“Songs From the Street” Team Needs Your Help

About:

Songs From the Street is a documentary film coming Summer 2020 from Carbon Trace Productions in Springfield, MO. It follows the story of the Springfield Street Choir, which is comprised entirely by the homeless members of the community. The homeless and formerly homeless of the community come together to perform in the Springfield Street Choir to advocate for homeless reform. We talk to the choir members about how the Street Choir has affected them in their day-to-day lives and their thoughts on how the Choir has helped to change the opinions of homeless people. The general goal of the film is to show the audience that homeless people are just people, they have their own lives and stories, and deserve help just as much as anyone else. The Choir aims to help homeless people on an individual level by giving them something enjoyable to do when they barely have anything while promoting a message to the public to incite local change.

This project came from a desire to humanize the people that are typically ignored and create positive change towards better resources and treatment of the homeless population. Carbon Trace is an award winning nonprofit film studio with a track record of humanitarian service focused documentaries, showcasing important topics such as family separation and detention at the U.S./Mexico border, urban poverty and the impact on childhood education, the mental health of Syrian children because of the long standing civil war, and solutions to chronic homelessness in the United States. The crew of “Songs From the Street” is made up of professional volunteers and students from Missouri State University.

The money raised from this campaign will primarily go towards five things:

• enter into film festivals/contents
• rent out spaces for showings
• travel to festivals/contests
• both digital and physical advertising
• fulfilling tier rewards

We immensely appreciate every contribution to our project. Every dollar helps!

For updates and news about the production, please follow us on Facebook and Instagram at the username @songsfromthestreet!

Story:

Over a course of a few months just after the Springfield Street Choir began until the present, the film crew observed multiple practices and performances. We interview the choir directors, church pastor, and choir members to get their perspectives on the intention and effects of the choir. The choir members have consistently said that the choir is a highlight of their week and they love to perform just for the joy of it, but that the choir also gives them an amplified voice that demands to be listened to.

The crew also followed different choir members for a few hours to get a look into the daily lives of someone who is homeless. They walk all day to avoid loitering and have limited spaces where they are legally allowed to simply exist, but the night is even more difficult. If the shelters are closed or full, these individuals are forced to trespass to find a space to sleep or are made to walk all night to avoid legal repercussions.

While the choir allows for a sheltered place for one hour a week and provides a free meal, the choir only has so many resources. Combined with city homeless outreach, there still is not enough resources to go around. To combat this, the Springfield Street Choir acts as a political force to publicize the issue of homelessness in Springfield, MO to incite a slow but steady change to the better.

The Crew:

It takes a lot of people to put together a project like this and months of passion, sweat, and tears. Our team is comprised of volunteers with a love of film, passionate film students from Missouri State University, and the guiding hands of the Carbon Trace producers. Our director and producer are among those student volunteers. Carbon Trace is a fantastic nonprofit organization specializing in documentary filmmaking and documentary education. They give student filmmakers opportunities to intern and hone their craft on meaningful films. Several members of Carbon Trace are also faculty of the Missouri State University film program.

Here’s a quick list of our dedicated crew members and their roles:

Producer: Michael Mayrand

Director: Mackenzie Huffman

Director of Photography: Corey O’Connor

Production Assistant: Noah Campbell

Camera Operator/Still Photographer: Jym Wilson

Lead Editor: Ben Daniels

Assistant Editor/Camera Operator: Cody Pate

Assistant Editor: Ashton Wilson

Sound Editor: Matt Foster

Composer: Jeannie Fehr