ReStore

Filmmaker Mike Collins, had a great idea as he watched the salvaging of the boardwalks and all of the historical pieces that were damaged by Hurricane Sandy. He wondered where these sorts of things go, so being from Philadelphia he knew of a architectural salvage shop out there called 'ReStore' and contacted them to see if he could tell their story.

"I guess it would of been right around the time Hurricane Sandy hit last year, and the boardwalks were torn up and they were going to salvage all of these things. I’m thinking where do all of these salvaged things go, they are historical so they have to go somewhere."

"When the light shines through it’s just like a cathedral.”

"I contacted a couple of salvage companies here in New York and nobody responded! I am from Philadelphia and I knew I can kick the tyres back home. I knew of this warehouse because I saw a music video that was shot there. In that video you could see there was all these amazing artefacts and I was thinking what could I do what those?"

"So I contacted the owner, Linda Lee Mellish and she immediately said yes and I would love for you to come down and talk. I went down expecting to be there for half an hour, but actually spent 2 hours with her, she is just an amazing lady."

"She told me that every piece in her store told a story. That was the thing that sparked in my head, that was the narrative, each piece was in somebody’s home or in somebody’s life. That was the story."

"I love looking at the bones of things. What Linda has done with her space is that she has gutted the building back to the shell and when the light shines through its just like a cathedral."

"We had lights with us, but I always try my hardest not to use lights if I can get away with it. I learnt early on from a very good cinematographer the term ‘lit by god!’ and I still use that term today. If there is sunlight coming through a window then I just can not do any better than that, because it was just lit by god!"

"I shot the majority of the piece on my Canon C300 set to Eos Std. The second camera was a 7D set to standard, but we decided to pulled the levels back just a little in camera."

Credits

Director

Mike Collins

Cinematographer

Christian Mazza

Editorial

Olivia Silver

Sound

Mike Henrichs

Artists

Mike Collins

New York filmmaker, Mike talks about Cinema Mercantile and passion projects.

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Location

Philadelphia, United States