The Alva B. Lines Project

this is too funny not to post and her comment was...

Sat, 09 May 2009 16:58:16 -0400

this is too funny not to post and her comment was priceless:”don’t mess up my foundation”
- Michael

Sprockets, the sound of it ripping through the gate, silver...

Sat, 09 May 2009 16:33:00 -0400

Sprockets, the sound of it ripping through the gate, silver halide and many unknowns…..ahhh, super8mm film. We shot 750 feet of 500T color neg film. Some will know this, especially if you wanted a cheaper alternative to 16mm film to go along with your newly purchased 1932 Ford Roadster back in the day: It was in 1932 that Kodak first released regular 8mm film. 77 years later, after many reformulations of the emulsion, Kodak recently announced (yes recently as in Nov. 2008) the latest and greatest in the super8mm format….Vision 3 500T Color Negative Film. This project represents for us, in more ways than one, the convergence of the old and the new.

So in my studio lies a bag of 750 feet of unprocessed film. Maybe there was dust and hair in the camera gate and it will come back flawed. Maybe the images will be too clean and we’ll have the colorist drag the film on the floor, collecting more dust and grit along the way. Maybe, just maybe, all the flaws, mistakes and unplanned opportunities we encounter in this creative process will result in a piece of art that will be enjoyed for generations. That is our hope.
- Michael (abiyoyo productions)

over the weekend we did a day long interview with one of our...

Thu, 07 May 2009 20:15:00 -0400

over the weekend we did a day long interview with one of our main subjects…our grandmother. With bronchitis just a few days before, her husband providing background commentary, and dog running thru the set….I would say she was a trooper.
-Michael

Mr. Lines goes to Washington (for 24 hours)

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:00:00 -0400

Last Monday Michael and I met at 8:30am inside the National Archives in Washington, DC (well, technically the Motion Pictures Archives are just beyond DC in College Park). I had taken BoltBus from Brooklyn on Sunday and Michael had flown late that night from Atlanta.

We had done our research and Michael knew exactly what we’d be dealing with. The National Archives have a strict policy of what you can and cannot take into the archive rooms. No ink pens, no sweaters with zippers, no hats, no hand-held scanners (though flatbed scaners are permitted). The security guards kept asking about his REDONE camera body, “What is this?!”

Everything that’s not allowed in the research rooms is kept in lockers underground. Here’s what we took in (thankfully they had carts), plus a laptop, a pencil, and a sense of humor…

Once we registered every piece of our gear and went through an orientation to get ID cards, we buried ourselves in research to pull, review and shoot film reels with the REDONE. There are set times throughout the day when staff will pull film reels: 10, 11, 1:30, and 2:30. We used every one of the deadlines - actually missed the very first one by a minute (this is the government, we learned), but Michael became fast friends with *almost* everyone on staff and they came through for us.

While I was initially skeptical about the quality of footage we were about to shoot from the film viewing stations, Michael dialed in and captured absolutely gorgeous results. And in between the running around for reels and blocking light with black fabric, I became rather obsessed with the 35mm and 16mm film and recorded this audio of it rewinding.

(using the iSlate app on the iPhone)

Make no mistake, this was some extreme documentary research. The room manager, who had worked there for decades, was dumbfounded to hear that we’d come to town for only one research day, intending to go through 50+ films and leave by 4pm. But we did it. We worked from the minute we arrived to 4:30 when we rushed from the locker rooms to our taxi driver who’d been waiting for 20 minutes. I then rode with Michael through the gnarly beltway traffic, around and across town to the airport where we finally had some lunch. He took a flight back to ATL and I took the metro to catch my bus back to Brooklyn. I think it took a week for both of us to recover.

Our first trip to the DC archives was intense, but equally fun and rewarding. We’ll go back for more, withouth a doubt, although not for a few weeks I should hope. -Hudson

(pictures from Flickr)

"I was told it cost all of $15 to bring me into this world and here I am, 93 years later trying,..."

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:10:00 -0400

“I was told it cost all of $15 to bring me into this world and here I am, 93 years later trying, wondering what’s going on.”

- from our interview on January 1

A quick trailer we put together from our Jan 1 interview...

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:00:00 -0400

A quick trailer we put together from our Jan 1 interview footage. This is just the begining…

"I was born in Savannah, GA on Price Street, at the corner of 37th and Price, right across the street..."

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:15:08 -0400

“I was born in Savannah, GA on Price Street, at the corner of 37th and Price, right across the street from the railroad tracks. On October 15, 1915.”

- from interview on January 1, 2009

shooting exteriors at the house

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:11:00 -0400

shooting exteriors at the house

"Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful..."

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:10:03 -0400

“Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.”

- this will be one of the most important stories we ever tell. -Michael

reviewing interview questions and notes for the three part...

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 04:08:27 -0400

reviewing interview questions and notes for the three part day-long interview on January 1

setting up the shot for the interview / January 1

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 03:10:46 -0400

setting up the shot for the interview / January 1

On the morning of January 1, 2009 Michael and I pulled into our...

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 02:18:24 -0400

On the morning of January 1, 2009 Michael and I pulled into our grandparents’ driveway with an enormous trailer full of camera gear. We unloaded and spent two hours setting up this shot and conducted a series of interviews that wrapped at 6pm. Our grandfather sat in this chair - his chair - and answered every question we could think of about his life growing up during the Great Depression, working jobs through school, being stationed in Papua New Guinea in WWII, starting a business, raising a family of five kids, and witnessing change in the course of his 93 years. As i wrote on twitter and posted on my blog, it was the best January 1 ever.

For both of us, what began as an interview quickly turned into a much larger project. -Hudson