![]() SOME PEOPLE HAvE AN ADDICTION TO rICK SPrINGFIELD. DIrECTED AND PrODUCED BY FILMMAKEr SYLvIA CAMINEr, THE rOCKUMENTArY, AN AFFAIr OF THE HEArT, ExPLOrES THE ENDUrING FAN BASE OF EIGHTIES' rOCK IDOL rICK SPrINGFIELD. DVD after receiving excellent reviews at film festival screenings around the world. The topic of Springfield may seem to some a bit unusual for a serious woman filmmaker; Sylvia won an Emmy for her directorial work on the Discovery Channel series, Great Hotels. However, in Sylvia's hands, this has a depth that is unexpected for the rock documentary genre. primarily in the US may seem an unlikely subject for Sylvia, who admits the rockumentary was new territory. "i had not been involved with this type of documentary," she says. "It's a lot harder in many ways because of all the licenses and technicalities, especially when you're doing a documentary independently. You want to capture the music and its essence live, and make sure it's gonna rock when you finish the film." As could be expected from a serious woman filmmaker, Sylvia was not content to let it become nothing more than a simple biopic or concert film. In her hands, it becomes a piece that embraces, yet also questions the validity of this type of fan worship. "it really is a story. It happens to have a lot of music in it, and we wanted the music to be the thread that tied every story together," she said. entertainment pr professional and executive producer Melanie Lentz-Janney believes that Sylvia was coming from the perfect perspective for a rock feature. She suggests that the director had enough affection for her subjects to feel engaged but enough distance to be objective. the two women met back in 2001, when Melanie was executive director of Women in Film and Television for the Florida chapter. Because Melanie had been a lifelong fan, a Springfield project seemed like a natural subject. Melanie describes how it all came together. "i knew that i could not be the one to knock on the door. First of all, I had never made a film before, and Sylvia had won Emmy Awards and had been doing this for twenty years, so she really needed to be the one to make the intro to rick's team. Fortunately, I had been studying rick and his team for so long, I kinda knew what the right route would be. So she picked up the phone and called and they said, "this sounds really interesting.'" melanie describes the first meeting that she and Sylvia had with Springfield. "He just wanted to kind of get to know us as people, which is very cool, because that's when I think he realised we were people he could trust to tell the kind of story that we wanted to tell. And he was amazing. He gave us full access and let us create the story we wanted to do," she said. as a former longstanding cast member of the daytime soap General Hospital, Springfield is familiar with being in front of the lens. Sylvia feels that this helped her subject to feel comfortable: "When we did interviews, he was very...you know...raw." |