Three years ago, a team of UNC students set out on a mission: win an Oscar. By creating an original movie musical, the team could potentially activate an obscure category no one has won in more than two decades. Now that film is making its North Carolina premiere November 13 at the Varsity Theater on Franklin Street.
In the 50 person Cinelounge movie theatre in Los Angeles, California, UNC alumni Nick Bafia and Julia Stamey saw their names pop up on the big screen. Bafia said it was a pretty neat experience.
“Not many people can say that they’ve had a project screen at a theater much less in Hollywood,” Bafia said. “Seeing the names of all the cast and crew up there and then seeing the intro credit sequence, and hearing the music playing you’re like oh wow like we did that. “
In the fall of 2018, Stamey said the duo created Bafia-Stamey Productions after hearing a guest speaker in a communications class mention no one had won the award for Best Original Musical in two decades.
“We thought, ‘Oh, we could do that,'” Stamey said. ” We could make an original musical film and after a whole lot of work and a whole lot of post production we’ve got a musical.”
Their film, an original movie musical titled “Fix” made its world premiere October 22.
The story follows three estranged high school friends who reconnect and struggle to heal their relationships, futures and themselves. Fifty former and current UNC students worked on the film: as cinematographers capturing scenes in locations around Chapel Hill, editors piecing together the 85 minute movie, and lyricists writing eleven original songs.
The team originally planned to try for the 2020 Oscars, but delayed the process a year because of extra challenges from the coronavirus pandemic.
Stamey said the team had recorded the vocals before filming so actors could lip sync along. When it was time to add the musicians to the mix, COVID-19 had shut everything down.
“None of these musicians can come into the studio for almost a year,” Stamey said. “We didn’t have any musicians until I think it was December of 2020 which so obviously that added a whole bunch of time and was a big challenge, but in the end, we made it work.”
Even without COVID-19, the team faced several hurdles. One, Stamey said, was that almost their entire production consisted of full time students.
“We’re not full time independent producers,” Stamey said. “We didn’t have you know independent financing.”
A kickstarter fund and late night bake sales on Franklin Street helped raise the film’s $15,000 budget.
Another problem: meeting the rigorous Academy standards which include being feature length and having at least five original songs written by the same composition team specifically for the movie.
Fix also needed to have an academy qualifying theatrical run, so Bafia-Stamey productions rented a theater in Los Angeles showing the film three times a day for seven days.
An even bigger barrier is out of their control. In order to award the Best Musical Category, the Academy requires ten films to be submitted. Bafia said the production team asked other producers to consider submitting their films for the lesser known category but didn’t hear back from everyone.
“It’s kind of fingers crossed,” Bafia said.
Even if their Oscar dreams are crushed, Fix is already receiving other accolades like “Best Musical/Dance Film” from the Los Angeles Film Awards and “Gold Award for Original Song” from the International Independent Film Awards. Bafia said the awards keep coming.
“They’re not major film festivals, but that means people are watching and people are voting on, and people are seeing people are liking it,” Bafia said.
Bafia-Stamey Productions submitted Fix for Best Original Musical, Best Original Song and Best Original Score categories for the 2021 Oscars. They’ll hear if they made the short list for those awards in December.
Photo via Joe Bafia
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