A former Scotts Valley resident returned to his hometown this week to film a scene for his original musical based on the music of the Beach Boys.
Blake Robert Ward, a 2010 graduate of Scotts Valley High School, filmed a final scene for his “sizzle reel” or an extended trailer, at Malone’s Grille on Sunday. Ward, with the permission of owner Ryan Fontana, transformed the restaurant into a tropical themed place decked out with surfboards. The crew, director Stephane Fiorenza, and Ward morphed the bar in Malone’s into a tiki bar on the island of Cocomo, setting the stage for key scene in the musical.
Ward, who ran track at SVHS and starred in a school production of Guys and Dolls, attended Loyola Marymount University where he wrote his senior thesis as a jukebox musical, based around the Beach Boys songs. With encouragement from his professors, he titled the script “Sounds of Summer” and has for the past seven years been working to get the project produced.
“It’s awesome to see how far this has come,” Ward said. “I got the idea one day as I was driving down West Cliff in Santa Cruz. The song ‘California Girls’ came on, and it just hit me.”
The script is based on a film musical that uses previously released popular songs as its musical score. In “Sounds of Summer” case, Ward used the lyrics of the Beach Boys songs to build characters, such as Rhonda and Barbara Ann, but he focused on ensuring the story narrative stood as strong as the music.
Ward credits his former SVHS teacher Karin Babbitt for encouraging him to pursue music and drama classes. In Ward’s junior year he was juggling both track practices and drama rehearsals, but he is thankful for the dedication Babbitt had towards pushing Ward to continue to act and sing.
Ward explained the next steps will be to finish editing his film reel to showcase to potential investors, as well as the Beach Boys in the hopes of getting the green light to start film production. Ward is updating his progress of “Sounds of Summer” using his Instagram @blakerobertward and hopes to get a website up soon.
“Going back to film in Scotts Valley, this is where it all began,” Ward said. “So to come back here, it’s pretty cool.”
