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Most certainly, Röckët Stähr’s Death of a Rockstar is not a film for everyone, but it is truly brilliant and will definitely join the greats of rock animation. Imagine Tommy meets Yellow Submarine with a little Rocky Horror thrown in as performed by some of Heavy Metal’s greatest bands. In the year 2164, when rock ‘n roll is banned, a group of underground rebels, led by a mad scientist, attempt to start a non-violent revolution by waking up the docile masses via a cloned rockstar sent on a guerrilla tour to “rock n roll them free from the tyranny”. But they soon find out, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
By Nefeli Soteriou
See the NYC Premiere of animated feature film Röckët Stähr’s Death of a Rockstar on Friday September 24 @ 6:30 PM at Cinema Village (22 East 12th Street) as part of New York City’s 10th Annual Winter Film Awards International Film Festival. Tickets now on sale!
A devoted labor of love, the rock opera Death of a Rockstar is Röckët Stähr’s first film and took a little over thirteen years to complete. As the filmmaker stated, there was no budget allocated, or a pre-production process. Animation was his choice preference over her sister – claymation; as Stähr puts it, “it is fantastical!”
A musician, performer and a songwriter, Stähr wanted a good friend of his who is a filmmaker to write a story around a selection of his songs. But one day while waiting for the subway to go meet his wife for dinner, the story hit him like a bolt of lightning! The subway came and he got on, and by the time Stähr met up with his wife, maybe twenty minutes later, he knew exactly which of the songs he already had would go perfectly with maybe 70% of the scenes. Stähr knew he’d have to write new songs to fit sections of the film, but he either had finished songs, or ideas, or other unfinished pieces, that would work perfectly in almost every scene he had in his head. About 85% of what Stähr thought of on the subway ride is what’s in the final film. He changed a few key ideas, and of course the film got fleshed out a whole lot more, but that basic story structure of what this movie would be, came to him that quickly.
Stähr approached animation houses and independent animators while he was still recording the music. Initially, he sent the original screenplay and a few demos of some of the songs. People responded well to the material, but were like “Sure, we can do this, if you have several million dollars!” By the time he finished recording the music, Stähr decided to try to illustrate a few scenes and draw character designs to send out to investors. He bought the software Toon Boom Animate, now Toon Boom Harmony, to do some of the illustrations on his computer. To draw he used a Cintiq monitor and his iPad as a smaller second monitor that he hooked up to his Mac Pro computer using an app called Duet. Well, long story short, Röckët Stähr wound up animating the entire film on his own!
The first song in the movie Death of a Rockstar, is actually about David Bowie’s last performance as Ziggy Stardust. Stähr got the idea after reading an old interview of him in the seventies talking about why he had to ‘kill’ Ziggy, so to speak, if he was to ever be free as an artist. And how, ironically, the character was originally a way he could be free as an artist – thus the lyric in the film, ‘a prison now what once began as a way he could be free’. Stähr repurposed it for the opening scene of the movie and didn’t change a word. Aside from that, firstly, he wrote the structure of the movie. He wrote down how many scenes there would be – 26, then wrote down what songs he already had that would work for each scene, which ones had ideas for but needed to finish, and put a question mark where he needed to write something from scratch.
Stähr wrote and recorded all of the music in about five years; animating took close to eight years. While animating, he largely ignored the screenplay and opted to just animate freely. Röckët Stähr let the music and mood guide him each day with whatever ideas came to him at the moment. Stähr would just go with where his mind went and didn’t question it much outside of making sure he hit his spots at the end of the scene. A couple of scenes stick pretty closely to the screenplay including the opening one, but others like the entire ending is nothing like what he wrote in the screenplay.
A fun way Röckët overcame a creative challenge during the animation phase was to trust in his creativity to match two scenes. There was the scene where the character Ronnie Waye is on a cliff at the end of the song. In the screenplay, she’s on a beach at the edge of the water. Röcky Stähr is supposed to walk over to her at the beginning of the next song. Stähr had to think of how he was going to get the character from a beach up to the top of a cliff in a handful of seconds. He thought, “well, this is animation, anything is possible, and the song is called Umbrella”, so, Stähr had him pull some umbrellas out of his massive head of hair and the wind from the oncoming rainstorm carried him up to the cliff!
A self-taught composer, Röckët Stähr arranged all of the strings, horns, and wind instruments that were played by real, excellent, musicians. He recorded at Threshold Studios, and N.Y. Hed, in NYC. Stähr played all piano, bass, guitar, and sang all of the parts aside from the part of Ronnie Waye, which was sung by Abby Ahmad. He recorded the drums and piano at Threshold Studios as well; the song Cinderella Suicide was recorded at N.Y. Hed. All of the guitars, bass, and vocals were recorded in his apartment straight into Protools.
Because the entire project took thirteen years from start to finish, during that time period, home recording gear improved. By the time Stähr finished animating, he wanted to update his equipment and software and re-record all of the guitars, bass, and all of his vocals. The piano, strings, horns, winds, didn’t need re-recording as they were all done in professional grade studios and sounded great, and Abby didn’t need re-recording, her part was actually the last thing recorded. Stähr didn’t want to do all of that re-recording –it took a long time and was kind of a nightmare, but he just knew it was the right thing to do, and he’s glad he did it. He used Protools as his digital audio workstation, but for plugins (compressors, EQs, reverbs) Röckët mostly used Universal Audio plugins. The filmmaker finds them amazing at replicating vintage gear, which is what he loves; he always goes for a vintage, or classic sound for his music. He used a few Waves plugins. His monitors are Adam A7s.
Röckët Stähr’s biggest cost was time. Because he chose to work with top-notch instrument players, he had to save up for several months between studio sessions to be able to afford the next one. There were engineers during the studio sessions, and the mastering engineer who mastered the final mixes of the music. That was pretty much the crew aside Stähr.
The biggest challenge Stähr overcame was learning to mix his film in a handful of months. Without formal training, the filmmaker worked in a considerable-less-than-ideal space, his studio apartment. The tracks were dense and he struggled. The string, horn, and wind parts were played by a handful of players whose tracks he overdubbed multiple times to get more of an orchestral sound. Röckët Stähr sang every single part of those choir parts one-by-one on his own. There are probably close to one hundred tracks on a lot of these songs. The filmmaker almost gave up –he couldn’t believe how hard of a time he was having. But having twenty-six dense tracks mixed professionally, would cost him a fortune and couldn’t possibly afford anything like that. Stähr simply pushed forward and figured it out. Then he worked with Joe Lambert who mastered his mixes.
Death of a Rockstar made its virtual festival debut at Lake County Film Festival in November of 2020, and since has also been seen at virtual film festivals Other Worlds Austin, Cinequest, and Fantaspoa, where the film made its international virtual debut in Brazil. Death of a Rockstar made its theatrical debut at the Anthem Film Festival on July 23, 2021 in South Dakota, and will make its NYC theatrical premiere at the Winter Film Awards International Film Festival in September of 2021.
In the meantime, Röckët Stähr is working away! He’s always writing more. Stähr would love to do another rock opera, or even a rock opera mini-series or something like that. The songwriter and musician is open to collaborations. If you would like to team up and do a live-action film or an animated one, then get in touch with Röckët Stähr.
You can follow Röckët Stähr on Instagram at @rocket_stahr or on Facebook at facebook.com/rocketstahr to keep up to date on what he’s doing in the future!
Nefeli Soteriou
Nefeli Soteriou’s background is in Film and Media Arts, Creativity Coaching with Coaching Psychology, Behavioral Coaching for Mental Health, and Education. With significant, real-world experience as a Life Coach and Filmmaker, she specializes in helping filmmakers with every aspect of the filmmaking life, from completing unfinished films to handling the stresses and pressures that they face.
About Winter Film Awards
New York City’s 10th Annual Winter Film Awards International Film Festival runs September 23-October 2 2021. Check out a jam-packed lineup of 91 fantastic films in all genres from 28 countries, including shorts, features, Animation, Drama, Comedy, Thriller, Horror, Documentary and Music Video. Hollywood might ignore women and people of color, but Winter Film Awards celebrates everyone!
Winter Film Awards is an all volunteer, minority- and women-owned registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization founded in 2011 in New York City by a group of filmmakers and enthusiasts. The program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the NY State Council on the Arts.
