Bang, Bang (unreleased)
In the summer of 2013, Knoxville filmmaker Douglas Stuart McDaniel asked the TL3 to make some music for the short film that he and his team, Scuffletown Monkeys, were going to produce for competition in the Knoxville Film Festival Seven-Day Shootout. It sounded like fun, so we agreed.
There wasn’t a lot of preparation to be done since the ’Monkeys wouldn’t even be assigned a genre until the beginning of the competition, whereupon they had seven days to write, film, and edit their submission for the contest. So we decided to join in on the spirit of the thing and waited until they gave us some insight into their plan before proceeding on our end.
If I remember correctly, we found out on a Wednesday that their plan was to make their film about a family of assassins. Susan had been playing around with a song she was writing called “Bang, Bang” so she and I finished it that night. The following day, we worked it up with Chris at rehearsal, and then on Saturday morning we went to John Baker’s studio (Baker Acres) and recorded the track.
In the meantime, Doug and his ‘Monkeys had altered their plot idea somewhat. The song was already finished and they still wanted to use it, so we sent it their way that afternoon, along with an instrumental mix so they’d have that to work with as well.
During the remainder of their production week, they sent occasional cuts of the film for us to see, and when the competition took place, Susan and I attended the showing. Unfortunately, “The Agenda” didn’t win, but it looked great on the big screen. And it was fun to hear the song blasting through the big-ass theater speakers.
It was a new experience for us and we most definitely had a blast being involved with such a creative bunch of people.
So, for today’s Friday Freeload, we present “Bang, Bang” in its full original form.
And I still think “The Agenda” should have won. Go watch the original film here.
— TL