Filmmaker Faces Cease-and-Desist From AEG Over Frank Ocean Coachella Video

A filmmaker has been hit with a cease-and-desist notice from Coachella’s parent company AEG after uploading Frank Ocean’s chaotic headlining set at the festival composed of fan-shot videos.

The upload in question — which edited together 150 different YouTube videos to recreate Ocean’s entire and controversial 80-minute set — was only online a short time on Tuesday before AEG demanded it taken down due to copyrights. 

However, Brian Kinnes, a Los Angeles-based editor and filmmaker, continued to make his Ocean video live via different mediums — like Dropbox and Google Drive — resulting in AEG’s cease-and-desist, Variety reports.

“I’m just combining what’s already publicly available,” Kinnes told Variety. “Essentially, [AEG’s] claims are pretty frivolous and almost completely baseless.” Kinnes added that he “did not plan on making a single penny” from his work.

AEG’s notice demands that Kinnes “remove and destroy all audio and video content […] of musical performances from the Festival,” with failure to do so leading to further legal action.

Kinnes, who didn’t attend Coachella, says he downloaded roughly 450 Ocean videos that were posted online, and whittled the footage down over the course of 80 hours to the best 150 videos from which he made his edit; Kinnes also sent the best available audio clips to a sound engineer to serve as the bed for the video footage.

Ocean’s headlining set was among the few sets that were not livestreamed during Coachella’s first weekend; he later canceled his headlining slot the following weekend, citing an ankle injury.

Back in 2017, Kinnes was in the news for creating a similar video with found-footage documenting Ocean’s 2014 FYF Fest performance; he cites the Beastie Boys’ fan-shot 2006 concert film Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That! as inspiration. (Kinnes’ FYF Fest vid was also subsequently removed from the internet.)

While Kinnes has enlisted a lawyer to help him against the AEG claims, links to his Coachella film have been removed from his website, which notes it’s “currently unavailable to the public.” While the majority of Coachella was livestreamed, AEG and the respective rights-holders have been aggressive in taking down any unauthorized footage from the festival on YouTube and social media.