Talent and friendship that are scattered throughout the United States recently converged on the northern side of Orange to make a music video marrying the stories of three songs.
Director Robert Patton-Spruill oversaw the production of a yet-to-be-named project at Boiler Bar & Grille, completing as much footage as possible before local extras arrived for filming.
“The weather’s been cooperative. Yeah, it’s a little hot, but it’s been cooperative. And I just love the people that we have around here, so it’s just a pleasure to come here and shoot, especially with small, tight crews,” he said during a break on set at 245 Tully Road. “But I’ve been working with all these folks for 20 years, so we all sort of finish each other’s sentences.”
Patton-Spruill said he plans to publish his project — which will span 30 to 65 minutes — on YouTube within the next three to six months, though he will drop samples along the way. The project blends together the songs “Till Dawn” by Ingrid Chavez, “Self Sabotage” by Jae Sims and “Simulation” by Patton-Spruill’s wife, Patti Moreno, and other musicians, including Brandon Burrell, who was also working on the set at Boiler.
“We’re trying an experiment. We’ve noticed that on YouTube there’s a little bit more freedom than there used to be with music, so we’re doing three songs at once,” Patton-Spruill said. “We call those an act of an opera. And so we’ve kind of combined them together, storywise. And it tells a bigger story. It’s a little bit more cinematic, more theatrical way of doing it.
“I feel like audiences, you know, they’re playlist-oriented. So why don’t I create the playlist all at once?” he continued.
Patton-Spruill and Moreno live in Winchester, New Hampshire, as do Burrell and jack-of-all-trades Ben Kilanski. Sims resides in Nashville, where he maintains a studio on the famed Music Row, and Chavez lives in California. Cinematographer and editor Missy Allard, who was Patton-Spruill’s student when he taught at Emerson College and later served as his intern, lives in Georgetown.
“She’s just developed into an amazing all-around filmmaker,” Patton-Spruill said. “She can kind of do everything.”
They all started their day with breakfast at Nana’s Country Store, which shares the same historic 18th-century mill building as Boiler Bar & Grille, on Aug. 18 and then got to work. Patton-Spruill and Moreno rented out Boiler on its closed day.
“We just want to work with the people we love, and we want to be creative with them, too. And it’s really not about the call sheet [the daily outline for a production shoot] and any hierarchy at all,” she said. “Ingrid chips in when she has something that she wants to express in any scene that anybody is doing, and it always adds to it. Jae as well. Everybody is just bringing their A-game and something different to the table, and it’s all meshing and it’s all coming out.”
“This is art; it’s not commerce,” she added.
Chavez, who used to live in Winchester, said she was thrilled to be back in this pocket of New England and that the community is lucky to have a space like Boiler. She explained her song, “Till Dawn,” is about a person experiencing a big life change.
“It’s time to get sober,” she said. “So it’s about taking your passion and going forward with it. For us, it’s singing and art and creativity; that’s what the song’s about.”
Shortly before 5:30 p.m., Chavez and Sims were in a scene mere feet from Tully Pond.
“I’m sitting outside. I’ve had a couple of drinks … and I’m thinking about my life. And, at the same time, Jae’s character is also going through a lot of stuff in his life,” Chavez recounted. “So, it’s all coming to a head.”
Once Patton-Spruill and Allard brought Chavez inside for additional filming, Sims and Kilanski started making small talk. At one point, Sims mentioned that his favorite filmmaker, Orson Welles, once said that he didn’t film movies, but rather “beautiful accidents.”
No sooner did he say that than Allard burst outside to tell Sims that something amazing had just happened. She caught a glimpse of Sims standing around casually, and she knew it worked perfectly.
“Whatever you’re doing, stand right here while you’re doing it, with your back to the window because we can see you while [Sanchez] is leaving,” Allard told Sims before addressing Kilanski and the Greenfield Recorder. “You guys, stay where you are, because I couldn’t see you, and it was fine.”
Orange resident Mary Canning, who has known Patton-Spruill since she worked as a producer at WGBH-TV in Boston and hired him to be the host of a series showcasing local independent filmmakers, was in charge of casting the local extras. That list includes herself, her husband Ingo Winzer, two Ralph C. Mahar Regional School students, former Athol Daily News writer Allen Young and retired Athol Public Library Director Deb Blanchard.
She also lent the production crew her green 2003 Toyota MR2 Spyder, which Sims’ rugged and embattled character cruises around in.
