Courtesy of “Mustard Man” crew

Fresh off its California premiere at UC Santa Barbara’s Embarcadero Hall, the cast of the independent, student-created “Mustard Man” are enjoying both the success and relief of finishing their first feature film — an extensive effort that spanned across college campuses and states. The process, which took 11 months throughout 2023 and 2024, resulted in a story about rock ‘n’ roll, lifelong family friendships and the kind of chaos that can only happen in your 20s. 

The film is pitched as “‘Dazed and Confused’ meets ‘Almost Famous,’” following the journey of college student KJ Jackson, who arrives home to Boulder, Colorado and reconnects with an eccentric friend who convinces him to join his local rock band, “The Mustard Men,” paving the way for a summer full of music, connection and turmoil. The film also has an impressive addition of a 100% original soundtrack and was released under Merlin Productions, a production company and joint venture formed by part of the cast.

A majority of the cast were born and raised in Colorado: crewmates Albert DiCesare, Roman Lynch, Ethan McAleavy, Nicole Vann and Zach Mund became friends after attending the same high school and bonding over their shared interests in music and film. After their high school graduation, the future crew of “Mustard Man” went their separate ways but used their connections and experiences at Chapman University, University of Arizona, University of Colorado Boulder, Santa Barbara City College and UCSB to create the film. 

The idea for “Mustard Man” was sparked after Mund (who plays the role of KJ Jackson alongside executively producing and co-writing the film) came up with the idea for the film’s two central characters, friends KJ and Rodger. Despite being long-time friends, Rodger’s eccentricness and tendency to live life on the wild side clashes greatly with KJ’s more quiet, laid back attitude, ultimately leading to the films main conflict. After sharing his original characters with future director Lynch, the two began to consider the idea of turning the relationship between the two characters into a full-length project.

“We basically started just writing stuff we thought was cool. And in some cases, funny, and then we kind of strung the plot together as it came about. We were pretty limited because we had no money or any resources at all,” Lynch explained. 

The film was paid for entirely by the cast on a budget of approximately $6,000, in a filming and editing process that took 14 months and revolved around a 200-page script.

“Our biggest expense was probably beer,” joked DiCesare, who served a variety of roles for the film, including co-writer, producer and the role of Rodger, the film’s eccentric and dramatic lead. 

“This movie was really special,” said DiCesare. “In the film, it shows this group of friends bonding and having a good summer, and that’s what was happening outside of the movie, in real life with all of us.”

Original plans included a wide variety of dramatic scenes, including an intense character death and ambitious plans to blow up a car. Ultimately, the film shifted directions upon assembling its full writing team of eight crew members, becoming more of an intimate story about coming of age during one’s twenties.

“I think at this age in our lives, it’s sort of a post-coming of age, more of like a coming-into-an-adulthood type story,” explained Zach Mund, who co-wrote the film with Roman Lynch and their team of assistant writers, alongside acting and contributing music. “’It’s a coming to adulthood story about rock ‘n’ roll.”

The film was shot over a period of three months, for approximately four days a week. Before the beginning of each scene, the actors would team up with Lynch to do a table read of the scene they would be filming. 

“It was really amazing to just hear all of the actors put their voices into these characters that Roman and I’d spent so long writing,” Mund said when reflecting back on the experience.

The film’s location of Boulder is essential to the story’s narrative and themes, and the crew made sure to feature a number of local businesses and public locations in their film. The crew also attempted to capture the style of the 1970s through purposeful set and costume design with dramatic colors and flair, even going as far to make sure that they used their phones as little as possible to give a film that takes place in the modern day more of a ‘70s ambiance. 

“Roman and I talk about if we weren’t doing what we’re doing right now, we’d be costume designers or set designers because it’s just so cool to create a world where your characters are going to live in for a little bit,”  said McAleavy, “Mustard Man’s” lead editor and designer. “There’s a lot of small things that you can do to kind of accentuate the movie and the characters by how you choose to build the set.”

The film’s main characters KJ and Rodger not only clash throughout the film with their attitudes and actions but through their chosen wardrobes, with KJ’s style being described as “muted” and the characters of Rodger and his girlfriend, Spritz, being “over the top.” Annessa Buggy, who also plays the role of Spritz, contributed heavily to the film’s costuming and hair and makeup departments. In their journey to create the perfect look for their film and characters, the crew relied heavily on thrift stores throughout the Boulder area. 

(L to R) Zach Mund and Albert DiCesare star in “Mustard Man” as main characters KJ and Rodger (respectively). The two also served as executive producers and co-writers for the film.

“We went around all these thrift stores, and the main thing was we wanted each character to have one thing that was theirs and consistent,” Buggy explained. For Spritz, that piece was a rainbow boa and a pink and black motorcycle jacket. For KJ, it was a worn military jacket and Rodger is defined by his pair of black sunglasses, which he only removes for one scene in the entire film. 

“​​Albert’s costumes were hilarious. Most of the costumes that he wears throughout the movie were actually compiled from  women’s clothing. And there’s a line in there where we make fun of him for it,” joked Mund, who also served as co-lead designer for the film. 

The cast stored their wardrobes in their cars for the duration of the summer and would transport their entire wardrobes to set each day. “Every day we’d come to set, and Roman would be like, ‘I want this vibe’ or ‘I want you in these colors.’ And then we just go to our cars, grab a bunch of things, like, put them on the ground,” Buggy recalled.

When it came to finding locations to film, the crew stated that most of the process involved scouting local businesses and directly asking them for permission to film. While they received some rejections, they received a “surprising” amount of yeses, with featured locations including the Night Owl Lounge, a professional music studio, Colorado’s iconic Rocky Mountains and even DiCesare’s own home. 

“It was just basically guerilla filmmaking,” Lynch joked. “Filming either wherever we knew we could film or wherever would let us if we begged enough.”

After the film was completed, the next 11 months were  dedicated to a wide variety of editing, including special effects, audio engineering, coloring and cinematography. McAleavy, a rising fourth-year at the University of Colorado Boulder, served as the lead editor of the post-production department, a process that required the completion of multiple different elements and was incredibly time intensive. Upon entering post-production, 33 terabytes of film had to be processed and edited by the post-production crew.

“It’s about trying to find a balance of emotion, rhythm and pacing and deciding what’s the best, most interesting way to tell these shots in terms of their order,” he explained. He primarily edited the film on three different platforms — DaVinci Resolve for coloring, Adobe After Effects and Logic Pro for unique features such as a surround-sound effect.

“It’s a weird way of basically choosing how much audio to pump into each side of your headphones or if you have two speakers, and by modulating that, you can kind of choose how involved the scene sounds,” McAleavy described. 

The technique was used throughout the film’s three concert scenes, which he cites as some of the most difficult to edit — alongside a crew-favorite scene in which the main characters find themselves in a bar fight — something that was also a challenge for director Roman Lynch and a moment that made him feel a like a “real director.”

“​​That’s when you feel like a real director, because people are calling your name, poking you on the shoulder saying, ‘Look, this happened, this happened, this happened.’ So that was quite stressful,” Lynch recalled. “There’s like 15 fires that you’ve got to put out at once.”

The scene was also difficult for the crew, particularly when having to capture a shot where a bottle is dramatically smashed over one of their longtime friends and crew members, Charlie Nevitt.  

“Out in Colorado, we don’t really have such an active film industry, so we couldn’t really get our hands on a breakaway bottle. So we figured we should make some,” shared Mund. “We picked up some crafts supplies from Michaels and we made our own little plaster molds and cooked sugar glass and made these things from scratch … I think we still have five or six laying around.”

“I added a lot of sound effects,” McAleavy joked. “But they were great.”

McAleavy’s impressive efforts received nothing but praise from his crewmates, with McAleavy reflecting on the amount of the time spent to make sure that minute details, such as lighting and reflections, were shown accurately throughout the film. 

“I had to go through and rotoscope, which is basically just like painting out the sunglasses in every frame on the close ups and replacing that with the crowd. So that was laborious, but I think it was worth it,” he admitted.

“He put reflections of the crowd into my glasses, which took him two weeks to do- for like probably 10 seconds on screen,” DiCesare added. “They are the people who made it happen.”

The film’s editing crew dealt with their fair share of struggles, with McAleavy’s editing card breaking during post-production and having to film an early morning shoot in Colorado’s famed Rocky Mountains, a scene that McAleavy says was the most difficult to edit and color. The scene is one of the last in the film, and the Rockies serve as a backdrop to a crucial conversation between characters KJ and Rodger about the summer’s events. After final edits, the scene ended up being nine minutes long, consisting mostly of dialogue, and the crew and actors only had one take to get it right.

“We stayed up the entire night, writing the scene, trying to iron it out. And Albert and I memorized it all. Went to McDonald’s at like, two in the morning and stuff. Got all hopped up on caffeine, and we drove up to the mountains at about 3:30 or 4 [a.m.],” Mund shared.

“Other than the road that was kind of close to where we were filming, there was almost no human interruption,” Lynch remembered. “That was one of the closest situations we had to a closed set, just four of us on crew and Zach and Albert … It just made it feel a little more personal.”

“It was a 4 a.m. shoot and I was tired, but that was a good finishing moment for the summer,” DiCesare concluded.

Another memorable scene,(and a favorite among much of the crew), revolves around DiCesare pretending to drunkenly drive a car while passionately arguing with his passengers. Lynch cited the moment as one of “Mustard Man’s” hardest to film, as the crew wrote the scene just before filming.

“I think that was a great scene to start on. We did that one purposefully because it was just the most fun,” Lynch stated.  

The cast and crew gather for a celebratory photo before the film’s California premiere at Isla Vista’s Embarcadero Theater. (Courtesy of “Mustard Man” crew)

While Isla Vista is only featured in the film for some additional pick-up shots, the spirit of the rambunctious college town can clearly be seen throughout, with DiCesare and Joey Arioto using their experience living and playing live music in I.V. in their performances and writing experiences. 

“In Boulder, people like music,” Buggy said when comparing towns. “But it’s rare to see a band, and never had I gone to a party where a live band was playing, and I definitely think a lot of that came from the Santa Barbara spirit.”

Four original tracks from the film are available on Spotify and Apple Music under the artist name Mustard Men, the same band name used in the film. 12 original tracks are played throughout the entire film, and the film’s scoring was also entirely original. When it comes to the film’s titular band, DiCesare served as the lead vocalist, Arioto played drums, Mund took the role of lead guitarist and Ben Jacobsen plays the role of bassist Kevin.

When asked what artists most heavily influenced the sound and style of “Mustard Man,” Mund cited a wide variety of artists and movements spanning chronologically across decades, including the Eagles, Bob Dylan, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Iggy Pop, Mötley Crüe, Arctic Monkeys and even The Backseat Lovers.

“We tried to put the music in a certain chronological order, and what I mean by that is that we begin the movie with a very calm, peaceful, acoustic song … and then at the very end of the movie, we bring it home with indie rock,” Mund detailed. He further highlighted how the process of “Mustard Man” was a tight-knit but intense team effort.

“We could not have done this without the contributions of literally every single person, and that’s only like 15, maybe 20 people, so pretty small, all things considered.”

The crew all shared the experience of seeing the film for the first time at its first premiere at Tucson, Arizona’s The Screening Room, which was followed by showings in Isla Vista and finally Boulder. Lynch was firm in not letting the cast see anything but the finished product.

“It’d be like showing the body of a car, just the frame before any panels are put on. It’s just so different,” McAleavy elaborated.

“Seeing it all at once at the premiere here in Santa Barbara, it was insane. It blew my mind. I had high expectations, but it just exceeded them,” Buggy shared. The rest of the cast and crew shared similar sentiments when reflecting back on the summer of 2023 and their shared experience of making “Mustard Man.” They came to the same conclusion — that the experience was worth all of the trials and hardship. 

“We’d get everything done, and it was still very professional, but there was a lot of bonding time, and a lot was just talked about, and a lot of relationships are made within those smaller things,” Buggy added.

“It did feel like a job,” Arioto admitted.  “But all the friendship and all the love that everyone had made it so fun. It was the most fun job ever.”

Lynch expressed a similar sentiment when providing advice for future hopeful film makers. 

“​​Just go out and make a movie. It’ll probably end up okay.”

“Mustard Man” is now available to rent for $0.99 or purchase for $5.99 on Amazon Prime.