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Screen Magazine - Index

Screen Magazine - Screen Magazine: Vol. 29, Issue 21 - Index

Solomon Adekale Creates American Flag In Grant Park
By Mark Carr
With a new president on the horizon and a time of hope and
political change, it’s time for the youth of America to speak out
from their hearts and souls. Solomon ‘Skale’ Adekale, a student
at Columbia College Chicago, seeks to unite the voices of the
youth with his new music video “My Flow is Tight.” On September
29, Adekale, First AD Alyson Silver and Cinematographer Brian
Henderson sought to create an American Flag made up of 182
people wearing red, white and blue shirts gathered in Chicago’s
Grant Park.
The music video is based on a song Adekale wrote and ties in with
his student film “Don’t…Be…”, an entertaining short where a large
group of people put bags on their heads and perform ridiculous
acts of how society wants them to act. The people with the
paper bags eventually die in the film and, in this new music video,
become resurrected to form a giant American flag.
Henderson describes the film, saying, “The bags kind of represent
conformity in his [student] film that he did. They take all of them
off and throw the bags down to the ground and they walk up to
form a giant American flag. It’s very symbolic of stepping outside
conformity in our society and becoming an individual and all
these industries together to create our country.”
Adekale describes the theme or message of the project as “just
for young people to get out and vote. They need to realize their
potential and how much of a voice they really have. We are the
future. If you want to say something, you need to get up just do
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it. That’s the way to get your voice heard because no one’s going
to sit around and wait for you and give you an open door, it’s
something that you have to take and it’s up to us together to get
that done.”
Unfortunately, not as many people as hoped arrived due to
weather issues. However, Adekale and Henderson came prepared
for this kind of turnout. “Solomon and I talked a couple weeks ago
of what we would do,” describes Henderson. “What we ended up
doing was to composite all the people and have them line up in
sections with a camera and tripod and not moving and we shot
that section for about 45 seconds. Then we would have everybody
move over to the next section eventually so the entire landscape
of the American flag was created, but only in separate sections.
Then in post we can just go ahead and overlay each of those
sections until it is one giant American flag.” The end result worked
like a charm, creating the illusion of a full American Flag.
The project is in production right now with three more shoots
left, including a fantasy land shoot and re-shoots. Adekale
expects post-production to last for two months and to release
test screenings to receive feedback. The project did fight against
Chicago’s indecisive weather, but production is almost complete.
Adekale expects the project to be six to seven minutes long with
an extended film version for the film festival circuit and a short
version to send to MTVU. After the project, Adekale expects to start
working on musical films.