For the entire year of 2014, I thought of how fun it would be to create a documentary short film. I’ve been watching many short documentaries and thought I could do a great job making one. The only problem was finding a good enough story. I lived in Poughkeepsie, New York and nothing seemed very interesting there.
Until one random winter afternoon, I received the local newspaper at my doorstep. Inside there was a story about a local man from Beacon who ‘played’ the Mid-Hudson Bridge in Poughkeepsie, New York. He created music from the bridge, by placing hundreds of contact microphones on the bridge and recording the sounds it made; then he got those recordings and making music out of it. I started researching this music project on the internet and eventually scheduled a meeting with this music whiz, Joseph Bertolozzi.
After one meeting with Joe, I convinced him to make a documentary about the music project. He put me in contact with other people who were involved in the project. We spoke with Nancy Cozean (Mayor of Poughkeepsie), Bill Moreau (Chief Engineer of the Mid-Hudson Bridge), Rick Warr (Mid-Hudson Bridge Foreman), Ron Kuhnke (Recording Engineer of Bridge Music), Paul Kozel (Recording Engineer of Tower Music) and of course Joseph Bertolozzi himself (Composer of Bridge Music & Tower Music). After about six months of shooting and editing, the film screened in different film festivals around the U.S.
It was a fun first experience. This music project happened nearly ten years prior to the shooting of the documentary, so it was a bit of a challenge to locate everyone involved, but once we did it was great listening to the old stories about the project and learning more about Joe. The people we interviewed had immense knowledge about music, engineering and politics, each giving a different perspective on the music project. Making this documentary gave me a chance to meet these inspiring people that I otherwise wouldn’t have had a chance to meet and all I did was open a newspaper!
Synopsis: In 2004, Joseph Bertolozzi recorded the sounds of the Mid-Hudson Bridge in New York State using those sounds to compose Bridge Music, making the bridge the largest percussion instrument in the world. The music contains no other tones than those of the bridge itself. This documentary follows Bertolozzi's journey from playing the Mid-Hudson Bridge and eventually the Eiffel Tower.
