A Conversation with Thomas Dolby – HuffPost 10.14.13

Mike Ragogna: Hi Thomas, how are you?

Thomas Dolby: Hello Mike, I’m okay.

MR: Are you here? Are you in England? On your boat?

TD: I’m in the Bay area. I’m actually on a boat in the harbor in Tiburron.

MR: Well, what’s nice about that is that is leads us right into your latest project, The Invisible Lighthouse.

TD: Oh, it does, indeed, yes.

MR: Let’s just jump right into that. This is really a special project for you. Your film, The Invisible Lighthouse, has already received a few awards and you’re taking that on a twenty-day tour of historic arthouse cinemas and independent film festivals. Now, you’ve always used multi-media but what made you want to document that particular lighthouse? What did it mean to you?

TD: By the way, we say “transmedia” these days, Mike.

MR: I stand transcorrected!

TD: [laughs] It’s the same thing, it just sounds a bit less nineties. So this particular lighthouse in England I’ve seen flashing on my bedroom walls since I was a little boy and I found out last year that they were going to close it down because its foundations are being threatened with erosion from The North Sea and also the general trend is toward decommisioning lighthouses because ships don’t really need them these days because of SatNav. When I found this out, it made me very sad initially because it had such strong memories for me and I decided I needed to document it in some way. I’d made an album and I’d made a game that we’ve talked about in the past and we decided to try a new medium, which was film. I had very little experience in the area other than doing some of my early music videos, but I sort of taught myself and I bought an affordable video kit, which now, of course, like everything else, professional quality has come down the street level so it lets DIY people like myself dive in and mess around with stuff without the need for a crew and a budget and shooting permits and things like that.

MR: Additionally, you used some interesting technology to record the project such as drones, and you did it in a clandestine way. Why was that?

TD: The lighthouse was on an island, which was formerly owned by the ministry of defense and they did all sorts of experimental weapons tests in there throughout the twentieth century. They don’t like people to go wandering around out there because there are unexploded bombs, and it’s ecologically a very unusual piece of land. There are all sorts of botanical gems that live out there and they don’t want people wandering around. So I got very little cooperation, really, from the authorities, and that’s what gave me the idea of doing this kind of clandestine commando raid. I found that you can get spy cameras and so on and I bought a bunch of them and I stuck them on my speedboat and put them on sticks and walked around the island. I had this remote-controlled quadracopter with a little HD camera in it that you’d fly from an iPhone. I had a very narrow window just after dawn when I could shoot and I figured if I got arrested or something, I’d just keep the cameras rolling and hopefully integrate it. So I got some really special footage and you’ll see the way it works on film. It overall climaxes with the island, but it explores some childhood memories and the unreliability of them and how we sort of amplify our childhood memories. But the climax on the island is just a King Lear-type crisis of conscience and memory.

MR: Beautiful, Thomas. Now that its been decomissioned, does this motivate you to get people together to salvage it as a historical landmark?

TD: There’s little that can be done with that one because it is eventually going to fall into the sea. There’ve been eleven lighthouses recorded on the island and they’ve all fallen under the waves. However, in the USA, there are thousands of lighthouses around the coast here and there is a doomsday list of forty-six that are at peril from either erosion or vandalism. So I do want to use this tour to draw attention to those. Some of them are passing into the private domain, being turned into residences or bed and breakfasts or whatever, but the problem is that they’re under the jurisdiction of the Coast Guard and they’re nothing but a drain on resources since they’re navigationally unnecessary now. But I just feel like most people that you meet have a memory of one lighthouse or another. They’re so evocative and so comforting somehow. It just seems very sad that we would let these slip away.

MR: In addition to the film, I’m imagining that the presentations you’ll be making will be accompanied by music.

TD: Yes, definitely. When I perform live, I project the film and we create the soundtrack entirely live on stage. I’m playing an instrumental score and I’m singing half a dozen songs, many of which relate to the area. My accomplice Blake Leyh is a world-class sound designer and he’s doing live Foley effects. Foley is things like footsteps and the rustling of leaves and cloth and things like that.

MR: So again, there you are employing new technologies to express your creativity. At this point, do you seek it out or does it seek you out?

TD: I think, really, I love being at the cusp of something. Fifteen or twenty years ago, music technology got cheap enough that now people could make records in their back room and distribute them over the internet. That completely changed the music business. Up to that point, the record companies had been the gatekeepers because in order to make a record and get it out, there was only one way to do that–with a record contract, which filtered out a lot of people who may have been the next Lennon or McCartney or not. But technology changed all of that and so it’s hugely liberating to a lot of artists. There’s a lot of music happening now, some of it’s very mediocre, but there are also some diamonds in the rough that we may never had heard otherwise. The same thing is now happening with film and video because for a couple of grand, you can buy a DSLR camera, which is capable of making feature films. At some of these film festivals I’ve been to, I’ve seen ninety minute features that have been made by a bunch of friends who got together and maxed out their credit cards, wrote scripts and went out and made movies. Specifically, many of them are zombie movies, but they’ll be more diverse over time. My story is a very personal story and if I had to get it funded through a studio, it probably never would’ve gotten hold.

MR: Obviously you had a great time creating this work and it was an adventure as are a lot of the things that you and I talk about. What are you looking at for the future now that you’re an award-winning filmmaker?

TD: I’m not headed to Hollywood to pitch feature film ideas. [laughs] I like the maverick aspect of it, that I’m able to do it without anybody breathing down my neck. So I may do more, I may look for other people’s stories that I can tell. But if I go back to doing creative projects based on my own music, I now have a new string to my bow, which is that there can be a film component to it. Video is a very powerful viral medium on the internet; it’s probably the most powerful. Additionally, some of these cinemas that I’m going to I’m finding are willing to open up to new formats, more theatrical events, and be more of a community-friendly kind of venue where they’re taking out their seats and installing leather sofas; you can bring a panini and a glass of wine with you and do your wifi. They want to set themselves apart from the mass-market movie theater in a strip mall.

MR: As it’s getting more comfortable for everybody, do you feel that there’s perhaps another technology that’s evolving out of the maverick approach to filmmaking?

TD: I think it would certainly happen and I think there are probably young filmmakers with some great ideas that we’re going to see that work, and they’re going to defy categorization and pigeonholing that we’re used to in film and TV.

MR: And with film schools, the way they teach has to be evolving, changing with respect to these new innovations.

TD: Yeah, I think it makes film school more valuable because although the consumer world is changing very fast, filmmaking fundamentals still apply. The ability to frame and compose and set up your shots and edit, all of those fundamentals are still important. It’s also the same in music if you want to go to school for learning music. You can pick up iPhone synthesizers in your own time, but you might want to go to school to learn analog mixers and tape machines because those fundamentals are still at the heart of it.

MR: It seems we’re reached a point where everybody has gotten pretty comfortable bringing newer technologies into their households.

TD: Well, yeah, they used to say that one in three American households had a guitar. At least one in three now have got an iPhone app, which is capable of making a film or a record. The thing about the music industry is that despite their woes about all of us dipping into their profitability, at the end of the day, they should be very happy because they have to remember that even when they were hugely profitable, ninety percent of what they made was a loss and was basically underwritten by the occasional hit. They had no idea of how successful something was going to be, so they just threw some of songs up on the wall to see what would stick. The advantage of everybody doing it themselves at a certain level ought to be that Hollywood and the record industry can see what’s going to be popular with the public before they pull the trigger on it and start spending big bucks on it. I do always think there will be an extra level of commercialism, which can only be attained by a handful of small companies that really have their arms around that level of marketing and distribution. But at the end of the day, their possibilities should be better than ever because instead of wasting the cost of the ninety percent to find out what’s going to fly, they can focus their marketing efforts on stuff they knew is going to be popular. Does that make sense?

MR: Yes. And also it seems like the culture will naturally streamline itself as well. How many more millions of videos are going to be able to go up on YouTube? There’ll be some learning curve for everybody and some place where this is all going. Now you’re somebody who gives TED talks, so you’re very much in touch with the latest technologies in the latest circles. Doesn’t it feel like something major has been boiling up technology-wise over the last few years?

TD: Oh, hopefully. Hopefully, we’ll get past this period where we’re sort of on the cusp of seeing these technologies and a disintermediation of the old way of doing things, which is such a threat. I think that what will follow on once the dust settles is something new that many of us hadn’t anticipated. I’m sort of a glass half full guy and I would much rather be the one who jumps in there and tries to take creative advantage of the changes rather than sit back and moan about how the old ways are dying out.

MR: Spoken like a true innovator! May I ask you, are you also going to put out a physical soundtrack or a download of the music of The Invisible Lighthouse?

TD: For now, the only way to see the film is to come and see the show. It’s evolving all the time, even on our tour bus we’re making changes night to night and integrating new things. When the tour is over, I’m going to think about a way to put it out commercially, but that would actually mean drawing a line under it and calling it finished, and that would be a bit of a shame.

MR: Hey, during the tour, is there creative improvisation on stage?

TD: Yeah, there is definitely some fluidity with it. I’ve only done two shows so far with the Foley artist Blake Leyh, and he’s got lots of great ideas, so we’re going to carry on trying to mold the thing over time.

MR: Oh, to be at that twentieth performance.

TD: Exactly.

MR: Thomas I always ask you this, let’s do it again. What advice do you have for new artists?

TD: I almost feel like they don’t need my advice because it’s such a wide world for them to explore without needing to pay for an A&R man. But I think the thing is the conventional advice from the old guard in the film industry is, “Oh, it’s all about the arc of story.” I actually don’t think that’s the case. I think that today’s generation have, in a way, gotten beyond merely story telling and they’ve gotten into just being in the moment. In a game, you create the moment yourself with the context and there doesn’t need to be the through line of a story. So in my film, it’s almost like the workings of your mind. Your private thoughts don’t have a linear storyline, they jump around, you get free association. My film has a lot more of that than a conventional film story arc.

MR: Sweet. What cities are you visiting during the tour?

TD: I’m looking forward to going all across the country.

MR: Are you looking forward to playing a couple of these places because of sentimental reasons or whatever?

TD: I like playing old theatres like The Royal in Detroit, really because they just have a sense of history to them and it just seems very appropriate given the subject matter of Lighthouse. I hope that the USA will take notice because I think the lighthouses around the coast… In a young country, history is not something that you stumble across every day. I think there’s such a history and a legacy with the lighthouses that watched over and withheld invasions and weathered hurricanes and sea battles and so on, I just hope we can save American lighthouses.

MR: Yeah, and to many, lighthouses represent so much more than their history as well.

TD: They’re very comforting, because you know how reassuring they’ve been to sailors and fishermen. In our case, it’s like talking about the great beacon light of hope. I think the beam from a lighthouse is what it conjures up.

MR: Thomas, thank you very much for the time and all the best with the project. I can’t wait to see it.

TD: It was nice talking to you.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne