If you haven’t see it yet, this is the official music video for Lecrae’s “Welcome to America”.
The rest of this blog is all of the stories of the people are in the video and some stories of the making of the video.
Also, I enabled asking questions, so if you have anything specific that you’re curious about, feel free to ask.
This is Maxwell, she currently is a prostitute. I followed her around for a few hours and literally filmed her on the corner until she got picked up and she told me, “well Isaac, I’ve got a date, I’ll see you later”.*
I went to her house, which was about 12x12 room, with couch, tv, bathroom. And as my rule for myself on the filming of this video, I gave her the only direction that I gave anyone “just do what you would do if I wasn’t here”. She then pulled out a faceless VCR and started fixing it, telling me that “it was a birthday present and she wanted to get it up and running again”.
When I saw that, I was blown away. Even the open mind that I thought I had towards prostitutes was opened even further. She has been such a pleasure to get to know and when I saw that VCR getting fixed, I saw a woman that is smarter than she knows. I saw her story in that VCR.
The VCR has been used, discarded, broken and unwanted. But she sees something more and took time into it to change it and make it new. I’ll bet that God gave her that VCR to show her how He feels about her.
In the middle of fixing up that old VCR, her song came on the radio and she had to get up and dance.
I should mention that when I was filming all of this, someone was shot a killed a few houses down from us. After I left, Tammi, who is smoking a cigarette and reading the Bible in the video, asked for a ride to a ‘community night’ a block away. I dropped her and her boyfriend off there and was asked to come in. It was a young family with two young kids, in the midst of this neighborhood, feeding anyone that would enter, from face tattoos to crackheads. After I met them and started to leave I heard them praying, while thinking “of course they’re Christians” and also thinking, these are the Christians you don’t hear about but should. They don’t have a facebook page you can ‘like’ or a Twitter account updating people on what they’re doing. They are just in it. They are loving people like Jesus told us to and not caring if people see them. But it’s usually the Christians that are doing it for their own glory are the ones you read about and frankly, that’s opposite of why we should do it and that’s why the Christians that should be on the frontlines and headlines are the ones that are too humble to do it.
*also, when filming Maxwell on the corner a car full of drug dealers got out and said “camera man has to go”. So I decided I should probably get going.
Here are some shots of Maxwell watching “Welcome to America” for the first time:
Jesse Howard Fry III. 82 years old.
Drafted and served in Korea from 1953-1955
I remember the day that I filmed Mr. Fry. By this time I was about a month into filming Welcome to America and I was collecting poorly hung flags*, which sadly there are more than you’d think once you start looking for them. When I was with him, he looked up at the flag as he was walking out of the grocery store. And said, “I wish they’d fix that”.
“So when you came back from Korea, how did they treat you?”
“They spit at me. They called me ‘war-monger’, ‘child killer’. I didn’t have one friendly comment when I was in uniform. They were just anti-war at that point and the took it out on us. But I didn’t have any choice, I was drafted!”
*The reason that I was collecting shots of poorly hung flags is because it was so symbolic of the theme of the song. If you don’t take care of something, it’ll fall apart. Everything requires maintenance. It’s not unpatriotic but the opposite, showing someone “you’ve missed a spot” doesn’t mean that you don’t care, it means that you do care.
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” - Elie Wiesel
This is Ray “CR” Barlow, I filmed him a year ago for Lecrae’s concert visuals (clip above).
You might recognize a shot that was used in ‘Welcome to America”.
“One thing I enjoyed while in school was sports, but the decisions and lifestyle I choose got me caught up in the streets, drug dealing, gangs, violence and it hindered me from finishing school. The year I was supposed to graduate, I was getting sentenced. While I was in prison I wasn’t trying to get worse, I was trying to become a better person. I used to get in a lot of fight for that reason of standing out and staying to myself. Not only was I fighting, I was winning and was good at it. So I decided to do some research and see if there were gyms in my area of living in Atlanta once I was released.
When I got out and started boxing, it was first a challenge of the body to me which I loved, having to learn how to breath properly while through millions of punches over hours of training. As I progressed I realized it wasn’t just a challenge of the body but also the mind. Like being able to stay calm in a tough fight.
Years before all of that, I had a major fear of what I will become in life as a man and would I ever amount to anything besides being a smalltime young street punk. The more I went through situations in life, prison at the age of 18, at the age of 15 getting in shoot out and seeing a used to be friend of mine shot right in front of me, which could have easily been me, having numerous guns aimed at me execution style around the age of 15, going through almost going mentally unstable due to weed and alcohol abuse around the age of 15-17.
Through all of that, those things showed me I am a son of God and through it all I can prevail and will be protected with prayer, belief, and a strong bond with with The Most High. Now, I fear nothing.”
You can check out his YouTube channel here.
This is not a set. All the stuff was already there.
“What would you do if you had two arms?”
“You know how people interlock their fingers together and stretch their fingers back? I’d do that.”
This is my best friend Nick.
He and the rest of the crew pictured are volunteer firefighters. Nick is an all-American hero. This guy rode a bicycle from Portland to San Diego, volunteered a few years at a summer camp for inner-city kids and literally saved a little boy that fell down a well. Which sounds like I’m making that up.
He’s the kind of man that people write fiction novels that end up matching the events of his life.
“When you run into a blazing house it’s the weirdest thing seeing dinner tables with food still on the plates, TVs still on and computers with Facebook left on the screen while it’s melting along with everything else around them. People don’t plan for fires, they are usually going about their normal, everyday lives and the next thing they know they are running out of the house and away from everything they own”.
When I rode along with them, they told me I “have” to wear the outfit. Which, I did without complaint.
This is Deputy Shawn and K9 Mike.
What I learned from shadowing him is that K9 officers actually take their dog home with them, it’s their family pet. They take them on walks, watch TV with the dog by their side. Even when the officer retires, the dog does as well.
He was practicing with his dog when I filmed above, saying one word commands and the dog would snap into whichever mode the command merited. One of the words meant “look for drugs” and the dog started running around the room sniffing everything and ran towards me to search me. That was freaky, though I knew I haven’t touched any drugs in my life, when a dog, trained to take you down, is targeting you it’s a surreal experience. Especially since I filmed a crack addict the week before.
Another cool thing I learned is that the car has a spring loaded door that is controlled by a remote that the officer carriers with him, so if the officer is being attacked by suspect, all he has to do is press the button and the door will spring open so the dog can attack the perpetrator.
“Don’t leave, people have been more generous with the camera around”
(filmed in Washington DC by Jonathan Gabriel)
This is Aalok (left) and America (right).
Honestly, the woman’s name is America. She is originally from Nuevo Leon, Mexico. She is the youngest of 6 and used to be a migrant worker. They worked extremely hard to eventually move over here and she became a US citizen back in 2005.
Aalok, her Grandson, is a miracle baby. He was delivered by an emergency C section because there was meconium in the amniotic sac so his heart rate was decreasing which can cause serious repercussions for the baby sometimes even death. He’s fully healthy now and was only crying because he was denied Lucky Charms, because “he only eats the marshmallows”.
You might have recognized him from earlier. This is him running towards his Grandpa Juan to greet him at the airport.
This is Michael. He was a Sergeant when I filmed this in 2009 (though I’m sure he’s moved up).
He rode in the back of the helicopter with us when I was filming a documentary. He was kind enough to allow me to walk around the helicopter to get one of my favorite shots of my career (which also made it in the video):
He made us feel safe and welcome in his helicopter. Even though when I met him, he looked like darth vader:
I should mention that I was over in Kuwait/Iraq filming country singer Joe Nichols on his USO tour for the troops.
After we landed. Michael pulled me aside to tell me a story for my camera”
“The last night that I was home, my wife and I went to the country bar. And uh, the last song they played for the night for us was “I’ll wait for you” (a Joe Nichols song). That was the last song that I got to dance with my wife, back in January. And uh, when [Joe] played it in concert the other night, I had to walk away from the guys because I started welling up with tears. It just brought me home, made me think of my wife and my two kids that I’ve got. Made me miss my family.”
“Not a whole lot of services, they like to pretend that there are but there not…but what can i do”
(This was filmed in Washington D.C. by Jonathan Gabriel)
This is Gary.
Though he might not look it on the video, he was very kind and welcoming. The day the video was released I got to drive around a show some people that agreed to be in it. And he loved it.
“I didn’t know it was gonna be seen by so many people”.
This is Forth District’s series “Film Rant”, interviewing me in depth about the stories behind Welcome to America. (This is part #2, so if you heard a Film Rant about Welcome to America before, this is a different one)
This is Brooke and her husband Peter.
Peter was deployed on a ship at sea with the Marine Corps for 8 months. They had only been married about a year when he was deployed. When we got home, Brooke traveled 14 hours from Michigan to North Carolina to see him.
Brooke’s Facebook post from that day:
“Got pulled over today
Officer said: Do you know the speed limit on this freeway?
Me: 60mph?
Officer: Yes. And you were going 81. Any particular reason why you’d be going so fast?
Me: MY HUSBAND IS GETTING HOME FROM DEPLOYMENT, SIR! I GOTS TA GET TO NORTH CARALINA ;) ”
(She did end up getting a ticket, but admits that she deserved it)
“I remember scanning all of the faces under the covers to find my Peter. It took a few minutes for us to find each other amidst the mob. We embraced and held each other tight. It was all worth it.”
“One of the best ways to end the filming of a video portrait of humanity is in New York City. Where you can capture almost all of the different types of people in one picture. This has been one of my favorite projects so far. Super honored to be trusted with something so powerful. #welcometoamerica”
@IsaacDeitz (Instagram post Jan 6, 2015)
“After a month of shooting so many different people for this @lecrae video, I’ve come to the conclusion that humanity is beautiful & fragile.”
This is ‘New York’. He and I met a while back when I was helping someone in his project move. We connected pretty quickly from both being from New York (even though I’m from upstate).
When I got the greenlight to do the video, I thought he’d be a good candidate to film because his face seems to have a story. He showed me around the projects that he was living and introduced me to a lot of his friends (he’s currently outside of the apartment of Gary, the guy that was smoking crack).
I went into this woman’s house as I was shadowing a police officer. She was a single immigrant mother of a son that had a lot of run-ins with the law. We were in New York in December and she had no heat in her house (in some shots, you can see her breath).
From what was explained to me, her son (off camera to the left), was a good kid, dabbling in drugs, got a bad hit of the wrong stuff and it fried his brain and he hasn’t been normal since. Since then he’s been in and out of jail for misdemeanors and I was with the officer when he was giving her an update on what was going on with him.
You can tell from her face that she is worn out on life. She was hearing for the hundredth time the current state of her son. You could tell that she was overwhelmed and heavy from where her life ended up.
Another list of weird requests for the Lecrae music video that I’m working on.
So far I’ve gotten to ride in a cop car, film inmates in their jail cells, follow the life of a real prostitute, a crack head in his home and so many other cool experiences. My heart for humanity is an inch bigger, I’ve never had the making of a music video or any video project instantly impact my life so much. I hope I can capture the thoughts and feelings that I’ve been having into the video for viewers to experience as well.
So I’m still looking for footage. You’ve all been so great at your responses to my past posts, now I’m trying to get some more specific things.
The theme in this list is tragedy.
I’m trying to convey the human emotion of pain, suffering, tragedy. I’m making this piece on the highs and lows of American living. And I’ve gotten a great deal of highs, but not many lows.
So if you have any footage of something that falls into that or if you have something going on soon that I would be able to film, let me know. I should also mention that this is a non-verbal, strictly visual telling of the highs and lows. So if you have a really sad story to tell, though my heart goes out to you, it wouldn’t fit this particular video. Examples of what I need to film or footage of:
-Funerals
-People crying
-Competitive eating
-Destruction (house fire, car fire, hurricane/tornados ripping into neighborhoods)
-Accidents
-Hospital visits
-EMTs on a scene
-Crime Scenes
-Riots/protests
-People getting arrested
-Violence
Believe me, this will ALL make sense when the video is done.
Thanks y’all!