The Bonnaroo Experience
The film reveals the incredible community spirit that is bounded by music, elevated connection, and limitless possibility. Through a montage of Bonnaroo’s many voices and images, this film directed by Michael Marantz, sheds light on the festival’s many promises of experimentation, self-discovery and love.
"Bonaroo was in fact the first music festival I ever went to. When I went for the first time back in 2003, it was more of a hippie jam festival, whereas today it’s just huge! I wasn’t filming anything back then, I just went with the intention of experiencing the craziness that is Bonnaroo!"
"There were 90,000 people there that year, all there for the same reason. To simply have fun and listen to some awesome music - and to just be happy. They were all there with this overwhelming sense of respect for each other - which I found, to be an incredibly moving experience."
"It had been some years since I was there last, and it just so happened that the organizers reached out to us to do a film about the festival. What they wanted was a more cinematic recap of the festival. Sadly It didn’t come with a huge budget, but it was such great opportunity to come knocking at my door, that you couldn’t not do it. I just figured that thing would be too damn fun! And it was. It was a total blast just like the first year that I went to Bonnaroo."
"We had a decent size crew for this project. There was myself and seven others of my production ‘dream team’, so how could that not be a heap of fun with all of those people. We had three separate camera teams who were out shooting for 20 hours every day without a break. Our steadicam operator was in his rig for at least 14 hours every day in the boiling hot sun… and loving every single minute of it! He later told me that he had girls flashing him and following him around every single corner - which is an occupational hazard at these things I guess. You just can’t imagine how much fun this damn thing was for all of us. I really think the fun we were having shooting this film, really comes through in the end."
"While we did spend some of the time shooting on stage getting footage of the bands, what we were doing mostly, was looking at everything away from the stage. We weren’t so much looking at the artists, but more at everyone having fun. After all, that’s what Bonnaroo is all about. It’s about having a damn good time."
"There is this great sequence at the beginning of the piece, where we see the artist walking up to the stage. He then makes his confession that Boonaroo is really all about the community and fans and not the bands. From there, we immediately go into all of this immersive footage among the fans. We dive right into discovering who the people are and what makes this festival so damn great!"
"The expression, ‘you only get out what you put in’ is absolutely applicable to these kind of festival experiences. I use my filmmaking to counteract the way youth culture is often portrayed in the media. Reality TV is harmful to our society and culture, and I wanted this piece to show youth culture as having fun in an entertaining way. I really wanted this piece about Bonnaroo to show this wonderful sense of harmony and this incredible shared experience that you get with this festival."
