In the space of four years, 26-year-old Marcus Haney has been to nearly 50 music festivals around the world, including Coachella, Glastonbury and Bonnaroo, and he’s never paid for a ticket. Instead he’s made a movie about it, called, No Cameras Allowed.
In the film, a leaked trailer of which you can watch below, Haney documents his journey from broke college student sneaking into Coachella through a Porta Potty to sneaking into the Grammys to eventually being invited on tour with Edward Sharpe and Mumford & Sons.
“We’ve done everything. Everything from jumping fences to fake wristbands to posing as security to posing as artists to posing as press to running through truck entrances to going underneath fences,” Haney tells Noisey. Through it all, Haney has turned himself into one of the most sought-after photographers in the music industry.
No Cameras Allowed obviously boasts a huge soundtrack which gives you a little insight into the vast amount of fetsival performances this young fence jumper has witnessed and photographed. Contributors include Phoenix, Grouplove, Band of Horses, Muse, Skrillex, Jay Z, Lykke Li and New Zealand’s The Naked and Famous, who Healy says he befriended a couple years back.
“The trailer makes the film out to be about a guy sneaking into festivals but it’s really a coming of age story set in a music world,” he explains. “It’s a love letter written to these festivals, in a way. And it shows them in such a great light that my goal is that people will see my film and then go and experience live music on their own. There’s no way you can translate the live music experience on to film.”
One of the experiences his fence jumping skills afforded him was actually becoming friends with Mumford & Sons who sought him out after his short film, Connaroo: How Broke Kids Do Bonnaroo, landed in their hands.
“The band gave it to the manager. The manager gave it to Edward Sharpe. Edward Sharpe watched it and, collectively, they invited me on the tour,” he explains. “But the only thing was, that train tour was during the same time as my finals at university. I had to choose between graduating or going on the train.”
He chose the train, and through the connection ended up shooting the cover for their Grammy-winning album Babel, which also features Grim Grim, a 67-year-old Welsh man he met after hitchhiking back from Glastonbury.
While not all punters may be able to “experience” live music in the same capacity as Healy, if offered the chance they should. Explains Grim Grim himself in the trailer, “If you ever get a chance to meet someone like Marcus, and he offers you the most stupid sounding, irrational, impossible, illogical scheme – do it!”
It’s currently screening in select US theatres.
Watch: No Cameras Allowed Leaked Trailer
http://youtu.be/bPRstX6iiLE
