Producing Change Through Poetry, Music, and Film

Recently, we’ve talked with Nina Brewton about starring in a spoken word film and with Scot Hanna-Weir about what goes into scoring music for the film.

Now, let’s look behind the screen.

We spoke with Allan Laino and Crossley Hawn who are members of Bridge Voices and produced the spoken word film, “America, You’re Beautiful.” We wanted to know why they were drawn to this project and what all went into producing this film. 

Let’s learn, shall we?

Why this project and why with The Poet Life?

Crossley Hawn: It was shortly after the murder of George Floyd. We sat back and wanted to let what was happening wash over us and not immediately respond, but instead create a space for listening. 

We wanted to listen, and of course we wanted to contribute. We gave it some time, and we all talked and decided to give an entire platform to a person of color. 

Allan Laino: Our very last live performance was a partnership with The Poet Life in January 2020, and that performance was incredible the way it came together. We were just so moved by the way music and poetry came together for that performance. 

So we thought The Poet Life might be the ones to help us out here. We didn't know exactly what we wanted to do, but we knew that we had a really effective and inspiring partnership.

Throughout the project, we learned that the passion and the kind of heart that we poured into this is what we want all of our projects to be built on. We've always been trying to engage with issues of our time. It's part of our mission to use music and our voices to examine what is happening around us.

Crossley: This sort of solidified our mission to create art for a bigger purpose.

Allan: We’re not going to undo centuries of systemic racism with a seven-minute video. But we can inspire conversations and concrete actions. 

What’s the process for producing a spoken word film?

First, be sure to listen to the full episode to get their full explanations and lessons learned first-hand.

Next, let’s dive into the overview of what all went into producing “America, You’re Beautiful” according to Crossley and Allan.

• Everyone’s voices were recorded individually, and Allan layered the voices together to create the quintet we hear in the film.

• Working with the recording of Nina’s poem and the musical score, Crossley and Allan had a few days of “intense storyboarding” and creating a spreadsheet to track where everyone would be for every minute of the filming day.

Now, in a normal film, the order is usually: conceptualizing, storyboarding, scripting, filming, composing, recording, editing.

But this is no “normal” film. 

They started with the poem (script) because that would be the focus of the film, and everything else supports the poem. Then they had the composition, followed by storyboarding, filming, editing.

“It was really fun work because we had such great material from the poem to the performance to the music to the visuals. It was about letting them complement one another.” – Allan Laino

Let’s continue:

• The locations and visuals were led by “the poem first and then logistic realities.” 

  • The first visual was inspired by the music because it felt like a morning glow, which then set the idea that the poem would take place through the course of a day.

“It was easy to integrate the sound world of the piece and the text of the poem in our storyboarding. Everything works together so well that it was easy to be inspired by both things.” – Crossley Hawn

• After mapping out the locations, the location scout woke up early one day to walk the route and make sure all would work well at the times they would be filming.

• After meeting with the videographer/director of photography, he had what was drafted so far for the poem and music as well as the storyboard to go off of. During the filming day, he really captured and framed the visuals beautifully.

• Then comes the editing. Editing the video footage together, editing and finding all the historical B-roll footage, fine tuning, revising, and finalizing.

How did they know it was complete? We were curious too.

Crossley says, “For me, it was when nothing was bothering me anymore.”

Pretty sound gut feeling right there.

Advice for aspiring video editors

We’ll leave you with this piece of advice Allan has for aspiring video editors:

“Organization is key. I didn’t watch every second of every video file. I could skim through it. First thing I did was categorize the videos and label it by look and feel because we knew the tone of the visual was our goal to match the tone of the poetry.” 

He continues to say, “From there, I was trying things out. Finding the special moments that come through in video that stand out then picking the highlights and finding the best place for them.”

Head over to wherever you stream podcasts to watch or listen to the full episode now! There’s much more to learn from these two.

And be sure to watch “America, You’re Beautiful” on AYBFilm.com or on Bridge Voices’ YouTube channel.