What Difference Does It Make?: A Feature Length Film By RBMA
Ruben Lone
A few months back, we expressed our excitement about the upcoming movie by Red Bull Music Academy, anticipating the Ralf Schmerberg-directed documentary What Difference Does It Make?, featuring an impressive cast of musicians, producers, and thinkers. As with any project curated by Red Bull and/or RBMA, the fusing of styles and philosophies into a single entity remains the focus of the film—icons from Rakim to Lee “Scratch” Perry to Brian Eno to Thomas Moulton all provide personal insight into artistic endeavors and struggles. Despite their individual theories, the idea that rings true amongst them all is that music is their lifeblood, the core of their being, their deepest, most passionate, most dangerous obsession.
What Difference Does It Make? also serves as promotional showcase of the most recent Red Bull Music Academy sessions and events last spring in New York. Inspiring for any artist interesting in applying to the Academy, the film highlights the diversity of the attendees, some being profoundly talented instrumentalists, others engineers, lyricists, rappers, singers, and producers. Behind-the-scenes looks at the studio environment, workflow, and general enjoyment of all of the applicants is indeed intriguing. As for the narrative side of the movie, jump cuts, gritty city scenes, and close-up interviews are raw and musically-composed details in their own rights. The darker contexts of survival as an artist, touching on points such as addiction, stymied creativity, and financial distress, are portrayed quite naturally. The directly intimate conversations humanize the often inflated depiction of frenzied, impractical creators.
RBMA composes a narrative of the various elements of the artist lifestyle—composition, production, performance. Through a lens that could so easily become disjointed, the poetic editing paints a visual picture of the current landscape of the world of music from an artist’s perspective in a time when we’re often bombarded with talks about business, technology, and industry. In short, this is a highly recommended watch, even if just to see the bit of Egyptian Lover sweatily performing on a tiny venue stage.
Check out the film below:
