Every year my friends come back from the Coachella Valley Music Festival in southern California, telling me how awesome it is and I always have the same answer Sorry my ball sweat is too valuable for me to spill it in SoCal. But concert documentaries on DVD were invented for people like me who just dont feel like getting off their ass to mosh around with 17 year old sweaty dumb fucks. Coachella has recently released a concert DVD that has footage from every single Coachella show since they started and I got a chance to talk with director Drew Thomas about how they got it done.
Buy the Coachella DVD
Daniel Robert Epstein: How did you come to direct this movie?
Drew Thomas: Ive worked a lot as a director of photography so I had worked on a couple of music videos with a director named Piper Ferguson. This was before the first Coachella festival had even happened. She recommended me to this group called Coachella and the Monday before the first Coachella Festival, I went in for a meeting. Frankly I expected to walk into a full on production meeting. I thought I would be that additional cameraperson that nobody wanted there. But I got there and it was just me and [Coachella Founder] Paul Tollett. Paul told me a little bit about the concept of the festival and he said that he thought it should be documented and asked what I thought. I said, I think its great. Do you have anybody else or are we starting right now? Hes like, well, its you and this is it. They had next to nothing. My shooting budget in 1999 was $10,000. We were shooting Super 16 and it ended up being three cameramen, myself included, a couple of assistants and a golf cart. We actually managed to get some interviews and get some of the performances and actually two performances from 1999 made it into the movie.
DRE: How do you think the concept of Coachella translated into the movie?
DT: The goal for this project was to do something very idealistic. It took time to catch everybodys attention and now I think it is an important cultural phenomenon. Basically it was to make a festival of good music in the United States, that wasnt going to be overly commercialized and was not going to be overly sponsored. As the shows progressed and gained better ticket sales, theyve actually removed sponsors. I think it was 2004 when a car company, that shall remain unnamed, offered them a pretty sizable chunk of money to put one of their cars in an unmarked tent somewhere on the concert grounds so that if somebody was wandering by and happens to walk in, they can walk around and see the car and pick up a pamphlet or whatever. They said no. These guys have definitely turned down stuff that might have made their financial lives easier.
Have you been to Coachella?
DRE: No I havent, but I have good friends that go every year. Im dying to go but Im too lazy.
DT: [laughs] Im in my mid 30s and if I werent shooting, I dont know if I would go. Its an amazing experience and when I was 25, I think I would be tripping over myself to be there.
DRE: From what I hear its the hottest place on earth, temperature wise. How do you keep your cameras from overheating?
DT: We havent been very successful in keeping our cameras from overheating. In 2004, when Wayne Coyne [of The Flaming Lips] walked out onto the audience in a giant clear plastic bubble, obviously we knew about that in advance. I found out about that Friday night and I think it was Sunday evening he did that. So we positioned cameras to ensure that we would have good coverage of that scene. Now this is an enormous event that has five stages. Theres no way that we can afford to have enough cameras at every stage to cover everything so we know we have to be selective and therein lies a huge problem. It took some doing to make sure that I had the cameras there to adequately cover this Flaming Lips thing. Well I get a call in Milwaukee about five minutes before they were to go on, saying that our most important camera overheated. So we had put a different smaller camera in the camerapersons hands and we had it powered up and rolled it out about 30 seconds before they walked onto the stage.
The following year we took an extra camera body and we kept it inside an air-conditioned trailer in case that happened again. But last year it was only 85 degrees during the day so there were no problems with the cameras.
DRE: Besides that incident, what acts have been the toughest to capture?
DT: There were a few things. Queens of the Stone Age played a couple times. We filmed them in 2003 and had really good footage of them on the main stage. But in 2002 they played the second stage and theyre from the Coachella Valley basically. So on top of the fact that they were an important up and coming rock band, they also were really loved by all the local kids. As we headed over there from another stage, the barrier collapsed so there was a full security lockdown on the stage with tons of crowd surfing and moshing going on. Everything turned out fine, nobody was hurt, but I could not get cameras where we needed to get them so we didnt tape the performance. It is one of those things that has pained me ever since because I really like that band. For a set to be that electric and not to be there is something that frustrates me.
DRE: How different was it taping the first few years of Coachella as opposed to doing it later on when it got popular?
DT: Every year the majority of artists are fine about being filmed. Sometimes you have artists that arent happy about being filmed. Usually you know in advance and then you just dont film them. That doesnt happen very often. I think that the Coachella festival is mostly filled with people who wanted to be associated with it, so they really havent had any issues with us. This other thing that happened is that in 2004 one of our camera people was walking through the grounds and getting some b-roll shots and stuff and was approached by a girl in the audience. She said, Im glad you guys are finally filming this event. He laughed and said Weve been here every year. But because of the fact that this really was a low budget independent film, we chose to shoot on a better format than use 15 smaller cameras and use kids out of film school as camerapeople. We chose to shoot all on HD and Super 16 film. Weve transitioned from Super 16 film to more HD as the years have gone by because of obvious budget constraints. But the three or four cameras that we do have are manned by people who are really good shooters and were shooting on formats that are archival. This footage will look good well into the future.
DRE: How difficult was it to come up with a through line for the movie?
DT: That was extremely difficult and that certainly is the number one challenge of making a concert documentary because frankly even the best concert documentaries can be pretty boring. Even back in 99, we started trying to think of story aspects. In 2002, we ran a contest where people could win passes to Coachella if they were willing to document their journey there. Those video journals may see the light of day at some point. We put some stuff into our movie like one video journal has a Mexican guy singing Im just trying to cross the Mexican-American border and Im headed to Coachella. He and his buddy took their little home video camera and we gave them a couple passes and they struggled to get their Visas and do everything they had to do to get up to California to see the show.
We tried to not beat the audience over the head with themes or try to pretend that the Coachella Festival is some sort of a movement. It is not, but what it is, is something thats going to draw people together.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Buy the Coachella DVD
Daniel Robert Epstein: How did you come to direct this movie?
Drew Thomas: Ive worked a lot as a director of photography so I had worked on a couple of music videos with a director named Piper Ferguson. This was before the first Coachella festival had even happened. She recommended me to this group called Coachella and the Monday before the first Coachella Festival, I went in for a meeting. Frankly I expected to walk into a full on production meeting. I thought I would be that additional cameraperson that nobody wanted there. But I got there and it was just me and [Coachella Founder] Paul Tollett. Paul told me a little bit about the concept of the festival and he said that he thought it should be documented and asked what I thought. I said, I think its great. Do you have anybody else or are we starting right now? Hes like, well, its you and this is it. They had next to nothing. My shooting budget in 1999 was $10,000. We were shooting Super 16 and it ended up being three cameramen, myself included, a couple of assistants and a golf cart. We actually managed to get some interviews and get some of the performances and actually two performances from 1999 made it into the movie.
DRE: How do you think the concept of Coachella translated into the movie?
DT: The goal for this project was to do something very idealistic. It took time to catch everybodys attention and now I think it is an important cultural phenomenon. Basically it was to make a festival of good music in the United States, that wasnt going to be overly commercialized and was not going to be overly sponsored. As the shows progressed and gained better ticket sales, theyve actually removed sponsors. I think it was 2004 when a car company, that shall remain unnamed, offered them a pretty sizable chunk of money to put one of their cars in an unmarked tent somewhere on the concert grounds so that if somebody was wandering by and happens to walk in, they can walk around and see the car and pick up a pamphlet or whatever. They said no. These guys have definitely turned down stuff that might have made their financial lives easier.
Have you been to Coachella?
DRE: No I havent, but I have good friends that go every year. Im dying to go but Im too lazy.
DT: [laughs] Im in my mid 30s and if I werent shooting, I dont know if I would go. Its an amazing experience and when I was 25, I think I would be tripping over myself to be there.
DRE: From what I hear its the hottest place on earth, temperature wise. How do you keep your cameras from overheating?
DT: We havent been very successful in keeping our cameras from overheating. In 2004, when Wayne Coyne [of The Flaming Lips] walked out onto the audience in a giant clear plastic bubble, obviously we knew about that in advance. I found out about that Friday night and I think it was Sunday evening he did that. So we positioned cameras to ensure that we would have good coverage of that scene. Now this is an enormous event that has five stages. Theres no way that we can afford to have enough cameras at every stage to cover everything so we know we have to be selective and therein lies a huge problem. It took some doing to make sure that I had the cameras there to adequately cover this Flaming Lips thing. Well I get a call in Milwaukee about five minutes before they were to go on, saying that our most important camera overheated. So we had put a different smaller camera in the camerapersons hands and we had it powered up and rolled it out about 30 seconds before they walked onto the stage.
The following year we took an extra camera body and we kept it inside an air-conditioned trailer in case that happened again. But last year it was only 85 degrees during the day so there were no problems with the cameras.
DRE: Besides that incident, what acts have been the toughest to capture?
DT: There were a few things. Queens of the Stone Age played a couple times. We filmed them in 2003 and had really good footage of them on the main stage. But in 2002 they played the second stage and theyre from the Coachella Valley basically. So on top of the fact that they were an important up and coming rock band, they also were really loved by all the local kids. As we headed over there from another stage, the barrier collapsed so there was a full security lockdown on the stage with tons of crowd surfing and moshing going on. Everything turned out fine, nobody was hurt, but I could not get cameras where we needed to get them so we didnt tape the performance. It is one of those things that has pained me ever since because I really like that band. For a set to be that electric and not to be there is something that frustrates me.
DRE: How different was it taping the first few years of Coachella as opposed to doing it later on when it got popular?
DT: Every year the majority of artists are fine about being filmed. Sometimes you have artists that arent happy about being filmed. Usually you know in advance and then you just dont film them. That doesnt happen very often. I think that the Coachella festival is mostly filled with people who wanted to be associated with it, so they really havent had any issues with us. This other thing that happened is that in 2004 one of our camera people was walking through the grounds and getting some b-roll shots and stuff and was approached by a girl in the audience. She said, Im glad you guys are finally filming this event. He laughed and said Weve been here every year. But because of the fact that this really was a low budget independent film, we chose to shoot on a better format than use 15 smaller cameras and use kids out of film school as camerapeople. We chose to shoot all on HD and Super 16 film. Weve transitioned from Super 16 film to more HD as the years have gone by because of obvious budget constraints. But the three or four cameras that we do have are manned by people who are really good shooters and were shooting on formats that are archival. This footage will look good well into the future.
DRE: How difficult was it to come up with a through line for the movie?
DT: That was extremely difficult and that certainly is the number one challenge of making a concert documentary because frankly even the best concert documentaries can be pretty boring. Even back in 99, we started trying to think of story aspects. In 2002, we ran a contest where people could win passes to Coachella if they were willing to document their journey there. Those video journals may see the light of day at some point. We put some stuff into our movie like one video journal has a Mexican guy singing Im just trying to cross the Mexican-American border and Im headed to Coachella. He and his buddy took their little home video camera and we gave them a couple passes and they struggled to get their Visas and do everything they had to do to get up to California to see the show.
We tried to not beat the audience over the head with themes or try to pretend that the Coachella Festival is some sort of a movement. It is not, but what it is, is something thats going to draw people together.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
zoetica:
Every year my friends come back from the Coachella Valley Music Festival in southern California, telling me how awesome it is and I always have the same answer Sorry my ball sweat is too valuable for me to spill it in SoCal. But concert documentaries on DVD were invented for people like me who just...
lotus:
I loved Coachella this year. Will I watch a movie about it? Nope.