AFat Wreck is a crowdsourced documentary film about the hugely influential label, Fat Wreck Chords. If you're reading this, chances are you already love at least one song from a Fat Wreck compilation.

If not a whole album or a band that the San Francisco label have put out. The upcoming documentary covers the story of Fat Wreck Chords and, though fan-made, the film contains interviews with Fat Mike, members of The Vandals, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes and Bad Religion, among many others.

I caught up with the director, Shaun M. Colón, to see how the project is coming along.

“Fat Wreck Chords was a big influence in mine and several of my good friends lives. In high-school we played in a punk band heavily influenced by several Fat Wreck Chords bands, notably Lagwagon and Propagandhi”, Shaun explained.

Fat Wreck is formative to so many people. Shaun is clearly one of them. He continued, “Their ethos has shaped a lot of choices I have made in what I have done with my life and how I see the world. I feel honored that I get to be the one that get to share that story with the wider world.”

Having an idea for a film is obviously just the start.

Most ideas just remain that way and eventually peter out, dissolved by procrastination, a lack of funding or other commitments. Shaun’s background is in music and marketing and he’s a co-founder of Dang!Records – whose website description does say “DIY til’ DEATH. Sounds kinda like late 90’s Fat Wreck Chords Bands”, in case you doubted his passion for the label’s work.

“Through the studio and the label we made a lot of connections and friends in the punk rock community. We actually did a recording session with Joey Cape from Lagwagon back in 2010,” Shaun explained.

“In early 2013 I was thinking about what kind of project I would like to try my hand in and thought it would be a rad idea to do a short doc film about Fat Wreck Chords.” Without knowing much more than that, he simply “rented a couple of nice lenses, a Canon 5D and took my  Zoom H1 with me to Punk Rock Bowling to began interviewing friends of mine that were into Fat and played in bands or had blogs and such.”

It wasn’t long before Shaun realised he was onto something. “It really all happened organically. When I got back to Texas I found out my job was flying in Ryan Greene for an unrelated event. He agreed to an interview and it was the first time I knew that this thing would be bigger than I originally intended.”

The film raised $30,312 but its goal was $7500 on Indiegogo.

As we’ve looked at before, crowdsourcing is pivotal for independent documentaries as we’ve covered previously. Shaun set out how the extra funding was used. “Up until the Indiegogo, the film had been primarily financed by me and my wife, which just covered basic travel expenses and some equipment rentals.”

The extra money has gone into improving the storytelling and the film’s production values – like purchasing great equipment, and “two extensive trips all over California to get a wider variety of interviews and locations.”

(Erin and Mike Burkett. Photograph of Laura Jane Grace by Justin Wilson)

Shaun goes on to explain the changes in the crew that came about due to the funding, saying that, “It also allowed us to bring on more extensive crew including Greg Pratt as the head writer and Justin Wilson as lead editor and Director of Photography.

Greg Pratt is most well-known as a writer for Exclaim! Magazine in Canada. Tells Shaun, “His 16-page chronological history about Propagandhi was a big influence in the creation of the doc.” Add to that Justin Wilson, as editor and director of photography. Justin is best known for his brilliant recent film, Filmage : The Story of the Decendents/ALL.

Knocking away their crowdfunding target was a critical point, allowing them to reset their sights. “It was pretty rad that it was as successful as it was. We had originally planned on just shooting a documentary short, so we were just looking to finance a trip out to San Francisco to get interviews with some of the core people at Fat. when we hit over 400% of our goal, we realized that we should go for the gusto and produce a Full Length Documentary.”

It almost goes without saying, we’re huge fans of DIY punk here at Punktastic. Not just the music, but the communities that it creates, of committed people who often work together with one another to produce amazing things.

Shaun is clearly hugely satisfied that this community has stood up and helped make his project. He says, “It means that the DIY ethos that was a major attraction for me to Fat Wreck is alive and well in the world.”

“It also confirmed that there is a good-sized audience of like-minded people that would love to see a film about something held very dear to our hearts. It is a little bit daunting to say the least. This is something a lot of us hold sacred so I know it is a story that has to be told the right way and with as much care, love and passion as possible.”

Shaun provided what looked like a master list of interviewees and a who’s who of punk rock bands.

This included Lagwagon, Propagandhi, Strung Out, Foo Fighters, Masked Intruder and No Use For A Name and so many other stalwarts. Oh, and NOFX of course. Although he did explain that “At the beginning there was no involvement with Fat Wreck Chords. We just sorta started making it. Originally it was just going to be a short from the outsiders perspective on how Fat had been an influence. As things progressed we got more and more support.”

‘A Fat Wreck’ is not an ‘official’ documentary – attaching ‘official’ onto the title of the project would be superficial in this case, as the bands interviewed are some of the most influential in the genre. Shaun explained how support for his work changed over time, saying that “After we cut the first teaser trailer, I sent it to Fat Mike and he responded with “Looks Cool” which I took as a tacit endorsement of the film. Things really got a big boost when Fat Mike agreed to an interview for the film. After the indiegogo showed we were a pretty serious project we got more support from the staff at Fat Wreck Chords.”

The other founder of Fat Wreck – apart from Fat Mike – is Erin Burkett. She runs Fat Wreck and for Shaun, this was “the biggest interview”. He went on the say that “[Erin] is super rad but not really a public person, so it was a big deal when she agreed to be interviewed.”

“She turned out to be the best interview we have had and to me one of the most important. She is such a rad person and such an amazing part of Fat Wreck Chords. I would argue that [Erin] is the most important person of the Fat story”,

The soundtrack will consist of Fat Wreck bands, you’ll be pleased to know. Shaun stated that, “Mike gave me the go ahead to use any Fat Wreck Chords tracks for the movie. He thinks that it’s really important to have Fat bands be part of the soundtrack (as opposed to covers)”.

Fat Mike has been quietly supportive of the project, which is a brilliant sign, and it is apparent that his support has been there from early on in the projects production.

So when is it going to be ready?

“This is probably the question that everyone wants to know.” That’s Shaun’s reply to what is probably a tiring question by now. “The answer I give most often is ‘it will be released when it is good’. Realistically, there is a lot of work to do. We have completed shooting for the most part so we are in post production [with] over 40 interviews and 30 hours of footage to go through and transcribe.

“We have a lot of really cool ideas that we want to bring to the screen and the plan is to make a doc unlike any other. We really don’t want it to be just any ordinary rock doc. There have been a lot of punk docs coming out lately and just like Fat Wreck Chords did we want to do something different and unique.”, Shaun explained with his never-wavering awe of the label.

And what about the legal side of things? Well, there’s a lot of that as would be expected. “Beyond the actual post production there are a lot of behind the scenes things like paperwork and such to get the film to be eligible to be shown in theaters”, he said. “We are working very hard to get all the things in place to have the film distributed. It actually takes as much work to do that as it does to actually make the film. We are very lucky to have Justin Wilson (Filmage) on board as he has just gone through all the hoops to get Filmage out to a wider public.”

Shaun’s enthusiasm is probably met by equal amounts of trepidation, but his dedication is impossible to ignore. He closed the interview by telling us that, “There are some things I can’t talk about yet, but we really feel it will totally be worth the wait. We will have some new teaser trailers coming out soon that include some footage to whet everyone’s appetites for some A Fat Wreckradness very soon!”

You can find all the official details at afatwreck.com.