CPJ: Could you describe what “The Wonder Year” is about in your own words?
PRICE: “The Wonder Year” is a feature length documentary about Grammy Award winning producer 9th Wonder. It’s an intimate portrait of an artist who is passionate about his craft as well as the conservation and education of his culture.
CPJ: How did you come to decide to make a film about 9th Wonder?
I grew up in Raleigh and moved down to Wilmington to go to undergraduate school at UNCW back in 2000. A couple of years later I started hearing about a group out of Raleigh called Little Brother and being a fan of the golden era of hip-hop I immediately was attracted to their sound and their message. They played shows in Wilmington every couple of months and I pretty much just became a supporter of their movement. Also, the fact that they were from North Carolina meant something. I’d always appreciated music out of North Carolina whether it be Ben Folds Five or Squirrel Nut Zippers, whoever. I really didn’t get the idea of making the film until about two years ago when I found out 9th was becoming a professor at Duke University, teaching a class on sampling and I thought the dichotomy between hip-hop and academia was really interesting. I got in touch with him through a mutual friend and we bounced ideas back and forth for a couple of months before I started filming in December 2009.
CPJ: What are your hopes and plans for the film?
PRICE: I’m extremely happy that 9th’s hometown of Winston-Salem is going to have the first chance to take a look at the film. Afterwards we definitely plan on getting it out on the film festival circuit (as well as music festivals) and we’re partnering with the clothing company LRG to do a college tour of the film in the fall. Pretty much the rest of the year will be these intimate screenings of the film, we want to make the presentation of the film an experience and use it to create a dialogue about the culture. 9th has been giving lectures at Universities all over the country for the past few years so it feels like the perfect avenue to get people to see the film as well.
CPJ: What can you tell us about “First Sunrise,” your recent short documentary that RiverRun is also showing this year?
PRICE: [It] came from a trip I took to Japan a few years ago to visit a friend of mine teaching English over there. Japan was really unexplainable and the only thing that really captured that feeling was “Lost in Translation.” So around the time the Canon 7D came out and the ability to shoot beautiful images on a tiny camera became a real possibility I decided instead of spending a ton of money on craft services and gear and whatnot, why not spend that money on a ticket back over to Japan. So it was basically me with a 7D and a little zoom recorder documenting an American’s journey to the coast of Japan to see the First Sunrise of the year.
CPJ: Are you currently working on any other projects?
PRICE: Through the making of “The Wonder Year” I’ve started doing a lot of music videos so I plan on continuing to do that in the near future. I’m also finishing up a short documentary called “Wilbert & Vern” about the friendship between a watermelon farmer and a blind piano tuner in Rural Hall, North Carolina.
PRICE on…
CREW: A very talented friend of mine, Justin Drust is handling the sound mix for “The Wonder Year” but other than that it was just me working on the film as far as shooting, editing, running sound, etc.
CAMERA: I shot on a Panasonic HVX & Canon 7D depending on what sort of situation we were shooting, there are pros and cons to both cameras.
BUDGET: It most definitely falls into the “under 100k” category.
