“Where Lives Come to Die” with Scott V. from Oakland

This piece is based on a poem by Scott V. from Oakland. Scott and I have been friends and collaborators for a long time. I saw him perform this piece live and people were laughing, confused, and depressed all at once. It was amazing. After collaborating on a long-form experimental video, we decided why not keep the momentum going and turn the poem into a video?

All the video was shot in 2005 over 2 nights at the actual coffee shop near Scott’s old work (the story is based on fact). I tried to edit it in the coming days. Days turned into years as I would step away from the edit to gain perspective, but whenever I would return to it, I couldn’t come up with a good edit or sound. Luckily John Davis gave me hours worth of his audio experiments to use in a radio program I made, and I found audio from him that worked perfectly. Later after I moved to New York, Nadia Awad came to Eyebeam as an intern and pulled a rabbit out of her hat on the edit. She’s got the magic touch! More time went by and Liz Filardi added her amazing titles.

The people who worked on this are all very talented and I hope you find our little 3 minute story at least half as sad, funny, and human as I did when I first heard it.

With support from eyebeam.org