One part surf film, one part social documentary, Sliding Liberia follows four intrepid surfers as they
travel through the war-torn West African nation of Liberia. In addition to featuring some of the most poetic surfing footage this side of Big Wednesday, this film has a great soundtrack and I had a chance to ask the film's co-director, Britton Caillouette, how he went about crafting it.
Boombox Serenade: First off, can you just run down some of the music/artists you used in Sliding Liberia?
Britton Caillouette: In no particular order: Brian Jonestown Massacre, Six Organs of Admittance, Piers Faccini, Antibalas, Califone, The Congos, Todd Hannigan & The Heavy 29's, Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, Babba Ken & The Afro-Groove Connexion.
Boombox Serenade: You mention that with Sliding Liberia it was your partly aim to "restore humanity to a genre that seemed to have lost it." Do you feel like music aided in that goal? If so, how?
Britton Caillouette: Yes. Surfing and music are intimately connected. In many ways both are abstract expressions of human experience. The best surfers will describe wave riding with almost the same language as any great jazz player––style, 
speed, power, finesse. As a drummer and a surfer, I've experienced the energy of both. I believe great music and great surfing both have the power to mesmerize and transcend. Like music sometimes, representations of surfing can become disconnected from their human element and evaporate in their self-reflexivity––chops for the sake of good chops. Surf filmmakers like Chris Malloy and Thomas Campbell have worked in recent years to interpret and reveal the human joy of surfing, and their effort is reflected in their soundtracks. With Sliding Liberia we chose to turn the camera toward shore in order to complicate the notion of "surfer's paradise." We wanted local individuals represented on camera, speaking for themselves. Surfing would act as a catalyst for greater social awareness. The soundtrack had to represent this hybrid of genres on another level––and we didn't need to look much farther than West Africa itself. With such a rich history of cultural exchange, you hear everything over there––highlife, funk, afrobeat, reggae, hip hop, acoustic, surf guitar, it's all there.
Boombox Serenade: What kind of budget were you working with on Sliding Liberia overall and what percentage of that budget went to music?
Britton Caillouette: Our budget was relatively low for this type of film and about 20 percent went toward the music.
Boombox Serenade: Your film used both score and licensed tracks. Why did you decide to use both types of music?
Britton Caillouette: I knew from the beginning that our film needed both. Again, it goes back to the fact that we were striving to accomplish something fresh and different. At the beginning of our editing process, Nicholai and I put a note up on the whiteboard that said "Complicate Everything." Images of tropical paradise are juxtaposed with shots of urban squalor. Moments of pure joy are interlaced with harsh memories of terror. If the licensed tracks contributed to the positive flow of the journey, the score was the reality check. With much of Liberia's past intimately tied to the slave experience of the antebellum south, I wanted the score to be infused with the blues. We thought about hiring an old blues musician, but that didn't work out. Dobro, lap steel, hammond organ––these things fade in with the interviews, constantly stirring up the past.
Boombox Serenade: You mentioned that Nick Ferrall did your music supervision. How did you go about finding and working with him?
Britton Caillouette: I've known Nick Ferrall for years. I used to play in a band with his fiancé in high school and have always respected his musical taste. He runs a music blog called rewritablecontent.com 
that reviews indie bands and always seems to be on the cutting edge of what's happening. Our work together was a true collaboration, more of a learning experience than anything. We'd get together and just have fun. He'd show me some stuff, I'd show him some stuff, and then we'd figure out who we needed to get in contact with. We really seemed to be on the same plane. Funny story, we were searching for months for our "ending song" that would really wrap up the film. On day I called him and said, "Dude! I got it! Have you heard "Sunday Noises" by Califone?" Nick laughed and responded, "Don't you remember? That song was on the first mix I gave you."
Boombox Serenade: On a scale of one to ten (ten being the most difficult), how difficult was it to find and license the non-score tracks that you wanted for the film? Do you feel like you were generally quoted fair prices for the tracks? Was there a lot of back and forth? Describe the process.
Britton Caillouette: I love finding new, obscure music. Trying to license it is a different matter. I'll be
liberal and give the experience a 7. Many of the artists we used are either unsigned or on small indie labels. To me, the process of tracking down all of these individuals and getting them to read, sign, and return contracts was semi-nightmarish. Nick and I worked together to stay on top of people, but even then it was a struggle. Each band was a different experience and a different set of parameters. I'm not a great negotiator by nature either. I do think we got fair prices for most of the tracks, though some of the bigger companies were able to leverage us more than I would have liked. My advice to other filmmakers would be to contact the labels and get the contracts signed as early as possible––preferably before you've even decided on specific songs. You can always decide to not use a track before you've cut a sequence to it. It's good to have that option if negotiations go south.
Boombox Serenade: Eveyone's talking about how radically distribution is changing these days. How does this affect a filmmaker's approach to music licensing? Did you negotiate for festival-level licenses or ones that would cover broader distribution (i.e. Internet) in anticipation of the new distribution landscape?
Britton Caillouette: We negotiated all rights in perpetuity for everything that we licensed. You never 
know these days where your stuff is going to end up. I had someone contact us that controls some internet niche, where he buys content to bundle with advertising while sending users from one place to another. Best to be prepared. Also, for us negotiating festival-only rights would have taken away all of our bargaining power. Many companies will give you festival rights for free or very minor compensation. If you accept you're basically telling them, "we're locking picture with your song, so if we do get distribution, name your price and we're going to have to pay it." A small-time filmmaker can usually find much better deals by negotiating for everything up front and using things like step deals or benchmarks in case certain types of distribution do happen.
Boombox Serenade: During Q&A at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival, you said that your film has some "harsh juxtapositions" in it, with "a surfers' paradise in one shot and urban squalor in the next." Can you describe how you approached that disparity in terms of the music choices in your film?
Britton Caillouette: I spoke to this a little above with my discussion of the score. The soundtrack flows
back and forth between score and non-score elements, and whereas the non-score tracks tend to drive the journey forward the score is a constant subtext. The clash really comes to a head during the Piers Faccini song "Uncover My Eyes"––where everything I wanted to do with the film is condensed into a 3 minute montage. For me the poetry of this song worked on many levels, and in may ways Piers accomplishes with his music what I wanted to accomplish with our film. Described as "a geography of a thousand melodies", Piers' Tearing Sky album weaves together European folk ballads, Mississippi blues, West African strings, Middle Eastern rhythms, and mystical chanting. It becomes almost too perfect when you learn that the record was produced by surf-world familiar, JP Plunier (Jack Johnson, Ben Harper), and that members of Ben and Jack's bands appear on the record with other world music greats.
Boombox Serenade: Todd Hannigan composed and performed the original music for Sliding Liberia. How did you go about finding and working with him?
Britton Caillouette: I've also known Todd for a long time. When I was 15 I lost my left leg to bone cancer. I make a brief appearance in the surf film Shelter by Chris Malloy, surfing for the first time since my amputation surgery. Todd scored the music for my part in the film––a song that has literally become part of the soundtrack of my life. That trip was also my first glimpse into filmmaking. I've always loved Todd's music and thought working with him would really bring things full circle for me. Never mind that his post facility, called Brotheryn Studios, is located on the sprawling and historic Rancho Casitas in the rolling hills of Ojai, CA.
Boombox Serenade: It was really nice to watch the surfing footage in your film with something other
than California-style surf music behind it. Did you anticipate how well afrobeat and reggae would go with that footage?
Britton Caillouette: People have used reggae in surf films before, but to my knowledge no one has used afrobeat. I've been a big Fela Kuti fan for a while and knew it would fit incredibly well with surfing. Afrobeat is hands down the grooviest music in the world, but it's also political music. If you listen, Fela was singing about things many Africans still deal with on a daily basis––war, poverty, corruption. Besides transcending suffering, the music was also intended to unite people in overcoming strife. It doesn't get more appropriate that that for what we were trying to do. Also, my co-director, Nicholai, and I happened to go to school with two members of Babba Ken & The Afro-Groove Connexion––a band that's at the center of a thriving San Francisco Afrofunk movement. I thought it would be cool to use modern bands who are bringing the style back.
Boombox Serenade: What's your favorite film-music moment in the film and why?
Britton Caillouette: The majority of people who have seen our film will tell you that their favorite part
is the Piers Faccini sequence. Personally, my favorite musical moment happens right after that, when the old storyteller begins playing his traditional three-stringed instrument again and says, "Now the sound you are listening to, it's used to tell the children how the water moves. It calls to the imagination the waves from the sea. You know...music has a message, a universal message." He strums his instrument at the edge of a darkness, surrounded by relics of the past. His voice and strumming are asynchronous with the
image. While working on this film I read a lot about ancient storytelling and mythology. When we met
this man, I had kicked around the idea of presenting Sliding Liberia as a parable. In his interview he launched into the story about the sea virtually unprompted. He grabbed the three stringed instrument and began playing. It was the same instrument his grandfather used in the village. I immediately knew we were in the presence of something timeless, and held onto the microphone with my dear life. For me this moment in the film proves the transcendent power of music. With only three notes the old man calls us into the story, poetically expresses the divine mystery, and lifts us above the suffering of war. What more could a filmmaker ask for?
Britton Caillouette co-directed and produced Sliding Liberia with Nicholai Lidow. The documentary is currently screening at both U.S. and international film festivals. Check the schedule here: http://slidingliberia.com/screenings_window.html
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