How the dynam­ic edit­ing of Don’t Think sets the bar for con­cert films

Pri­or to the release of their 2007 con­cert film/​arthouse doc­u­men­tary hybrid Miri­or Noir, Arcade Fire’s Win But­ler gave an inter­view to Pitch­fork where he admit­ted his dis­in­ter­est in most con­cert films: ​“Even if you have a hun­dred cam­eras and it’s shot from every angle, there’s just a com­mu­nal, vis­cer­al thing that nev­er trans­lates very well.” As a life­long vet­er­an of both con­certs and con­cert films, I can’t say I ful­ly dis­agree with Butler’s assess­ment. In many instances, includ­ing his own band’s Live at Earls Court in 2017, some­thing inef­fa­ble gets lost in the tran­si­tion and many direc­tors don’t know how to trans­late a band’s iden­ti­ty to record­ed film.

Of course that doesn’t mean it’s impos­si­ble. More that every­body instead has to get cre­ative in their pre­sen­ta­tion­al choic­es. To wit, Adam Smith’s work on The Chem­i­cal Broth­ers: Don’t Think from 2012 remains the gold stan­dard in con­cert film­mak­ing through its bliss­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion of the synaes­the­sia a Chem­i­cal Broth­ers gig seeks to invoke. That mix­ture of beatif­ic musi­cal rhythms aim­ing to pum­mel and entrance in equal mea­sure, a mul­ti­coloured orgy of care­ful­ly-timed flash­ing lights in sync with the music, and a series of impres­sion­is­tic visu­als (some­times psy­che­del­ic and oth­er times com­i­cal) all com­bin­ing with the aim of cre­at­ing a sen­so­ry over­load for crowd mem­bers to lose their inhi­bi­tions over. (And, not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, pro­vides cov­er for the fact that the nature of theirs music means that ​‘the Chems’ them­selves can’t be active stage presences.)

One might assume – giv­en the spec­ta­cle of Chem­i­cal Broth­ers live show like the 2011 Fuji Rock set caught in Don’t Think – that Smith could rely pri­mar­i­ly on the on-site fes­ti­val cam­era feeds pro­vid­ed by Fuji TV as his source footage and still man­age to trans­late the show’s ener­gy well enough. Lots of clear wide shots of the stage, reg­u­lar swoop­ing crane shots of the fes­ti­val throng, the occa­sion­al close-up of the Chems twid­dling var­i­ous knobs. As any­body who watch­es the BBC’s staid year­ly cov­er­age of Glas­ton­bury could tell you, though, that pre­sen­ta­tion has a way of flat­ten­ing near­ly every artist sub­ject­ed to it.

Whilst Smith does fre­quent­ly utilise the cov­er­age pro­vid­ed by in-house fes­ti­val pro­duc­tion, it func­tions more as a base to build around. He has many rov­ing cam­era oper­a­tors in the crowd, cap­tur­ing both the action on-stage and indi­vid­ual crowd mem­bers rap­tur­ous­ly trans­fixed off-cen­tre by the lights and sounds in inti­mate close-up. In some ways, these recall YouTube fan footage or the Beast­ie Boys’ Awe­some: I Fuckin’ Shot That! which was filmed entire­ly by fans at their 2004 Madi­son Square Gar­den show, just with a greater cam­era sta­bil­i­ty and with­out hav­ing the war­bling of the guy next to the cam­era com­ing through. They often cap­ture some char­ac­ter­ful moments too: blissed-out mem­bers being star­tled to atten­tion by unex­pect­ed drops; a guy excit­ed­ly telling his friend the next song is ​“Swoon” before it prop­er­ly drops; con­fused hor­ror at the recur­ring images of clowns through­out the set.

But those crowd shots wouldn’t be any­thing all that spe­cial or note­wor­thy on their own, even with the night-time set­ting and rov­ing stage lights cre­at­ing some won­der­ful (and acci­den­tal) instances of shad­ow inter­play cin­e­matog­ra­phy. That’s where Smith’s role in the band’s live show comes in. Since their first per­for­mance in 1995, he’s been the Chems’ go-to live visu­al provider along­side Mar­cus Lyall, the pair offi­cial­ly being cred­it­ed as the live show direc­tors since 2010, as well as co-direct­ing the visu­al album aspects of Fur­ther (the record the band were tour­ing at the time of Don’t Think’s film­ing). As such, Smith inti­mate­ly knew the show he and his crew were record­ing – akin to Jonathan Demme and David Byrne plot­ting out the live show which would make up Stop Mak­ing Sense in exact sto­ry­board­ed detail – and could, with the aid of edi­tors Jono Grif­fith & Mark Whe­lan, arrange and aug­ment his footage in ways which blur the lines of in-film reality.

For exam­ple: ​“Set­ting Sun” inter­mit­tent­ly recre­ates its stage visu­als, bor­rowed from the orig­i­nal 1996 music video where a woman turns her head in pro­file whilst psy­che­del­ic lights stream over her face, with crowd mem­bers in brief insert shots and the only imme­di­ate tell comes from the high­er-def­i­n­i­tion of the new footage. ​“Chem­i­cal Beats” over­lays the Cather­ine wheel sparks visu­al onto the con­cert footage and com­bines them with post-pro­duc­tion arti­fi­cial shak­ing that makes the acid synth build almost resem­ble a rock­et launch, like the music is so mas­sive the movie can bare­ly con­tain it, and arti­fi­cial crash zooms on beat drops which should be corny but Smith some­how gets away with. At oth­er points, most­ly dur­ing the set’s down­time tran­si­tions between num­bers, Smith moves the focus a lit­tle away from the stage to project snatch­es of the visu­als around the fes­ti­val field or briefly fol­low­ing one rev­eller (Mario Kobayashi Stop­ford) with a Snor­ri­Cam (a chest-mount­ed front-fac­ing cam­era) in a daze after­wards as audio and video reminders of what she ear­li­er wit­nessed dis­ori­ent her.

These are the more obvi­ous, flashy exam­ples of Smith try­ing to add a psy­che­del­ic slant to Don’t Think. An attempt to make this one gig feel like an entire world which is at once all-encom­pass­ing and bare­ly-con­tain­able. But it’s the moment-to-moment, floor-lev­el, tight-lensed, over­stim­u­lat­ing visu­al arrange­ment which real­ly makes the film sing. In fact, for all the flash and sen­so­ry over­load going on, what most sticks out is how rhyth­mic and var­ied Smith’s hard cuts actu­al­ly are. The drops on ​“Sat­u­rate” are fol­lowed by shots which last much longer than aver­age, almost as if hang­ing in air on adren­a­line, with the final one flow­ing into a wide-angle crane shot that keeps pulling fur­ther and fur­ther back, expos­ing just how large the crowd watch­ing tru­ly is, before the clos­ing drums snap us back into the pit to her­ald the arrival of the hard­er-edged ​“Believe.”

Most espe­cial­ly, ​“Star Gui­tar” on a casu­al pass feels way busier on an edi­to­r­i­al lev­el than it actu­al­ly is. Due to the segment’s usage of a cross-dis­solve over­lay of the puls­ing red and orange lights on-stage, a large per­cent­age of close-ups and extreme close-ups of fes­ti­val­go­ers and their limbs, and fre­quent instances of rack-focus shifts, the footage descends into glo­ri­ous abstrac­tion. Lights and sounds and bod­ies all meld­ing into inde­ci­pher­abil­i­ty, into a dis­ori­en­tat­ing one­ness. In the moment it feels like euphor­ic quick-cut chaos, but when exam­ined close­ly you find that the base footage isn’t all that busy. Cuts arrive after a few sec­onds, always on-beat rather than rapid and con­stant, whilst the cam­er­a­work remains com­posed and considered.

There’s so much con­trol in Smith’s con­struc­tion of a sequence designed to make view­ers (and gig atten­dees) lose all con­trol. Even when try­ing to keep my brain in dis­tant ana­lyt­i­cal mode for writ­ing this piece, I couldn’t help but men­tal­ly sur­ren­der to the synaes­the­sia of Don’t Think mul­ti­ple times. As the tit­u­lar song com­mands: ​“Don’t think, just let it flow.”