Shooting Beasties

Three MCs and one DJ. A homecoming gig in New York's Madison Square Gardens. And 50 fans with Hi8 cameras under instruction to film whatever they liked during the gig but to keep their cameras rolling no matter what. These are the basic elements of the Beastie Boys' Awesome: I F**kin' Shot That, a concert film quite unlike any other.

Having blazed a trail for the past 20-odd years with their punk hip hop aesthetic, it was a logical step for Ad Rock (Adam Horovitz), Mike D (Michael Diamond) and MCA (Adam Yauch) to rewrite the concert film in their inimitable, anarchic style. And its genesis was reassuringly chaotic.

"The original idea came from a short clip of one of our concerts someone had recorded on their cameraphone and put up on our website," explains Yauch, who had the unenviable task of editing all the collected footage into a coherent film. "I liked the handheld quality of it - you could feel the excitement of the person shooting it."

With this as a starting point, and with three days to go before the sold-out gig on October 9, 2004, the trio decided to find 50 fans willing to tote a camera (by posting an appeal on the website and picking volunteers based on where they were seated) and find 50 Hi8s (picked for the scratchy film quality) they could use and return. Weren't they worried that all 50 wouldn't come back? "Well, we took their driving licences," points out Yauch.

Despite plenty of experience as a director (Yauch has been the relatively unsung hero behind many of the Beastie Boys' most memorable videos) he admits that at first the task of editing this raw material - with added footage from five professionally shot DV cameras - was overwhelming.

"After a month, though, we'd hammered out a rough sketch that worked well enough and we could see the light," he explains.

A year and 6,732 edits later, Yauch and his team had succeeded in bringing together a visceral live music experience. The trio's endlessly energetic performance is captured everywhere from the front row to the gods - with cameras held steady, held while its operator dances, held near enough to the speakers that the bass thump is palpable.

There are the fans singing along (including a word-perfect Ben Stiller), going for beers, going to the toilet. There's old labelmate DMC in the crowd, a concession stand worker's spontaneous air guitar moment, two fans' enthusiastic attempt to sneak backstage.

"There were all kinds of things we didn't know we'd get," says Yauch. "We didn't really plan on people filming themselves pissing."

Despite objections from Horovitz, the urinal shot stayed. As did the moment when their DJ Mixmaster Mike slips up while attempting a trick on the decks ("he was a little upset but it lets people know what he's doing is completely real") and the moment that Diamond would have preferred left on the cutting room floor - when Yauch found footage of a girl in the crowd making the same move Mike D had on stage and blended them together, superimposing the pair on a beach scene.