5x5 #20 // "Like it's 1929"

5x5 #20 // "Like it's 1929"

The capturing of this footage was the result of my friend needing a ride to the Strip district in Pittsburgh. She made the indisputable argument that me helping her out would be indeed be worth my time because it would get me out of self-imposed isolation and into the outer world. Of course she was right.

I ended up using my iPhone 8 Plus for the shooting even though I had my Gh4 on me. Since the nature of it all was so scrappy and thrown together, I wanted to fully embrace it with cell phone quality footage. I always tend to forget that iPhones don’t have the same recording quality they did five years ago, and I had to stylize it in post-production to fit the minimal aesthetic anyway.

I connected the piece to historical events out of my love and fascination with American history. One of my favorite historical elements of Pittsburgh is that the Strip district used to be the home of a decently sized Hoovertown during the Great Depression. Its history, paired with the startling economic parallels we currently have to the roaring 20’s, inspired me to connect the visuals of the rampant free market to a previous time we let it get out of control. The audio snippet of a man praising a government handout seemed especially novel.