By Christina Radish

 On October 9, 2004, the Beastie Boys handed out 50 cameras to audience members at their sold-out performance in New York ’s famed Madison Square Garden .  These 50 different passionate perspectives, shot from the point-of-view of the audience, take the viewer deep inside the world of a live Beastie Boys show, capturing the experience like no film has ever done. 

Awesome; I . . . Shot That! is a cinematic celebration starring Mike D (Michael Diamond), Ad-Rock (Adam Horovitz), and MCA (Adam Yauch), who comprise the Beastie Boys, and is directed by Yauch (as his alter-ego Nathaniel Hornblower), who came up with the concept after watching a 30-second fan-shot clip on the online Beastie Boys message boards. 

“This kid had shot part of a concert on his camera phone,” says 41-year-old native New Yorker, Yauch.  “He uploaded it onto the Internet to show some of his friends, and I just thought it looked really cool.  There was a certain video grain to it, and the fact that it was hand-held just gave it a certain energy.  There were a couple people’s heads in the foreground, and the guy was obviously jumping up and down, or dancing, when he shot it, but you could just feel the energy of the room from it.”

“Most concerts that I see, that are documented, are done so high tech these days, with HD cameras on sweeping booms, and it’s all so smooth and cleaned up, but I don’t think you really get the feel of the concert.  I just thought it would be interesting to document a concert in a different way.  So, we got a bunch of low-res Hi-8 cameras to try to get some of that feel.”

Breaking rules since their rise to fame in the mid-1980s, the three MC’s from New York introduced a new style of hip-hop/rap when they exploded onto the musical scene, and their first album, “License to Ill,” became the biggest-selling rap album of its time.  To this day, they are still one of the most popular hip-hop/rap acts, selling out venues all over the world when they tour. 

Three days before their Madison Square Garden appearance, the Beastie Boys posted a notice on their website inviting fans to sign up as videographers.  The notice stipulated that the fans had to already have tickets for the concert, and the shooters were selected according to the locations of their seats.  Once chosen, they were given easy-to-use, lightweight digital cameras and the simple instructions just to keep the cameras rolling throughout the entire show.

“I think there were certain camera people that got a lot of really useful footage, but we used footage from all the cameras,” says Yauch, about their recruits.  “There were some people who had a bit more of a steady or deliberate style, and there were other people that were just jumping around.  I think all of that was useful, in terms of pacing.”

Obtaining the raw footage was just the beginning of the process.  The most challenging part was trying to merge together coverage from 50 different cameras, taking the better part of a year to edit. 

 “When we first got all the footage back, we did a really rough mix of the audio. Then, we digitized all the footage and put that on a server.  We actually had four edit stations that were connected into the server.  And then, we got the footage in sync, as best we could.  Once we managed to get it roughly in sync, then we started cutting it.  We started out by doing three individual cuts of it.  We gave each of the three editors about 20 cameras each and they each did a rough cut of the movie.  After that, I sat down with the main editor and we started pulling parts of those cuts, and really got into it.”

“The trickiest part of putting it together was getting the whole thing to flow.  Finding the pacing to be able to just sit through the whole thing and experience the ebb and flow of it was probably the hardest part.”

“We probably shouldn’t have put the ‘F’ word in the title, if we were trying to not get an R rating,” says the father of a 7 ½ year old girl, who he admits is a fan of his music.  “I didn’t really think about that too much, at the time.  I didn’t count up how many times the ‘F’ word is in it, but I guess the title certainly put us over the top.”

Originally planned as a DVD, rather than a release for the big screen, Yauch says that he feels very fortunate to have Awesome; I . . . Shot That! opening in theaters across the country.  “In retrospect, I think we’re very lucky that it came together because we weren’t even really setting out to do it.  When we originally shot it and began editing it, I was really thinking in terms of it going straight to DVD.  And then, once I was looking at the footage and we were cutting it, I started thinking about it in a theatrical context.  I thought it would be really cool to project it.  And then, I went and did a test and projected it on a digital video projector, and it looked really cool, so we started pursuing it.  I’m definitely glad that it came together.”

Yauch would also love to be able to release a soundtrack to accompany the film, but says that that might be a bit more difficult.  “We’d need to get a lot of clearances before that could happen.  It was very complicated to clear all the samples that are in the film because our DJ, Mixmaster Mike, is throwing in all different beats while we’re playing.  We had to figure out what all those things were, and clear them.  We’ve definitely discussed trying to get the clearances to do a live album.  I think it would be a great live album, especially if we did a surround sound mix.  But, I guess it’s to be seen, if we can do it.”

A self-proclaimed workaholic, Yauch says that, although they are currently taking a break, he expects the Beastie Boys to get back together in a studio, some time in the not too distant future.  Until then, he’s got plenty to keep himself busy.

“I’ve been working on a narrative script, with a friend of mine, that I’d like to direct,” says the man responsible for many of the Beastie Boys videos, over the years.  “I’m definitely interested in trying to make that work.”