Each year the Vans Warped Tour has produced a DVD that documents the so-called annual summer concert tour that some dub a “Punk Rock Summer Camp.”
The footage is usually of the bands having fun on and off the nine stages that are set up in hundreds of towns across the United States during any given summer and is usually enjoyed by fans of the music or the artists.
But there’s a twist to a new Vans Warped Tour documentary, “No Room for Rockstars,” that will be featured as a special screening during Slamdance this year.
The documentary isn’t about the tour. It’s about the human side of some of the artists who are touched by or participate in the event, said director Parris Patton, who was commissioned by Vans do the film.
Patton followed the whole tour from start to finish in 2010.
“They wanted to get away from doing the same old and find the emotional core and express the emotional stories of the musicians who are on the tour,” Patton told The Park Record.
Doug Palladini, the executive producer of the film, contacted producers Stacy Peralta and Agi Orsi to make the film with Patton.
“He said there is a lot on the Warped Tour that can make a great film, so why don’t we go out and make a film,” Patton said. “We went out to make a film about real stories and real people, so it’s not 20 minutes of performances that come with every 40-minute block.”
For starters, Perlata contacted Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman to see which artists he thought were on the rise.
“We did that to see if we could provide an arc for the picture,” Patton explained.
Lyman led the team to pop artist Mike Poser and punk rocker Chris Drew.
“I interviewed them both before we got on the tour, because I had an idea that I was going to follow them,” Patton said. “The film really didn’t take shape until we got out there, because we didn’t really know what was going to happen with those two once things got started.
“We got on the ground and found people who seemed interesting and got the film going,” he said. “That was the advantage of being with the tour all the time. We could just follow our whims.”
One of those whims was a kid named Joe from 20 Palms, Calif.. whose only goal in life was to be a part of the tour as a performer, Patton said.
“He was selling his CDs to everyone in line, while he followed the whole tour,” Patton said. “He let us look at his van and we had to ask if he was really going to drive 15,000 miles in it, because it was, well, you know.
“Joe was one thing that broke us away from what we thought we were going to do with the film,” Patton said. “At first, I thought he’d be a great character study, because I knew he was either going or not going to make it.”
The major difference between Joe and the other artists on the tour such as Suicide Silence, Pennywise, Rancid and Anarbor, is that the established artists travel in buses and the Warped Tour is more like a summer camp for them, Patton said.
“I knew if we followed them, it would be pretty methodic, so I looked for stories like Joe, who had a clear story arc at the end of the day,” he said.
Although Patton figured out the story arcs early during the project, he still had no idea how it would all come together in a comprehensive film.
“First off, there are nine stages blasting music all day long, and before I knew it, my head was spinning with all the bands and stories you have going on at once,” he said.
In an attempt to sort things out, Patton and his crew held nightly meetings.
“I knew my crew was getting great stuff and every night we would talk about the stories, but it was hard to see the forest through the trees and figure out what it was going to be.”
That’s when Perlata stepped in to help again.
“Stacy was great out there,” Patton said. “He told me not to try to see the big picture, but to just focus on day-to-day stuff.”
The crew ended up filming more than 400 hours in two-and-a-half months.
“The thing that ate at me for a while was knowing we weren’t going to have any reshoots if we needed them,” Patton said. “Sometimes when I make documentaries, I start editing and find I need another interview and go do it, but this time around, we couldn’t do it.”
Luckily Patton didn’t need to fill in any blanks and cut the film without any second shots.
“It all worked out the way it was supposed to,” he said. “I look at the footage and then I look at the film we did and, in hindsight, it felt so easy to put together.
“I worked with these incredible people,” he said. “I was introduced to all this great music and I saw the entire country, and now have a film that everyone is proud of.”
“No Room for Rock Stars” will screen at Slamdance on Sunday, Jan. 22, 6 p.m., Treasure Mountain Inn, 255 Main St. For tickets and more information, visit www.slamdance.com.