And when he more directly copycatted ANTR like the depiction of the band members, the ANTR version also came out as more effective from a cinematic standpoint IMO.
As far as the band is concerned, I do not believe anyone has or will be able to depict scenes close to what most likely happened. The problem IMO is that music has a strange effect on the human mind and a very common effect, specially in stressful situations, is a confusion during later recollection about how long people continued to hear it. There is a tendency to continue to 'hear' the music long after it has ceased, which explains why survivors like Bride, Steward Brown etc felt that the band played music till the end. Also, this phenomenon has significant individual variations, which explains which there were so many differences in survivor reports about how long the band played. We should also add the tendency to embellishment in survivor accounts in order to make the band members' efforts sound more poignant.
In reality therefore, irrespective of what some survivor accounts said, I feel that the band stopped playing a long time before the
Titanic's final plunge, perhaps around 01:30 am. By then everyone on board, including the band members, would know that the ship (and with it, themselves) did not have much time left and so priorities would have shifted quickly with onus on chances of self-preservation. That change in the minds' perspectives would have also brought forth another phenomenon which almost all of us have experienced in everyday situations - a point where music gradually ceases to be soothing and starts to get intrusive. Another related point is that such a change in perspective is influenced greatly by the individual's personality, which in turn explains the significant differences about the "music timeline" as the
Titanic sank.