A few weeks ago, I noticed a short film about ukulele obsession. Obviously, it piqued my curiosity. The film’s co-writer and director Wade White was kind enough to answer a few questions.
Q: What’s the film all about?
“Ukulele” is a story about a man (Herbert) who inherits his father’s beloved ukulele. It’s a prized symbol of who his father was to the whole family and Herbert sets out to learn how to play in honour of his father’s memory. It becomes such a central part of his life, however, that it very quickly begins to encroach on his other relationships, most notably with his wife. It becomes an obsession, and things eventually come to a head. I won’t give away the ending, but needless to say it’s memorable.
Q: What made you want to make a film about ukulele obsession?
The original idea for the script actually came out of a writing exercise as we prepared for a competition called the Toronto 24 Hour Film Challenge. The idea of the competition was to write, shoot, and edit a film all in just 24 hours, so we knew our schedule would be tight. In preparation we decided to write a couple of sample scripts with a two hour time limit, to sort of put ourselves through the process. One of the scripts we produced was “Ukulele” (inspired by Tim’s son’s ukulele which happened to be in the living room at the time). We ended up using the script for the cast rehearsal for the competition and everyone really enjoyed it, which got us to thinking that it was a viable story in its own right. A little bit of editing and a whole lot of preparation later and we starting shooting the film.
That covers the ukulele part. As for the obsession part, I think that’s mostly because it’s something we can all relate too. I suspect everyone at some point in their lives has become overly enamoured with something: a person, an object, a creative endeavour. It sort of creeps in and starts taking over, all your time, all your concentration. You begin to eat, drink, and sleep it. So although in this case it’s an obsession over a ukulele, I think it reaches beyond that and speaks to something we all experience (to lesser or greater degrees) in general.
Besides, if you are going to write about obsession over a musical instrument, I can’t think of a better one to go with.
Q: Does any of the film come from personal experience?
Hmmm, I’m not sure how much I should confess here. I actually learned the ukulele way back in school in grades 4 through 6, though I don’t believe it ever become quite the obsession it does for our film’s protagonist. And I guess I’m currently a bit more of a guitar player when I do sit down to play something. But I have had other things in my life (for example, filmmaking), which have at times tended to take over. When you get involved in something very creative it can often be hard to reign things in and know where to draw the line. Other parts of your life don’t receive the necessary time and effort they deserve. Of course, “Ukulele” is a comedy and so we exaggerate that aspect of the character to good effect. So I guess in the sense of one’s artistic and creative endeavours encroaching on the rest of life, I would have to say, yes, personal experience did come into play.
Q: How did Ralph Shaw come to be involved?
Well, once we knew we were going to actually shoot the film, we very quickly decided that it was going to have a ukulele soundtrack. I mean, how can you have a film about a ukulele and not have a ukulele soundtrack, right? So with the exception of one piece, everything is ukulele-based. Our lead actor even learned a few chords and strums to lend some authenticity to the part. We discovered Ralph Shaw more or less just through searching around on the internet. We had come across some very interesting sites and contacted a few other musicians, but once we landed on Ralph’s website we more or less knew this was a guy we wanted onboard, in whatever capacity. We contacted him, told him about the project, let him read the script and the rest, as they say, is history. Ralph was very generous with both his time and music, especially considering we were a smaller operation. But he was totally on board with the idea and has been great at promoting the film now that it’s done and available on DVD.
Q: When’s Ukulele going to be available for download?
Hopefully soon. The DVD is available now of course, and we’ve signed the necessary forms that allow them to make the film itself available for download, so it’s just a matter of them transferring the film to the proper downloadable format(s). Apparently they’re still working out the few remaining kinks in having the download option in general available on the site, so when they have everything working to their satisfaction I’m sure Ukulele will be ready for download in short order. We’ll let you know as soon as we know.
If you want to get a flavour of the film, you can watch the hilarious animated introduction here.
You can buy the DVD from Film Baby.
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