‘Wizard Rock’ casts spell on filmmakers

Forget about heavy metal, bubblegum pop and hip-hop. Two Spokane sisters are at the center of a new musical trend, with a rock documentary about a genre more at home in the public library than a bar – Wizard Rock.

For the musicians and fans who love music inspired by the Harry Potter books written by J.K. Rowling, unkempt hair wouldn’t be the right statement without oversize glasses and a lightning-bolt-shape scar on the forehead.

“It seemed like a story that needed to be told,” 22-year-old filmmaker Mallory Schuyler said of the hundreds of Potter tribute bands.

Now, just hours before the release of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” Mallory and twin sister Megan Schuyler are wrapping up a little more than a year of work interviewing the tribute bands and their fans around the country.

Much like Wizard Rock itself, their film “The Wizard Rockumentary: A Movie About Rocking and Rowling,” is an independent production created out of passion and a desire to do something creative.

“In 2004 we were home from college and we saw a show of Harry and the Potters,” Megan Schuyler said of one of the first bands in the Wizard Rock genre.

“Then in 2006, Mallory got into MySpace. There was this whole movement starting up and not a lot of Harry Potter fans knew about it.”

Wizard Rock bands had built small fan bases, but the Internet was helping to turn them into a movement, Megan Schuyler said.

“I don’t think a movement to this point could have existed without the Internet,” she said. “People were going online and realizing they were part of a global community.”

New York-based journalist Melissa Anelli started writing about Harry Potter books as a fan in 2000 and now considers it a full-time job. She said a single performance of Harry and the Potters in Massachusetts – intended as a joke – drew such excitement that the band started touring.

When Harry and the Potters snapped up more than 90,000 fans on MySpace, there was the explosion of other tribute bands.

“Suddenly, one day, there were 300 other Harry Potter bands,” Anelli said.

The Schuylers stumbled upon the online community of musicians, with book-inspired band names like Draco and the Malfoys, The Whomping Willows and The Hermione Crookshanks Experience, and saw an opportunity to document a creative subculture.

“I just went kind of crazy and went on a downloading binge, trying to get as much of this music as I could,” Mallory Schuyler said.

The pair sketched out a mission statement, pooled their savings and started shooting the documentary in their spare time.

“Before we could even think about it we had our first flight booked and a Web site up,” Mallory Schuyler said.

The sisters hit concerts in New Jersey, Virginia, New York and Nevada. In the process, they saw something of themselves: young people developing creative work using digital tools and building alternative distribution networks.

“It’s been a privilege to see how the community has progressed,” Megan Schuyler said.

“These kids are learning how to book their own tours and produce their own CDs.”

The Schuylers see the Wizard Rock musicians’ creativity as also being driven by the richness of Rowling’s characters. There are entire ballads written about secondary characters who barely speak a line in the Harry Potter films and Wizard Rock fans pride themselves on knowing minute details from the novels.

“It’s like Mallory and I joke: We have our real lives and then we have our Harry Potter lives,” Megan Schuyler said.

Those real lives also helped them prepare to shoot a film. Megan Schuyler is a producer and video editor for the Spokane-based production company North by Northwest and Mallory Schuyler is the book manager at Tinman Gallery.

Megan plans to shoot final sequences at a University of Washington midnight book release party in Seattle tonight and show a special 20-minute preview at the event. Meanwhile, Mallory will be hosting her own release party at the Tinman Gallery in Spokane.

The final cut will be finished by the end of the year and submitted to 2008 film festivals. Until the film is finished, fans will at least have something to read.