Less than a year and a half after ending the Brooklyn Underground Film Festival to work on their own film projects, Josh Koury (director), Gerald Lewis (producer), Myles Kane (editor), Gaia Cornwall (lead designer/animator) are wrapping up their first post-BUFF project: We Are Wizards, a documentary about the Harry Potter phenomenon.

We stopped by their editing studio in Brooklyn to talk with Josh Koury and Myles Kane about We Are Wizards and all that Wizard rock we keep hearing about.

Chief: So how did this whole project get started? Were you guys out drinking beers one night, and you were like, “You know what? We should make a documentary about…” Well, what is it about? I mean… It’s about the Harry Potter phenomenon...

Josh Koury: It’s about the Harry Potter phenomenon, but it’s also about the fan culture that accompanies it. I mean, walking into it we knew it was a pretty big culture because we’d heard about it, and we’d read about it. But after exploring it, we didn’t really have any idea how big it really was, and how really influential and really cool and exciting it was. You know what I mean? At first glance…It started with Gerald and I. And coming to the conclusion that we wanted to make another project because we had recently ended the Brooklyn Underground. It’s one of the major reasons I wanted to, because I wanted to get back into filmmaking.

So we got together, Gerald and I, and decided that we wanted to make a movie together. And we threw around a bunch of ideas. And we had about five or six ideas. Met with a bunch of friends. I met with Myles as well, and pitched all the ideas. He was one of the guys that said We are Wizards would be the best one. I had that in the back of my head, too, you know. It just felt right. And then once we actually started digging into it, just like this whole world started emerging as we’d move forward. A big thing about shooting a doc and making a doc is that you have to really connect with your characters. And the world itself, the Harry Potter subculture, is pretty huge. We really selected a handful of people that we really identify with and that we really feel represents a certain aspect of their culture. And they’re just really cool people.

Myles Kane: Definitely. My involvement started early on just kind of supporting Josh and Gerald. You know, I was in a similar place wanting to get back into film. So I helped as far as the shooting. I think I did two or three shoots.

Josh: Yeah. Well, the first shoot you did was with Darius.  

Myles: Yeah, Darius.  

Josh: I don’t know if you know Darius. The Hungarian Horntails is one of our subjects. It’s a seven-year-old and a four-year-old who have started their own wizard rock band. The whole family themselves are just the coolest people in the world. And you know, they’re ex-punk rockers, and they’re just people we would hang out with anyway, but they just happen to have these awesome kids and they just happen to be doing this incredible stuff. And, I mean, it was just magic. When we first went there, we came back with like, twelve tapes or something.

Myles: Yeah, I was supportive of the idea just on paper. It sounded like kind of the right time for a project like that with interesting subjects. But I came into it not being a Harry Potter fan at all. I’d never read the books. I’d seen, like, one of the movies, but I didn’t even know the three main characters’ names. I knew Harry, but I wasn’t sure on the other two. Ron and Hermione. I do know that now. But, anyway, so I just went in very fresh. And just kind of back-up camera guy. But that first shoot with Darius, I was definitely hooked just from what I’d seen and what I’d shot. And just on a personal level. We spent a whole day with them at their house, and went to this rock show they played in a church in Philadelphia. I was like, “Something is definitely worthwhile here. Something’s happening.” So I was hooked on a very different level because at that point I didn’t even understand any of the music or any of the references or like, that whole Harry Potter culture side. It was way over my head.  

Josh: I remember at one point it was pretty funny because I knew I’d sold Myles on the idea. I think this is pre-Darius. We were at another shoot. He’d helped us out with a different thing… it was like a podcast thing. And at one point, he turned to me and was like, “I think you actually really have something here. I think this is really the right film at the right time and I think you’ve got something going here.” And that meant a lot to me because it’s a hard pitch, you know what I mean? Tell your friends you’re making a movie about Harry Potter and everybody’s like, “What?” But, it is really sweet. And once you get into it, it’s important, and it’s the right time. I always said that…when we started, I said the first thing I didn’t want to do was that I didn’t want to write a Trekkies. I didn’t want to make a movie that goofed on people. I wanted it to be honest, and I wanted it to be real. And if we could capture that, if we didn’t feel like that was really going to happen, then we weren’t going to do it. We were going to ditch. But that happened pretty quickly. we realized that our subjects were pretty intense and pretty attractive, almost right away. And that sort of changed everything for me.  

But were you into the books or the movies beforehand? You’d read them all?  

Josh: Yeah, I’d read all the books up to that point. Seen all the movies.  

Myles: You were a fan.

Josh: Yeah, I was a douche fan. I was a total closet fan, like take the sleeve off and walk around. They’re good books, man, you know?  I mean, right now I have total Harry Potter overdose. I [was reluctant to] read the last book and wasn’t really excited about it. Once I started reading it I was like, “Okay, I like this, actually.” But it took awhile. Because after twelve, fourteen months of just eating and sleeping Harry Potter…you do anything for that long, and it’s difficult. But yeah, in the beginning, I was a big fan.