50 feet of Song - Birdtalker // Super 8

Another chance to collaborate with the Super 8 project called "50 Feet of Song" came my way and I was thrilled to jump in. The concept of the project is to film folk musicians performing a song in one take on one roll of Super 8 film, which is 50 feet of film in length. My previous session with Kirby Brown came out really well and I was hoping to do more. To be honest, it's a bit of a thrill to shoot an entire roll of Super 8 in one pull of the trigger and the results are a truly unique experience of capturing live music.

The project was featured on Kodak's podcast, The Kodakery, as well as in Kodak's new print quarterly magazine, Kodachrome, named after their much beloved yet dead reversal film. You may also recognize the name from Paul Simon's legendary song.

Anyways, I shot this session in Harlem with the fantastic folk band, Birdtalker, who I've been following for a while. Check out the full session below and be sure to not only listen to more of their music but check out more sessions on 50 Feet of Song.

50 Feet of Song - Kirby Brown // Super 8

I recently got the chance to collaborate with a brilliant Super 8 project called 50 Feet of Song, based in Portland, OR. To give you an idea of the concept, the website explains it best:

Inspired by the visionary field recordings of Alan Lomax and the direct cinema of the late '60s, we hit the road all over the Pacific Northwest recording artists at festivals, in hotel rooms, back alleys,  and on front porches creating new field recordings in the folk tradition.  50 feet of Super 8 film measures out to about 3 minutes of record time. This 3 minutes also mirrors the standard length of a song, a convention left over from the physical limitations of 78rpm records.  It's within these confines that we set out to record original sessions of the songs of our time. We also believe that behind every good song is an even better story. In addition to shooting sessions, we are deeply interested in the personal narrative that surrounds the craft and reveals to us the beating heart behind the song. 

So once I found out about this project combining folk music and film, I knew I wanted to help out in some way and figured they could use some help covering the many musicians passing through New York City.

The first NYC session is a Nashville-based and former NYC dwelling musician, Kirby Brown singing "No One Ever Noticed". See the full session below and watch more at www.50feet.org.

Looking forward to filming more musicians for 50 Feet of Song in the future.