L.A. Film Fest: ‘All Together Now’ makes music in an indoor forest

Inside a warehouse in Los Angeles, the cast of “All Together Now” partied in an artificial forest filled with fog and piercing music.

In order to bring in numerous bands to provide the soundtrack for the film, director Alex Mirecki opted for a faux forest rather than shooting in the great outdoors. He said the controlled climate of the set guaranteed that bands wouldn’t be rained out.

In the film, Ron (played by Lou Taylor Pucci) hosts a party in the middle of the woods. As the night goes on, a hodgepodge of characters comes to the event and connects over the music, performed by bands Pedestrian Deposit, Night Control, Manicorn and Nice Face.

CHEAT SHEET: Los Angeles Film Festival 2013

The concert and music in general were meant to be connecting threads, according to Mirecki. He adapted the script to follow musical selections, grouping scenes into chapters and arranging them based on their dominant emotion, then pairing them with a corresponding song.

“Events tend to have this nature to some degree. They separate into chapters. There are times where it’s good, times where it’s bad, times where you’re bored and times where you’re excited,” Mirecki said. “We just tried to capture that in the music.”

Even the light in the film reflects some of the ideas in the music -- at times distorted, grainy or diffused. Mirecki laughed when asked if he was deliberately imitating Instagram filtering.

“In a lot of ways we took what the idea was in the music and tried to have it come across in a cinematic way,” he said. “I wasn’t really thinking Instagram.”

Pucci said he and his fellow actors recognized their roles were secondary to the event at the center of the film.

“I didn’t even develop my character all that much because the major character in the film is the environment, and the music is really part of it,” Pucci said.

Mirecki said the environment and the role of events like the all-night concert depicted in the film capture the essence of today’s adolescents and young adults, a group interested in getting lost in music and the power of an event.

“It pinpoints a generation. It shows you how they chill at a time, how they love; it shows you who they are,” Mirecki said.

The Los Angeles Film Festival will screen “All Together Now” at 9:40 p.m. on Saturday, June 15; 7:10 p.m. on Thursday, June 20; and 9:50 p.m. on Saturday, June 22.

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dana.ferguson@latimes.com