Wissenswertes

Director Ben Makinen was an extra in the Francis Ford Coppola movie Outsider: Rebellen ohne Grund (1983) while living in Tulsa, Oklahoma as a freshman in high school.

John Hickenlooper ran a jazz club in Denver during the early 1990s called The Jazzworks. Ben Makinen worked there as a doorman, sound man and waiter before becoming a full-time professional drummer.

JazzTown is the first jazz documentary to ever incorporate 4k aerial photography shot with a drone.

Director Ben Makinen spent a month in 2017 learning to pilot and operate the 4k on-board camera of the DJI Mavic Pro Drone above Kelly Dam Road/Reservoir (former Lowry Air Force Base) where the eastern border of Denver city limits meets the City of Aurora. Shortly afterwards, geofencing was implemented that prevents any further drone flights over this beautiful land filled with the song of the Red-winged black bird.

Director and cinematographer Ben Makinen (Bmakin Film) helped pioneer the early use of drone photography as a powerful tool in the documentary cinematographer's tool box by using aerial footage shot from those early flights in 2017-2018 in and above Denver, Elitch Gardens and the surrounding foothills of Genesee, Colorado to the west in JazzTown.

Grammy winning jazz singer Dianne Reeves invited director Ben Makinen into her Denver home for a JazzTown interview on the recommendation of her artistic director, who's father Makinen had met quite by chance while shopping for furniture in his H&E Used Furniture store.

Jazz pianist and singer Ellyn Rucker, one of director Ben Makinen's early music mentors who appears in JazzTown, shared the bill with Miles Davis for three years in a row at the North Sea Jazz Festival from 1986-1988.

Elly Rucker played in a band with drummer Ben Makinen, guitarist Paul Musso and bassist Geoff Cooke named the Jazz Orphans.

Ellyn Rucker also recorded and performed with Spike Robinson, Red Mitchell, Marvin "Smitty" Smith, Eric Gunnison and Phil Urso.