Warming Up

When I was first approached by Matt Detrick about a documentary detailing a remarkable initiative they tackled that would produce and perform 20 different original multi-cultural compositions by 2020, I was intrigued. It was not only their courageous, and a bit crazy idea, but it was the passion I witnessed in talking to Matt, and later discovered with all of the members. They are exceptional musicians and wonderful human beings.

The Performance

One of the challenges for our production was getting all the players interviews done.
Their lives are deep and fascinating. They began playing their instruments as youngsters, some even before starting elementary school. Matt Detrick, the founder of Apollo chose the name because of his long fascination with the space program. To highlight his choice, we chose a background of Apollo space suits at Space Center Houston. The shooting window was tight…the location insisted we complete all four interviews before the center opened at 10am. This required us to arrive at around 4:30am to set up for interviews at one hour each, starting at 6am. We stumbled out with great interviews and even some B-roll around the Saturn V rocket that morning. 

The Coda

Multiple terabites of performance video and historical stills were supplied by Apollo, a good deal of which came from Ben Doyle of BEND Productions . Without a doubt this would prove to be one of the most massive jobs we had edited. In the end, it was so satisfying. Having so many wonderful assets made this film the compelling story that it is, winning awards and now streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Tubi.