What happens when you take a former musician turned hairstylist and ask if he has any fun ideas? You get Russell Moore and the Rumo’s Barbershop Sessions.

Working with Russell, I knew that we wanted to create a series of stripped-down performance films. This had to look good, and sound good, but it also had to be as authentic as possible.

Teaming up with Adam Moore (no relation to Russell), we used Russell’s hipster-esque barbershop as the backdrop and dropped in local artists. We gave them the challenge of stripping down their performance and then filming it in a single take.

The challenge was to create a unique vision while also being simple in a very confined space. Camera A was either (RED SCARLET-W) and was either shoulder-mounted or on an easy-rig. Extra angles were made of a Panasonic GH5 & GH5s locked down to cover for any missed focus. For lighting, we generally used a mixture of quasar tube lights and various Aputure’s 300D + 120D with light domes, or space light modifiers.

Thanks to RJ Ojeda for the stills.