I wrote recently about my excitement about the release of Griff the Invisible, and the film’s soundtrack penned by Sydney band Kids at Risk. So I was thrilled to recently catch up with Sep Caton to talk about his band’s involvement with the movie, the lead single “Doing The Best That We Can,” and the upcoming tour.
You’ve just written the soundtrack for the upcoming Aussie film Griff the Invisible. Why did you want to be involved with this movie?
The filmmaker Leon Ford, who wrote and directed the film, and also the producer Nicole O’Donohue are friends of everybody in the band, and we had known about this film coming for quite some time. And anybody who had heard about it, no matter what sort of field you were in, you just wanted to be a part of this film. Every actor in town wanted an audition, anybody who’s on a crew just wanted to be a part of it. It was something special, and you could tell that by the very first time you read the script.
So at first I was at a party with Leon and he was talking a little bit about the music and just some songs by some other Australian bands that he wanted to put in there, and I said about one of the songs he wanted to put in there “Hey, I do a really good cover of that! How about I whack something down for you, you can have a quick listen, and if you like it you can use that; might be a bit cheaper” and yada yada, it just kept going on and on.
And eventually we went in for a meeting with the filmmakers, and they showed us the set and everything. We were just so excited. And they said “Well we also need a score” and we said “We’ll do that!” “And we need some other songs …” “Oh we’ll do that!” And by the end of that meeting we walked out with the soundtrack in our hands basically. So yeah, it was a great opportunity.
Is there any difference approaching writing a film soundtrack compared to a regular band recording?
Oh definitely. When you’re doing something for yourself you basically write for you, but when you’re writing for a film there’s a certain part of you that says “I need to put myself into the head of that character,” and that’s what we did. We basically with this movie approached it “What would this character, what would the song be in his head as he’s walking down the street?” or “What would she be hearing and humming to herself as she’s going about her business?” And that’s what we sort of did; we put ourselves in the minds of the characters and that’s where it came from.
The first single “Doing the Best That We Can” sounds great. Was it as much fun to record as it is to listen to?
It was. It was fast and furious, I’ve got to say. I think we did the whole recording for that song in around 45 minutes, at the very end of the recording process. It was just something we went “Here we go” whack-whack-whack-whack-whack. It didn’t have a place in the film at the time; it was just something we’d been working on that sounded great. We just had a lot of fun with it. Originally it wasn’t going to be a single or anything but it was one of those songs that if anyone’s heard it, 10 minutes later you hear them humming it, then an hour later they’re still humming it, then the next day walking down the stairs still humming it. So we went “Oh right, hello, we’d better do something with this song.” So yeah, eventually it became the single.
This movie’s picking up some real global buzz after being accepted into film festivals in Toronto and Berlin. Are you guys hoping to capitalise on that international attention and take your music overseas?
We’d be crazy not to, wouldn’t we? We originally had plans to go to Berlin; not to play or anything but to be there for the film. We were really just so proud of it, we wanted to be there for the filmmakers. But we’d like to capitalise on this however we can overseas, and here at home as well. We’re certainly hoping to make the most of it.
You’ll be appearing at local film festivals and premieres to promote the movie and your work with it. That’s a very different scene for musicians. Are you looking forward to it?
Yes, we are actually. They’re related worlds, but they’re certainly a bit different. The funny thing is with Kids at Risk, is that many of us have a film or television background, whether in front or behind the camera. So it’s not exactly a new world to us, but it is fun to collide our two worlds together.
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