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King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s Chunky Shrapnel film is now available to stream online. The movie, which premiered April 17 11pm BST (April 18 8am AEST), will be available for 24 hours.
The band’s first feature-length film, named after a lyric from the band’s 2017 song ‘Murder Of The Universe’, captures King Gizzard’s tour in support of ‘Infest The Rats’ Nest’ in the UK and Europe. You can now rent the film for 24 hours on Vimeo.
It was directed by John Angus Stewart, who had previously directed music videos from the band’s thrash metal album ‘Infest The Rats’ Nest’ and for other Flightless Records artists, including The Murlocs, Stonefield, Bullant and more.
Chunky Shrapnel was originally set to premiere earlier this month at Melbourne’s Astor Theatre, before the Australian government closed cinemas nationwide to stem the spread of the coronavirus.
In an interview with NME earlier this week, Stewart said the film prioritises exploring the band’s music rather than their respective personalities.
“With documentaries about musicians or even about filmmakers, a lot of the time, to give it a narrative thread, they pry into artists’ personalities or whatnot, trying to extract this deeper narrative to make it feel like a three-act film,” he said.
“But to me, I think [King Gizzard’s] performance and their music is so fuckin’ interesting that you don’t have to do that. And in the end, they’re really interesting guys…If you like this music, you’ll get an insight into who these people are. But I didn’t want to frame them as these godlike figures, because to me that’s kind of bullshit. They’re just normal dudes.”
The filmmaker said he had nearly no constraints on his filming, apart from that once he was on stage, he had to shoot handheld and couldn’t ever cut.
“The funny thing about Stu [Mackenzie, vocalist/guitarist] and the rest of Gizz is they literally said, “Actually, do whatever you want.” If I tripped over Stu’s guitar cable and it popped out, he would just think it’s funny. They just don’t care about that stuff,” Stewart said.
“When the song started, my movement and the blocking of where I move the camera – that’s the editing, that’s the cutting, because we wanted the whole thing to feel so immersive.”
Stewart also told NME the band are currently working on a new album, from which he is set to direct two music videos. He also spoke about shooting Chunky Shrapnel entirely on film and the film’s epic closing medley ‘A Brief History Of Planet Earth’. Read the full interview with Stewart here.
A Chunky Shrapnel live double album will be released on April 24.
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