University students may not find a marching band particularly novel, but for a couple of French filmmakers, the subject holds significantly more intrigue. French filmmakers Pierre-Nicolas Durand and Helena Cotiniere are in the process of making a documentary featuring the University’s marching band, with the goal of giving their European audience a glimpse into the lives of American college students during the current presidential election, Durand said.
Durand said the project was inspired by fellow French filmmaker Claude Miller’s earlier observation of the Virginia State University’s marching band playing at a football game during his visit to America a few years earlier. Miller was so interested in marching bands, Durand said, that he requested Durand and Cotiniere, who have experience in making music-related documentaries, make a film about American marching bands.
Two schools, one message
Although the filmmakers were impressed with VSU’s marching band, Durand said, they wanted to include more than one band in their film to get a more complete story. While visiting the University of Virginia, Durand said, he was impressed by the University’s size, history and reputation as one of the best schools in the United States, and thus decided to feature it as the other university in the film. Durand said it was “very interesting to find two universities where there was a huge love and commitment to the marching band.”
The decision to feature two marching bands was to get a deeper and richer understanding of marching bands, rather than to make a comparison between the universities. Fourth-year College student Theo Smith, one of the Cavalier Marching Band’s four drum majors, noted, however, that the University’s marching band may be very different from those at other universities, including VSU. While the marching bands at other universities may be very old and established, Smith said that because the University’s marching band is only in its fifth season, it is “still forming and creating traditions.” According to Duran, however, the film tries to present a unique and diverse American perspective, without judging or directly contrasting the different schools.
Durand added that because of recent disagreements between France and America, he hoped to make a film that showed this American perspective in a positive light.
“I want people to smile and laugh and love [the United States] when they are watching this documentary, and not be thinking about the Bush administration,” he said.
He added that marching bands present a fun glimpse into American culture and life.
“In France we don’t have marching bands at all,” he said. “We decided to make a documentary about them [because] a marching band is a way to try [to] know the American view.”
Durand noted the university system in France is very different from the American system. Unlike American schools, French colleges do not have sports teams or athletic scholarships, he said.
The “rah-rah” rhythm of American politics
According to Media Studies Prof. Paul Wagner, “a lot of [documentary filmmaking] is just curiosity about the world.” Documentaries such as Durand and Cotiniere’s, he added, serve to transport people into another world.
While the documentary follows two marching bands and their members, Durand said the real story focuses on American youth.
“[France and the rest of Europe] are interested by young people [in America],” Durand said, noting that the people in France have a lot of exposure to American culture. “It’s definitely a musical movie and a social movie, but we are very interested in how the students see the world and their home country.”
Durand also noted that the current presidential campaigns are a source of some of this interest and serve as a backdrop for the film.
“The political aspect is like a rhythm,” Durand said. The political situation “is a way for us to show the time ... the conventions, speeches and Election Day [are] like a rhythm.”
Smith said the documentary will parallel the “pomp and circumstance of the marching band as it relates to the presidential election.”
While Americans may not necessarily make a connection between marching bands and the presidential election, both events have aspects that are unique to America that the French may see and connect to each other, Wagner said.
“On this side of the Atlantic, it’s like, ‘What’s your point?’” Wagner said. “It may be a little obscure for Americans, but if you’re French or European and generally think these are typical American phenomena, you may connect it with a ‘rah-rah’ pop culture.”
Durand said that not only is the election an important milestone for Americans, but the people of France closely follow U.S. elections, especially the presidential race. The French are particularly interested in this year’s presidential contest, Durand said, because they are hungry for change in the American political system. In his opinion, the election of the next American president is more important for the world than the election of the next French president, he noted.
Durand said the filmmakers asked the marching band members questions about what they thought of candidates’ debates and filmed a group of students who met to watch Sen. Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention in August.
“We film them in their life because it’s a way to hear about some American values, like family and the economy,” Durand said.
For example, Duran said, he has heard many complaints from students about rising gas prices. The filmmakers will likely travel with a student who goes to fill up his or her car at the gas station and ask him or her about the gas situation, he said.
Durand said he was interested in comparing the commitment students have to the upcoming election with their “huge commitment” to music by participating in the marching band.
“In France, people vote for sure,” Durand said, noting that while most American students he encountered are engaged, a few said they don’t care about politics.
Although the documentary is not primarily about the presidential race and does not show a bias toward either Obama or Sen. John McCain, “everything is political in a way,” Durand said.
Wagner also acknowledged that documentaries are not expected to be balanced in the same way that the news media is because they are associated with personal expression and unique points of view.
“A marching band is about young people, and young people are the future of their country,” he said. “It’s their political race, too.”
On a personal note
The makers of the documentary began filming the Cavalier Marching Band during band camp and stayed through the first week of practice and the first home game against the University of Southern California, said drum major Bryan Myers. After filming these events, the crew went to VSU to film its marching band, Myers said.
Smith noted that the filmmakers will continue to film the marching band throughout the semester and will return in January after the election has concluded to “try and gauge students’ reactions.”
Myers said the film crew focuses mainly on the culture of the marching band and the lives of students who participate in marching bands.
“During band camp, not only do we rehearse, but we do nighttime activities like Olympics or scavenger hunts,” he said, adding that the film crews have been present at these activities as well as the formal marching band activities such as games and rehearsals. He also noted that the film crews have tried to capture how the marching band creates friendships that exist off the field.
Smith added that the film is “trying to get a sense, holistically, of what marching bands are about,” including their leadership, hierarchy and organization.
Myers noted that the filmmakers had interacted on some level with all 250 of the students in the marching band during their visit.
Basing the documentary on the people involved in the marching band instead of just describing the marching band allows the filmmakers to capture the human interest aspect, Wagner said.
The audience “can relate to the person and through them come to know and feel and experience the themes” of the documentary, he said.
Myers further noted that while the filmmakers did ask political questions, they were “not aiming to have it be like an interview, but to capture what we do in the normal course of our daily lives.”
Durand said once the documentary is complete, he hopes to present it at an upcoming French film festival. Due to space limitations and editing decisions, the final product will include only a small portion of the footage the crew shot, Wagner said.
“It may be one-tenth or one-twentieth or one-hundredth of what they actually shot that actually ends up in the film,” Wagner noted.
He also said documentaries are a “complex mix of artistic and business” elements because the makers must also market their final product to the audience who will view it and the sponsors who will support them.
Durand said he has a specific message he wants the audience to take away from the film.
“We really want to show a positive side of America,” Durand said, adding, “it’s very important because it’s true.”
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