Americans from All 50 States Play a Part in Poetic Short Film About the Myth of the Nation
On a cross country road trip with his husband during the government shutdown, Lefty's Brandon Roots found inspiration to create a short film. Starting with a poem inspired by ‘America the Beautiful’ he set out to crowdsource a voiceover with people from each of the 50 states. In the process he found hope in the people and the myth of America.
Brandon said of the film’s inception: "Inspired by ‘America the Beautiful’, appropriately written by a school teacher after their first cross country trip, I wrote a poem to accompany the short film I was editing and recorded myself reading as a temp track. But my voice alone wasn’t enough to finish the piece. I could have reached out to have a celebrity voice, but to do that felt inauthentic. Instead over the next couple of months I crowdsourced the voiceover to include a person from every state in the country. This proved to be quite a challenge. It was an unusual ask for folks. But it captures one of the myths of America that is being challenged today, that each of us should be heard, that every one of us matters.
