Universe

TYPE: Documentary Feature
GENRE: Documentary
STATUS: Completed

LOGLINE

A portrait of Miles Davis and his only protege, Wallace Roney, told through the fifty year journey of the artist’s lost masterpiece, “Universe.”

SYNOPSIS

When Wallace Roney recovers “The Universe Compositions,” an orchestral jazz suite written in 1968 and left unrecorded by his mentor Miles Davis, he inherits the missing link in the history of jazz. As he prepares to record and debut the music, Wallace finds that each song is a portrait in miniature of his mentor, and that he must find a way to step out of Miles Davis’ shadow in order to truly succeed him.

ARTISTIC STATEMENT

We originally conceived of Universe as a short film. We thought the music would speak for itself and that a straightforward music doc about the studio recording process would suffice as the best way to tell this story. But the more time we spent with Wallace Roney, our main character, the more we understood that our story was fundamentally about mentorship and art made across generations. Watching Wallace interact with the world—with music, with peers, with the industry—you see how he has modeled himself after his mentor, Miles Davis. Even his body language, the way he dresses, the tone of his trumpet playing…they’re elements that are best shown via the film medium. And they’re also elements of the story that are best told as a feature film, where we’re allowed time to let the characters breathe rather than ping-ponging between plot points. This is when we decided on our aesthetic approach to the film—observational, black-and-white, static compositions—that would show Wallace in the light of a golden-era jazz icon such as Miles Davis, even while showing that he existed in a lower-income, non-famous capacity. Films about the music of jazz are so often worshipful of the medium’s history. Jazz documentaries often tend towards history lessons or gussied up Wikipedia profiles. With Universe, we want to show jazz as an artform passed down among generations. The music in question was passed down from Wayne Shorter to Miles Davis to Wallace Roney over the course of fifty years. In the film, Wallace passes on his own mastery of the music to the next generation coming up behind him. It’s in this way that Universe is about mentorship and jazz as a music that is forward-facing, rather than an intellectual music housed by historical institutions and conservatories. We want to tell a story about jazz that inspires young musicians by showing them that the music’s history is to be expanded upon with creativity of their own. On another level, we’re hoping to tell a new story about Miles Davis. In the past, documentarians have attempted to tackle his entire biography; to create the “authoritative” story about Miles Davis. We’re approaching his story differently. Our portrait of Miles Davis is through the eyes of his protege; someone who absorbed all the legends, rumors, and art of this cultural icon, and then used them to build his own persona. This portrait of Miles is leaner; it’s focused on a singular friendship and mentorship by Miles Davis. By narrowing the scope of his portraiture, we hope to tell a more expressive, acute story about him.

KEY CREW

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