Last weekend I woke up early on a Sunday morning and headed downtown to a film shoot at Lafayette and American Coney Islands. No, I wasn’t rubbing shoulders with George Clooney.
Single Barrel Detroit was filming a music video at our famed rival restaurants and I wanted to see them in action. Usually, their shoots are clandestine, cloak and dagger operations but this time they invited the public. This shoot featured two local bands, Bars of Gold and Wildcatting, that share band members and a whole lot of history.
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After the filming, I had a chance to ask Jared Groth, Producer & Creator at Single Barrrel Detroit, a few questions.
Detroit Moxie: How do you describe Single Barrel Detroit?
Jared Groth: We consider ourselves to be documentarians at heart. We film live music performances in Detroit specific locations. We strive to capture the essence of Detroit and how it has created/effected the local arts scene, more specifically the music scene. Our goal is to remove the musicians from the traditional stage and place them in a setting that forces them to adapt. The moment we love best is when one of our featured artists fits in with (or juxtaposes to) the setting so well that they essentially become a part of the landscape.
DM: How did you come up with the concept?
JG: “The Take Away Shows”, a film series created by a French Film Director Vincent Moon, directly inspired us. The videos he shot had such a cinematic quality to them and presented music in such a different way that the videos really transported you and made you feel as though you were there. Slowly our concept evolved and we became more and more location oriented, wanting to tell the story of Detroit, its colorful history, architecture and life.
DM: Is the focus always on up-and-coming bands or are there some dream bands that you’d love to shoot?
JG: We will always want the website to be heavily weighted with Detroit artists, however our strategy is to incorporate national bands in order to gain exposure for the rest. For instance, someone coming to the site to check out a Holly Golightly video might stumble upon Child Bite and like their music as well.
DM: How do you choose the bands and pair them up with locations?
JG: We make it our goal to compliment the band with a location, either in a sharp contrast or a in a setting that melts with their persona.
DM: Why did you decide to invite the public to this shoot?
JG: We have wanted to do a public shoot for a while. One thing we feel has been missing from the videos is people and their interactions with the bands. A restaurant seemed like a natural place to accomplish that goal.
DM: How did the bands Bars of Gold and Wildcatting fit with Detroit’s most famous Coney Islands, American and Lafayette?
JG: The two Coneys have a legendary “rivalry” which when you really look at it, it's merely a difference in opinion for Detroiters. They both make the same thing, one just has a little more mustard. We wanted to show the two personalities of the band members who make up the bands Wildcatting and Bars of Gold. Again, that brings us back to a difference in opinion.
I can’t wait to see the finished video! In the mean time, catch some of their previous videos filmed on location in Detroit. Be sure to check our their Kickstarter project, Four Films for Attention. They have just over two days to reach their goal! The project hopes to garner national attention for one of their favorite bands, Prussia.
?A few of my photos from the shoot:
Jared Groth, Producer & Creator at Single Barrel Detroit.
Scotty Iulianelli
Brandon Moss and his son.
Ben Audette & Scotty Iulianelli
Scotty Iulianelli
Marc Paffi