Dan Stubbs
Audio By Carbonatix
There’s a certain magic to live music: the energy of the crowd, the proximity of the performers. But to Jesse Santana, the key is the rawness, the candor, the mistakes.
Santana, an Aurora rapper known as ReSrface, set out to capture that magic with his new film, ReSrface at the Crib, which he calls a live digital concert. It shows Santana and a four-piece band squeezed into a cozy living room, playing a full set of his alternative hip-hop music. Nearly half of the film is one continuous shot, and no retakes were allowed if the performers messed up.
“To me, a concert is the possibility that something might go wrong,” says Santana, age 27. “There’s something really powerful about that, because that’s just life. You don’t get redos.”
Things did go wrong. The original drummer dropped out hours before the shoot, the first Airbnb set was double-booked, and the full band never got a chance to rehearse the show together ahead of time. But when filming began, it was “ethereal,” Santana says.
The chaos resulted in a warm, intimate jam session between talented friends. Santana glides through rooms of the house with a cameraman following him, frequently panning and zooming to catch the jazz-like riffs from the musicians stationed on couches and loveseats. The performers all wear house socks and wide smiles, their joy and passion palpable through the lens.
“I wanted everybody who saw it to feel like they were sitting on the couch with us,” Santana explains.
The project was inspired by Absolutely by Dijon, a 2021 short film released to accompany the singer’s album of the same name. That film similarly features a band playing in a living room set, opening with a continuous shot during the first song. The following songs are increasingly intercut with different camera angles and artistic shots, reminiscent of a more traditional music video format.
Santana took the opening concept further. The first four songs of ReSrface at the Crib are one take with no cuts or editing. Santana pauses between songs to speak to the camera as if it is an audience, and to introduce the band, which cheers for one another: “We gotta be the crowd,” he jokes.
Dan Stubbs
Burroughs is on keys, ego n friends is on guitar, Israel Barkat is on bass, and Sam Bhara is on drums. Santana occasionally jumps on instruments himself, playing the piano and the ukulele; the latter of which, during a song filmed in a dark bathroom lit only by a street lamp through the window.
The digital concert covers ten ReSrface songs in around forty minutes. It’s followed by four songs from featured artists, with Santana providing guest verses: “Lately” by Jupe$, “Mainline” by Home, “Letting Go” by Lady Los, and “TMJ (That’s My Jam)” by ego n friends.
Though planning the project took months, it was filmed in a single day. The shoot was around eight hours from start to finish.
Santana is selling access to the film for just $1, noting that if someone didn’t have a dollar, “I would just send them the video.” He describes the project as a pure labor of love for everyone involved.
“There was not a single thing that was transactional about this project,” he adds. “I want people to feel the love of friends having a good time. Nothing more, nothing less.”
The shoot was sponsored by Couched Media, a company that invests in Colorado creatives, and the crew’s catering was sponsored by a local safety inspection business, Fire Profection. Even the jacket Santana wears in the film came from a Denver designer, Alt Savant.
At times, the camera catches glimpses of the sound engineer, Garrison York, staring into screens in the corner, working in real time to keep the production going. In addition to the musicians, the film ran on a skeleton crew featuring cinematographer Andrew Hanson, director Dan Stubbs, gaffer Jackson Lowry, and pre-production lead Cleo Mirza.
Santana begins and ends the film sitting by himself, first in an empty room and then outside on the porch. It’s a metaphor, he explains: “Music absolutely thrives in collaboration. But at the end of the day, we begin alone, we end alone. That’s in every craft, passion, and also in life itself.”
But as he sits in solitude, the band’s music keeps playing. Movement is visible through the porch window behind him. And when the screen cuts to black, his friends’ voices burst through, laughing and questioning whether they should form a permanent band.
Santana is not truly alone. And when you watch the concert, even as an audience of one inside your home, you won’t feel alone either.
“ReSrface at the Crib” is available now for $1. To purchase, send money to Jesse Santana via Venmo or Cash App and include the email address or phone number to which the film will be sent.
