Film editor Brian Kinnes recently compiled a 73-minute film of Frank Ocean’s infamous Coachella set, using fan-made footage.
Brian Kinnes’s insight was to download all of the files as they were uploaded to YouTube; the footage has since been removed from the internet, and he uploaded it and received a cease and desist. He now has the most comprehensive collection of all of that particular moment.
A few hundred years ago, St. Bonaventura wrote about four ways of making books (via MK’s defunct Taking Note Now):
- Scribe: Write the work of others, adding/changing nothing
- Compiler: Write the work of others, with additions not your own
- Commentator: Write the work of others in principal place, with your own work for purposes of explanation
- Author: Write your own work in principal place with others’ for purpose of confirmation
Compiling in particular is outstanding, because there’s so much raw material to compile now. I recently read Abloh-isms and really enjoyed it, in particular because some of the articles are gone from the internet now; I wouldn’t even have known they existed, so I wouldn’t know what to search for. That book immortalizes the conversations, just like Brian’s film immortalizes the Frank Ocean set.
See also Documenting Lost Documents, and the Museum of You. Several years ago, my friends and I compiled a book of my favorite quotes from Kanye West, in the spirit of capturing his artistic career up until that point.