Sean Nero

A ma­jor fea­ture film on the steel­pan is fi­nal­ly in the works and the lo­cal team be­hind it promis­es that the qual­i­ty of the pro­duc­tion will serve as the ide­al mar­ket­ing mech­a­nism for the uni­ver­sal ad­vance­ment of the in­stru­ment, while giv­ing T&T an eas­i­ly recog­nis­able brand.Pan! A Mod­ern Odyssey, is the ti­tle giv­en to the project con­cep­tu­alised by mu­sic pro­duc­er and pub­lish­er Jean Michel Gilbert and Dr Kim John­son, a vet­er­an jour­nal­ist and au­thor, un­der the ban­ner of the Caribbean Mu­sic Group.

Gilbert, the ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er on the project, will dou­ble as co-pro­duc­er along­side ac­claimed french cin­e­mat­ic ex­pert Barth�l�my Fougea and John­son. John­son, the his­tor­i­cal con­sul­tant on the film, is al­so the man be­hind the script which has been re-writ­ten no less than 15 times. A French com­pa­ny called WINDS will serve as the in­ter­na­tion­al co-pro­duc­er.

Ac­tion on the pro­duc­tion comes three years af­ter both Gilbert and John­son re­alised they had a shared vi­sion for an in­stru­ment they are pas­sion­ate about and there­fore made the con­scious de­ci­sion to en­ter a part­ner­ship.

Not just a doc­u­men­tary

Orig­i­nal­ly en­vis­aged to be a 90-minute doc­u­men­tary, Pan! A Mod­ern Odyssey has mor­phed in­to a cin­e­mat­ic docu-fic­tion. With the scope of the project re-imag­ined, the ex­per­tise of French di­rec­tor Thier­ry Teston, was en­list­ed with the aim of giv­ing the work the type of pol­ish one of this mag­ni­tude re­quires for im­pact, not just at home, but glob­al­ly.

Film­ing for the doc­u­men­tary seg­ment took place over two weeks dur­ing Car­ni­val 2013. From the pa­n­yards to the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah stage dur­ing Pan Trin­ba­go's Na­tion­al Panora­ma Com­pe­ti­tion, that "Car­ni­val" as­pect will fea­ture ac­com­plished mu­si­cians in the steel­pan fra­ter­ni­ty as Len Boogsie Sharpe, Andy Nar­rell, Ray Hol­man and Leon "Smooth" Ed­wards. Reign­ing Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­on Petrotrin Phase II Pan Groove, Neal and Massy Trinidad All Stars, Bird­song and Wit­co Des­per­a­does will be spot­light­ed es­pe­cial­ly as the cen­tral char­ac­ters for the movie were drawn from these bands.

Fol­low­ing this June's cast­ing call, how­ev­er, film­ing for the fic­tion­al seg­ment is sched­uled to take place over two weeks in Sep­tem­ber, where nine scenes chron­i­cling the pe­ri­ods 1820 to 1963–from taboo bam­boo to In­de­pen­dence–in T&T will be filmed. Then it's on to post-pro­duc­tion be­fore the lo­cal re­lease in Feb­ru­ary 2014 and ul­ti­mate­ly, the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val in France.

Gilbert said: "Pan is our most so­phis­ti­cat­ed cul­tur­al item. So far, I think noth­ing has been done to pro­mote the pan on an in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. Be­ing in the mu­sic busi­ness for the past 21 years, it is clear that to­day, the mu­sic can­not go with­out the im­age. So what we are say­ing is let's do the ul­ti­mate film on pan, to be able to project the steel­band in­dus­try. I spoke to the peo­ple at Cannes about bring­ing a steel­band (from T&T) to the fes­ti­val to per­form and they loved the idea."

Tak­ing pan glob­al

The op­ti­mism from the pair is a di­rect re­sult of pos­i­tive feed­back re­ceived com­ing out of dis­cus­sions held with tele­vi­sion ex­ec­u­tives in Cannes.While Pan! A Mod­ern Odyssey was be­ing de­vel­oped, the Caribbean Mu­sic Group has con­vinced tele­vi­sion sta­tions in South Africa and In­dia to film doc­u­men­taries about the emer­gence of the steel­pan in their own ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tions.

John­son said, "We are mak­ing this film on T&T. We are al­so en­cour­ag­ing oth­er net­works to make films on pan in their coun­try. The his­tor­i­cal part of their film will be tak­en from this film. If you mak­ing a film about pan in Nige­ria, pan in Nige­ria start­ed with pan in T&T. So you pull about 20 per cent from this trunk film and add on your 80 per cent on Nige­ria. So we are en­cour­ag­ing that type of re­la­tion­ship with oth­er coun­tries as well, so it will be in prox­im­i­ty with their au­di­ences."

Gilbert said they have em­barked un­con­ven­tion­al ap­proach be­cause they want­ed to cre­ate a new busi­ness mod­el. He said when they thought about it, Pan! A Mod­ern Odyssey would be the 90-minute docu-fic­tion that will serve as the cen­tral bank of footage for net­works around the world de­sirous of pro­duc­ing a 50-minute doc­u­men­taries about the steel­pan and its im­pact in their re­spec­tive cul­tures.

Gilbert has the touch

Gilbert is no stranger to in­ter­na­tion­al tele­vi­sion ex­ec­u­tives. The fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary on the Ca­lyp­so Rose (Mc­Cartha Lin­da Sandy-Lewis) ti­tled Ca­lyp­so Rose: Li­oness of the Jun­gle, was pro­duced by an­oth­er of his com­pa­nies called Ma­tu­ri­ty Mu­sic. It en­joyed sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al screen­ings and met with crit­i­cal ac­claim.

That movie was four years in the mak­ing. The US net­work PBS bought in­to the film which was aired across 170 sta­tions. As a con­se­quence the vet­er­an en­ter­tain­er has book­ings that have eclipsed Machel Mon­tano and oth­er so­ca star com­bined.

John­son said, "In South Africa there is a Marim­ba and Steel­band Fes­ti­val. Two weeks ago, there was an In­ter­na­tion­al Steel­band Fes­ti­val in Aus­tralia. The steel­band is used with delin­quent boys in Nantes, France. There is a glob­al net­work much of which is on­line, we want to tap in­to that net­work with our film, our an­cil­lary prod­ucts and brand T&T.

T&T has no brand, un­less you know some­thing spe­cif­ic. In In­dia, they might know T&T be­cause of Bri­an Lara...in the lit­er­ary world they might know T&T be­cause of VS Naipaul. To most every­day peo­ple, if you say Trinidad they might ask which part of Ja­maica, but they can tell you about trench town (in Ja­maica) We want to change that. There's an amaz­ing ex­pe­ri­ence called pan and it is not some­thing that you can buy in a store."

To achieve this feat, how­ev­er, fund­ing is cru­cial. While state agen­cies such as the Min­istries of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, Tourism, the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny and the T&T Film Com­pa­ny have signed on to the project, Caribbean Mu­sic Groups of­fi­cials says it time for the pri­vate sec­tor to fol­low suit.

Gilbert said: "We are ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ed. We thought that all of the main pri­vate com­pa­nies that are part of the na­tion­al land­scape would un­der­stand that pri­vate spon­sor­ing would push the project which in­cludes CDs, books and a Web site. We want peo­ple to see the di­men­sion of the project and see how they fit in­to it."

About the Project

Pan! A Mod­ern Odyssey is a trans-me­dia steel­band project based on a film aimed at glob­al­ly pro­mot­ing the steel­band move­ment and brand­ing T&T as its home.The project in­volves:

(1) the pro­duc­tion of a 90-minute cin­e­mat­ic docu-dra­ma on steel­band in T&T, cli­max­ing with the 2013 Panora­ma Com­pe­ti­tion;

(2) the pro­duc­tion of sev­er­al 52-minute tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary films on steel­band spe­cif­ic to TV net­works in North Amer­i­ca, Eu­rope, Asia and Africa, com­bin­ing footage of pan in those coun­tries with ex­cerpts from the 90-minute docu-dra­ma;

(3) pro­duc­tion of an­cil­lary items, in­clud­ing CDs, DVDs, cof­fee ta­ble books on pan, a ded­i­cat­ed in­ter­ac­tive Web site, on­line MI­DI steel­pan com­pe­ti­tion, so­cial net­work­ing and blogs, phone apps; and

(4) a glob­al mar­ket­ing thrust com­bin­ing in­ter­na­tion­al broad­cast­ers, dis­trib­u­tors and tour­ing agents to re­lease the film and the an­cil­lary items at main film and mu­sic fes­ti­val world­wide along with live per­for­mances by T&T steel­bands.