exploremusic

Last August 23, Radiohead performed at the Výstaviště Holešovice exhibition hall in the Czech Republic.  In the audience were 50 people with inexpensive Flip cameras.  .  They were encouraged to shoot the show from as many different angles as they could and then upload the results to a website.  The filmmakers then took this footage and synced it to a high quality recording of the concert supplied by the band itself. 

The result is a stunning piece of communal art, a concert film that feels, well, like a concert.  It’s raw, choppy but extremely real.  And even more astonishing is that the whole thing—all the way up to an 8G DVD version—is available as a free download. 

Beware though, that grabbing the concert does require a commitment.  It took me an hour to pull down the iPod version (1.3G)—I’m too cheap to pay for the premium version of MegaUpload—and then I had to find a free program to unzip the files because they’re in that damned .RAR archive format.  But once all that was done, the effort was worth it.  (Failing that, segments of the show are already all over YouTube

This, of course, isn’t the first time that a band has used fans to shoot a concert film.  The Beast Boys did it when they put together Awesome:  I Fuckin’ Shot That! in 2004, but you had to buy it.  This gig is totally free for the taking. 

The variety of file formats is staggering:  full DVD, HD Quicktime, iPad,iPod, iPhone, AVI—and soon, even Blu-Ray.  Pick your download type here. 

Maybe this is a project for the long weekend, especially if it’s going to be rainy and miserable, thanks to Hurricane Earl.  Thanks a lot, dude.