When a film is finished, there’s always some great material left on the cutting room floor. After completing post production on The Cold Lands, writer/director Tom Gilroy had an idea for using some of his favorite extra shots — giving new life to footage that would otherwise have been permanently shelved.
The footage was rescued from obscurity and given new life in the form of seven original videos, made in collaboration between Tom and seven of his favorite musicians. They explore the visual and story worlds of The Cold Lands, but have narratives all their own, as interpreted and scored by these artists.
The first of the videos was released June 3rd on Salon.com to coincide with the film becoming available on digital platforms. It’s a collaboration between Tom and Mark Mulcahy, and it goes a little something like this.
The second video is a collaboration between Tom and Michael Stipe. The two are old friends and the music Michael did for the piece is his first since the disbanding of R.E.M. Watch and listen here.
Salon.com quotes Azure Ray’s Orenda Fink, “I went for the dreamier scenes of the movie — looking for pieces that spoke to the eternal love of a mother and son in life and death.”
Check out Azure Ray’s piece and interview here.
The Echo Friendly describe their piece as something that “exists as its own thing separate from the band and the film. It’s always nice when that happens in collaboration.”
Find their video and interview here.
For Nix Nought Nothing‘s installment, says Bart Warshaw, “A starting point for me was that I didn’t want there to be any references to civilization…I wanted this to be reflected somehow in the story we were going to tell.”
Watch Nix Nought Nothing’s collaboration with The Cold Lands here.
And this piece made with San Francisco’s Dub Gabriel was released in connection with our screening at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco, hosted by Fandor. Regarding working on this piece with Tom, Dub says: “Both with the music and the visual, it is about the emotions of the movie, introspectiveness and isolated feelings that I wanted to convey.”
The last video of the series is by Ithaca New York’s Rockwood Ferry. Tom met Rockwood Ferry’s Tenzin Chopak at a screening of The Cold Lands at the Pawtucket Film Festival, where both became fans of each others’ work. Tenzin describes how they collaborated to make a video together:
“We began by discussing some of the scenes I felt were powerful in the film and what meaning they had to me. Tom requested I send him some of my new music and I recorded a demo one afternoon that ended up being the piece we used. After Tom heard the piece, we spoke again and he sent many clips that he felt inspired to share.”
Thanks for following along with our series as each new piece was released!
You can find The Cold Lands feature film itself on DVD, iTunes, Cable/VOD and other platforms here.
