home, drove five states north to join T/F for one hot summer afternoon. The Ross brothers’ third feature film, Contemporary Color, was featured at T/F’s annual Boone Dawdle, a bike ride and blufftop screening along the Missouri River. Contemporary Color finds creative ways to document an unusual concert of new, original songs written for the nation’s top color guards, organized by David Byrne (Talking Heads). T/F’s Allison Coffelt sat down with the filmmakers while they were in Columbia.

True/False:  Can you talk a bit about the decisions you made when you were thinking about how to approach this project as a version of a concert doc, or an event film?  It’s not oriented around a single person’s experience or following one person through; how did you come to the structure you have?

Turner Ross: You’re working with David Byrne who’s responsible for one of the greatest concert films of all time. You don’t want to just delve back into that straightforward approach. Nor did we want to make a emotional journey you know, with one character– let’s isolate this person– because it was such a collective experience: the musicians, the stagehands, the kids on the floor, our team making the movie. It was such an egalitarian experience where everybody was involved and everybody was invested. So, to truly isolate any of those one things for too long– I think what would would have WEIGHTED it down, and really would have done an injustice to the actual experience of being there.

And so we chose to take vignettes, little pieces of those things, and share them, and sort of ride the currents of these experiences. So you can have this emotional uplift with music, or you can have this emotional uplift with a character who goes through this valley with somebody, but it’s quick and passing. The music is fluid, these interactions are fluid and allowed us to go into these kids’ heads for a brief period of time, but then also to be present.

Our inspirations for this thing, although they sound comical, really did feed into what we wanted to do, which is things like professional wrestling from the ‘80s where you’d have these really heavy-handed narratives, but you’d only have a little bit each time you went to the show– you know, just be a little piece of the narrative, and so if you dropped into that world that was just crazy; or “The Muppet Show” when you go backstage with Kermit and he’s just frazzled and doesn’t know what to do, and then all of a sudden you’re with Statler and Waldorf up in the stands, and then all of a sudden you’re on stage and then maybe you’re in the audience blowing yourself up. It’s just all these little pieces moving around—

Bill Ross: This was our actual pitch to David–

TR: –Who was totally into it! (laughter).  He was the first person to ever say, “guys that sounds great; your rambling nonsense is good stuff!” But we love that in those environments that you are completely welcomed in, absorbed and sucked into the life and current of these moving spaces. And that’s what we wanted. We didn’t want to create this artificial structure; it already has a structure.  You’re already in the space for this period of time, and we wanted to allow that to happen, but also to drift in and out.

T/F: I wanted to ask you about how you made editorial decisions about the drifting. For instance, I noticed sometimes we would meet someone, like a musician, and then we would see a couple of songs.  Then, maybe three acts later, their song would come on. What were you looking for when you looked at different pieces?

BR: Well, anything that we do is to present the feeling that we had while we were there. So wandering those hallways, you would bump into people throughout the show. We didn’t want to set it up in the film like, “Okay here’s this guy, and then we’re going to see them perform and that’ll be that.” They are existing just as we are and we’re all floating through the space.

Editorially, we really fell in love with all these folks, and we wanted to continually pop in and see them, and see, where are they now? Are they up in the stands watching? Are they In the back goofing off? We wanted this very circular thing.

TR: It’s kind of a stream of consciousness narrative rather than a predictable one, because the problem with the show, and then the interludes, and moving in-and-out is: if you started to develop a consistency, you start to develop an expectation, which just took you out of it. If we showed a performer and then the performance, showed a performer then the performance, it could just become really tedious. As frustrating as it can be to occasionally pull away from a song or wonder where the hell this is going, it’s like, well, you can go anywhere you want and try to create some unpredictability so this is a journey in which you can be surprised.

T/F: I really like the idea of having the viewer go on the same journey that you’re on as you’re doing it. Of making it experiential and having the viewing experience mimic the actual experience.

BR: I mean, we all work in the same office in New Orleans, and you’re sitting there watching a performance and you’re like, “I wonder what Ad-Rock is up to right now? I would love to come backstage and see what he’s doing”, and so we shot it like that. Those options could be had and so that’s the way the film was cut.

TR:  We had an interesting conversation a couple weeks ago –we were at an event on a panel of people who want to talk about VR, virtual reality– whether that’s the death of what we’re doing, and all of that. This is kind of our own virtual reality experience.

What would happen if you dropped yourself in the space? Where would you go? Where would you look? What would you want to do? For me the difference between the two is, yeah, you could put on a headset and fly into this room and move around space at will, but the actual experience of being there and really feeling the energy of the space, getting to know these people, and feeling it out really dictated the way that we constructed the film, the choices that we made and certain rhythms we adhered to. It is different. You really that like the sense of being in that space with these people, and the emotional kineticism of the space. It was something that stuck with us for a long time and really dictated how we did things.

T/F: How would you describe the feeling of being in that space in that moment, personally?

TR: It was awesome. It’s a stupid word, but—(laughter), but in the real sense, it was awesome. We make these small movies together. We go out in the world with our little cameras, and the two of us and sort of recklessly find things that we like. And in this experience we were in the f***ing Barclay Center with complete control of everything. And a team working around us, and permission to do everything. That permission was access to this incredible event where you have hundreds of kids for whom this might as well be the Olympics. It’s the same energy, the same emotional outpouring- they’re invested, they’re waving flags at the Barclay center…that’s insane! People are paying attention to them and it’s not piped-in music on stage– it’s St. Vincent, it’s David Byrne. So you think of how these people were feeling, and the response the give and take. And just having access to be able to float around that world. Aside from what we do, my favorite spaces is dream space. You can do anything you want there. You can create anything you want, and this was a situation where we were very much in that dream space. We had everything at our disposal and this wild universe was swirling around us. We had all the tools in which we could say: “Send the people this direction, send the people that direction. I’m gonna go climb up on stage right now.” Just kind of drifting through and allowing everybody to be themselves and capture this environment.  It was profoundly emotional for me. What about you Bill?

BR: Well, I’ve never been in the circus but I would imagine this was fairly close to what that experience must be like. It was very athletic; we played sports growing up and it felt like a lot of nervous energy– you have one shot to perform, to do well, to kill it. And that was on the kids. That was on the musicians. That was on us, making the film. So there is this very heightened sense-of-being for three hours, and when it’s all over everyone rushed backstage. It was this outpouring of emotion because we had all pulled off the show. There was a lot of hugging, the kids were crying, we were high-fiving and talking about what we’re gonna do after the fact and it was just… Like the next day I remember like we all woke up and started texting each other just like: I’m so sad, like profoundly sad, like summer camp was over. This great journey that we’d all gone on –a very intense journey we’d all gone on– was now over, and it sort of felt like a very, very bizarre dream. I think that’s what we had hoped the the film would feel like as well. I think it does. I think we made what we wanted to make anyway; I hope it comes across.

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If you missed it at the Dawdle, keep an eye out – Contemporary Color will be released by Oscilloscope in 2017.