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| Gabriel Noble: P Star Rising |
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| Filmmaker Interviews | |||
| Written by Dixon Christie | |||
Gabriel Noble: P Star Rising
 MyDocumentary.ca: This is Dixon Christie with mydocumentary.ca, here with Hotdocs in Toronto. I’m here with Gabriel Noble, about to talk about your film “P Star Rising”
Ya, it’s an exciting film, happy to be here for our international premiere.
MyDocumentary.ca: Congratulations
Thank you
MyDocumentary.ca: where are you from?
Brooklyn, New York.
MyDocumentary.ca: wow. So tell us about your film; what is P Star Rising?
Sure. At nine years old, Pricilla Diaz came to her father in the shelter they were living in and said, “dad, I’m gonna bring you back in the music business; I’m gonna be a rap star, and you can be my manager”. And I followed this father/daughter duo through the music industry for four years, where Pricilla becomes a star, and brings her father back in the business, and kind of loses her childhood in the course of the journey. The film really follows her for four years where she really finds her voice and was able to tell her dad, “Dad I need you back as a Father, and I need my childhood back”.
MyDocumentary.ca: wow. Big story.
Yah. Very big story; long story.
MyDocumentary.ca: so is this your first film?
It’s actually my third documentary. This is definitely my baby; four years shooting; one year editing, so, long-time coming.
MyDocumentary.ca: at what point in the telling of the story did you start to realize where your story arc would be? Obviously you’re hoping she’ll be successful, but when you start there’s no way you could have predicted any success.
No, there isn’t, I actually didn’t start filming her as a rapper; I started filming the relationship between father and daughter; I thought that would be the story. However, her career was definitely moving very fast of her becoming the youngest rapper ever. There were moments she was about to quit; she was going to return to school, she was home schooled, she was gonna return to school, and her father was gonna get a real job, and that would have been an interesting ending. But that didn’t happen; she continued to be successful, her father continued to be enveloped in the business, and it wasn’t until, for her, the pressure just mounted so much and that she got old enough to have a voice. She was finally able to tell her father; ‘this is what I need from you”. When she’s nine, ten, running around rapping in the streets and on MTV and going around the world she’s just trying to make her dad proud. She knows nothing better; she’s just a little girl. It’s not until I saw her have this transformation that, ‘you know what? I have to tell my father how I’m feeling; otherwise I’m gonna lose everything; I’m gonna lose my childhood. That’s when I was able to stop the film…and when he was able to hear that, he was able to listen and that’s how it finally ends.
MyDocumentary.ca: were you able to develop a relationship with both sides of the story? Able to get to know the characters equally on both sides?
Absolutely, I spent a lot of time talking to Jesse, the father, as a single father, mentoring him through fatherhood, through the music business, and just as a friend and confident. To Pricilla I became a friend, a confident, an ear for her to talk to. I spent a lot of time off camera, I’d say about sixty percent of the time I was shooting, and forty percent of the time I was just listening, hanging out, and traveling with them. I was in with the family, I become invisible and you see that in the film; its very intimate very authentic, often uncomfortable moments for the family.
MyDocumentary.ca: So, because of your invisibility and relationship with the family you’re able to witness things you’d never be able to see?
Absolutely. I also shot the film by myself. I did sound, I did camera, I did direction. Every time I bring in another cameraman or boom operator, it changes the dynamic, it changed the story. I just continued to be that running gun one-man team, and it worked out. Not the best way to do a film, but the footage is incredible, so it worked out for us.
MyDocumentary.ca: Now lots has happened in five years; you can have a V1HD camera, as opposed to an XL1, what camera were you using to shoot the movie?
Panasonic 2400- 24p, which I began, I guess it was five years ago when it was the ‘hot’ camera. Slowly it dissolved into HD; the film is ultimately built up to HD, so its HD projection. That camera was great; it was small, I could slide it into clubs, I could slide into places, record labels, intimate meetings where normally a camera would be inappropriate. It actually really helped me. I had it on my back, I had the wireless? On the characters, and I just ran with it.
MyDocumentary.ca: Two wireless inputs on that camera?
Yes.
MyDocumentary.ca: wow. So basically you’ve got the wireless plugs going into the DVX 100; it looks like a hand-held consumer camera, but like a good hand-held consumer camera…
Yah, it definitely looks like your up to something; I mean if I stripped down everything, if I’m going to film something covert, I strip down the mics, I just use the internal mics, it looks like a very, it looks like a very consumer camera. But, when I put the shotgun on, when I put the wireless on, have XLR’s going into my pouch, then it looks like I’m going in to do something serious. Then when we’re shooting big clubs and big concerts, it looks even more serious; I have lights, and the whole kit. So, it can be stripped down to real running gun and it can also be built up to be professional, and sometimes excessive.
MyDocumentary.ca: Now obviously, you had no idea that she would become successful, so that became the best happy accident in your film making career; tell us about that evolution for both of you; both for you and her.
When I began the film, and I saw her rapping on the streets of Harlem at eight-and-a-half/nine (years) I definitely knew she had something; but I wasn’t convinced she’d become a star. She still is not a star; but she clearly is on her way. Now she’s the star of The Electric Company, which is a PBS show in the States, every Friday, it’s a kids’ show…
MyDocumentary.ca: used to be here in Canada as well; twenty-five years ago, yah...
Yah was a Morgan Freeman show. She’s now integrated her rap into the show. Its an amazing show for her, so she’s in a really safe place; she has PBS behind her, training in acting, training in singing, training in dancing, so she’s really becoming a threat; not just a rapper. I used to see her get snuck into nightclubs, at nine/ten/eleven years old. She would get one song, and she’d blow the crowd away, and then she’d sneak back out the back way by the bouncer, go home to bed, and then go to school the next day. So now, with her being invited to Puerto Rico, invited to Japan, really being treated with respect as an artist is amazing to see. I think she’s a huge feature. I think the film is obviously propelling her because people need to know her. She’s an amazing, precocious little girl, who’s been in the limelight in her world, since nine years old. At fourteen, she’s definitely a star in the making.
MyDocumentary.ca: it will be interesting to see, with stars such as Brittney Spears from the Mickey Mouse Club, I believe Christina Aguilara was too? That kind of intimate camera attention on those stars, but to find somebody from Harlem, and be able to get that quality of attention as a youngster; that film is going to be interesting to know what other things you can do with that film because there’s going to be a big demand for it in the future.
Yah, I mean I hope so. I was never committed to her becoming a star for the film to be successful; I think the film is ultimately a family story. Its kind of a story of redemption; a father who ultimately wanted to fulfill his dream was sort of deferred to this little girl trying to make her dad proud…a single father trying to raise his kids, and not make mistakes like his father made. There’s a lot of family...We premiered at Tribeca Film Festival, and they marketed it as a family film, which is interesting; not as a music film, not as an urban film but as a family film. We had five thousand people come out on a Saturday night to a park screening...all ages obviously. I think the film transcends her becoming a star and really at the core is about parenting and about being a child, and wanting to make your dad proud.
MyDocumentary.ca: we like to ask our directors were there any profound messages, any profound insights that you took throughout the telling of the story; did you learn anything about yourself?
I did. I’m a new father, three weeks, it’s a crazy time to do film festivals, but I was really able to study a father for five years, which is pretty interesting. And trying not to judge; which is very hard. I was really able to see how he disciplined his child, how he wanted his child to fulfill things he wasn’t able to do, it really just showed me how vulnerable children are, how you think they are just so malleable, their innocence, but actually they are just sucking everything in. You see her becoming him, in a sense. You’re seeing all the bad habits, and the good, her taking those on, her own personality. I found that really interesting; the responsibility a parent has, definitely take that home with me.
MyDocumentary.ca: we like to ask our directors the amount of film they shot, and what the final length of the movie was.
That’s a very good question. I shot 270 hours of film over four years; the film is 86 minutes long so you can imagine I have 268 incredible hours of footage.
MyDocumentary.ca: and a very big hard drive.
Several.
MyDocumentary.ca: where can people learn more about P Star rising?
Sure; PstarRising.com has a blog from Pricilla, a blog from myself, it has the trailer, updates, we were at Tribeca, we’re here at HotDocs, heading out to Sheffield, and hopefully show this around the world and get it sold. Pay back those credit cards.
-Good Luck!
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