Coachella issue cease and desist against filmmaker who made unofficial Frank Ocean concert movie

The company that owns Coachella Music Festival, AEG, is threatening legal action against Brian Kinnes, a filmmaker who made an unofficial concert movie of Frank Ocean’s weekend one Coachella set.

Kinnes created a one-hour and 20-minute movie of Ocean’s entire show, stitching together videos uploaded on YouTube and releasing it to fans on Tuesday, before promptly receiving a cease and desist order from AEG the same day.

Why did Kinnes create the concert movie?

After it was announced hours before Ocean was to take the stage that he would not be streaming his set, many fans who were unable to make it to Coachella were left disappointed.

This disappointment prompted Kinnes to create the video. He downloaded and went through roughly 450 videos to find the best content. After 80 hours of editing, the final cut ended up using 150 different videos of fans’ concert footage.

Kinnes made a similar concert movie of Ocean’s 2017 show at the FYF Fest, with Kinnes saying that that project itself was inspired by Beastie Boys’ fan-shot concert movie ‘Awesome; I F—--’’ Shot That!’ released by the band in 2006.

His FYF Fest movie has since been removed.

The concert video was quickly removed

The movie, which was one of the few high-def videos of Ocean’s controversial show, which many fans in attendance found disappointing, was hastily removed following a copyright infringement report by Rico Management.

The video and all links to it have since been removed from Kinnes website, but he’s confident that the hundreds of people who were able to download it will still distribute it on the internet.

“I’m just combining what’s already publicly available,” Kinnes said. “Essentially, [AEG’s] claims are pretty frivolous and almost completely baseless.”

What AEG said in their cease and desist

In their letter to Kinnes, AEG’s attorneys have said the following:

“The contents of your social media posts, use of our Festival name, use of our Festival content, and other circumstances clearly indicate that you are using the Intellectual Property with intent to trade on the Festival’s name and reputation.”

They also demanded Kinnes to “remove and destroy all audio and video content […] of musical performances from the Festival,” adding that not complying would result in “immediate formal legal action.”

Kinnes has since consulted a lawyer, who says that since he’s not profiting off the movie, he may not face serious repercussions for using the concert footage.

“It feels like a massive overreach of power by a corporation that is struggling with their image,” Kinnes added.