SIRONIA PRESS
By Gary Murray
The first thing that one notices about both director Brandon Dickerson and writer/actor Thomas Ward is how easily they compliment each other when talking. One will start a sentence and the other will finish the thought. The two come across as if they are lifelong friends and not artists working on their first major motion picture.
Brandon Dickerson is a successful Los Angeles director of music videos, doing over 100 different projects. Even though he was thriving with that format, his goal was still to be a feature film director. He said he wanted “the opportunity to go beyond three minutes.” Thomas Ward is an actor and playwright in residence at Baylor University who has had works produced all over the nation. He just has not had a successful screenplay.
The men are both writers of the new film Sironia which plays at the Dallas International Film Festival. The work has been showing at different festivals over the last few months and won the audience award at the South by Southwest Film Festival.
The story of Sironia is of Thomas Fisher played by singer/songwriter Wes Cunningham. Thomas is a talented musician who has not had the career he expected. When his wife Molly gets pregnant, the two decide to move from LA to Waco in order to raise their child. Even with the change of scenery and attitude, Thomas is still bitter about his career. The story of Sironia is of finding out what is important in the world.
The path of the film is serpentine as Brandon tells the tale. “I was in Hollywood and my wife’s mom got cancer. She lived in Waco and we abruptly moved there. Historically, I’m a director of commercials and music videos. What was deemed as a bit of career suicide, leaving Hollywood to move to Waco to care for my wife’s Mom.” He admits to listening to Wes Cunningham’s music on the road trip.
Wes Cunningham is the tangent friend of both men but neither knew the other. Wes wanted Brandon to meet with Thomas and they got together for breakfast.
“At that breakfast we started crafting the story for kicks,” said Brandon. “We started writing just for fun and this turned into a weekly meeting then meeting every day which turned into this script, really having no idea that it would get funded.”
The ‘just for fun’ project became a reality when the husband/wife team that owns Curves set up the financing for Sironia.
“We met and kind of geeked out about how much we liked Wes’s music,” said Brandon. “(Thomas) thought of a stage play and I brought up the idea of a script. And, here’s the movie!”
Thomas had several plays produced in Texas, NYC and Atlanta. “It was really perfect for me,” he said of that meeting, “The moral of this story is say ‘yes’ to breakfast.”
Both admitted that the 21 day shoot started with the music. “The story built itself out of the songs,” said Thomas. With the funding secure, the project began to take on steam and the two writing partners turned to director and actor. That meant that Thomas had to audition for the role that he wrote. Said Brandon, “We all said that whoever was best for the role would win.”
They used crew from LA and from Friday Night Lights to make Sironia. And in a world of digital media, Brandon shot the film on 35mm which he called ‘using a familiar brush’.
Thomas, as an actor on set, was able to watch Brandon take on the task of crafting the vision they conceived together. “For me, it was liberating,” he said of the experience. “I think the two biggest adjustments for me were that dialogue isn’t precious. It is not as important as it is in the theater. Story and structure are way more important. With a play, it is a discovery from the beginning. With a screenplay, the discovery happens but you have to know the story before the characters talk. And that is torture for me. I love words.”
As far as the issues the film brings up, Thomas became philosophical. “This is about a place in life where we are dealing with these fish out of water issues. How do you define success? As a unique experience? What is success? What is making it?”
Then Brandon added, “Having done music videos and seen people who have made it and are miserable and who have failed and are miserable. There is no difference between the two, lack of contentment. I found you could be a banker and still be struggling with that as well. We all need to find contentment outside our circumstances.”
The two are working on a very different screenplay for their next feature. It is a period piece concerning a migrant worker. For now they are traveling to different festivals, showing their work to eager audiences. As Brandon summed up, “The film at the festivals is the film I wanted to make–which is wonderful and terrifying.”
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