Excited to share the single artwork and music video along with some press images for Lexi Todd’s newest single, “Madonna”. Lexi is a local Brooklyn musician who has a very soulful yet pop sound and I was beyond thrilled to work with her. Halla Creative did all of the concepting and design for both the single artwork as well as the music video.

The single was very much about being your own queen and ditching to the status quo, which is where the name “Madonna” came from with her genre-defining and defying music and performances. So with that in mind, Halla Creative and I set out to create a concept that would mesh both Lexi’s vintage-y, soulful sound with strong “queen”-type imagery. Stephanie Haller of Halla Creative also directed the music video.

The art for her single artwork, promo materials as well as the music video were shot on a variety of film formats including Polaroids, 16mm, 120 and 35mm. We also had shot some additional photos for press, socials, etc and were really in love with the results.

With the music video, we wanted the vibe to match the single artwork in the vintage vibe and powerful, straight-on posing. Shot on expired 16mm Kodak film with a Bolex H16, the look blended beautifully meshed with Lexi’s aesthetics. You can watch the music video below.

CREW

Music: Lexi Todd

Cinematographer: Nick Collingwood

Design/Director: Halla Creative (Stephanie Haller)

Styling: Tyler MacDonald

Processing & 2K Scans: Kodak Lab NYC

Key Grip/Gaffer: Jason Bullok

Camera Rental: MONO NO AWARE

I obviously shoot a ton of Super 8 film as anyone who's ever visited my website or Instagram can see. So it was a real treat to find out last spring that while I was at a Mono No Aware fundraiser, that I won the raffle for a Mono No Aware workshop where a group of people would take a van loaded with cameras, film and snacks upstate to Hudson, NY and Kaaterskill Falls to shoot some 16mm! My first time!

Our first destination was the Olana State Historic Site along the Hudson River, home of Frederic Edwin Church, who was a landscape painter from the Hudson River School. There we had a brief chat with our guide and filmmaker, Fern Silva, and Steve Cossman (founder of Mono No Aware) about the history of the area both in painting as well as 16mm film. Peter Hutton was a filmmaker that shot many serene landscapes of the Hudson Valley and American cities on 16mm film and lived in the area until his passing in 2016. And so, inspired by those who came before us, we set out to create our own portraits of the landscape. We left the historic set and went over to Kaaterskill Falls to start our hike.

We were provided Bolex H16 REX5 16mm cameras, courtesy of Mono No Aware, to use and some Kodak Vision3 50D color negative film. Given the bright sunny day and gorgeous springtime colors, it was a perfect match. I also brought along my Minolta Instant Pro, which is a Polaroid Spectra camera, and a Pentax Auto 110, which I found fitting as it's a 110 camera which is actually just 16mm film cut down for still cameras. Unfortunately, that camera has some winding issues aaaand I may have dropped it at one point on the hike so the photos are cropped a little funny. But so it goes...

We hiked around with our fairly heavy Bolex's, chatted a bunch, saw some waterfalls and very cool landscapes and ate delicious food Steve had prepared. Overall, a great way to spend a day. I just received a “K-3” Krasnogorsk-3 16mm camera and I'm now very eager to shoot more of the format. I already shot a some test rolls and a little music video with it a few weeks ago. And just shot another music video this weekend! So lots to look forward to including Kodak re-releasing Ektachrome in 16mm!