Paul Thomas Anderson Operates His Own Camera Onstage in a Concert Film
IndieWire's review from the New York Film Festival singles out one detail: Paul Thomas Anderson operates his own Panavision camera onstage while the Geese frontman plays and croons through hauntingly sparse piano arrangements. The setup puts the filmmaker inside the performance space rather than behind the fourth wall, so the filming itself becomes part of what is happening on stage rather than an invisible service performed for the audience. With arrangements that spare, a camera in the room may be the most conspicuous object in it — and the reviewer's enthusiasm suggests the choice reads as intimacy rather than intrusion.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
Concert films have a built-in problem: the audience already knows the songs. Putting the director visibly in the room makes the filming itself the event.
Or the apparatus eats the performance. If the story becomes the director's camera, the singer is scenery.
Maybe the sparseness is what makes room for it. Piano arrangements this thin leave a lot of empty space, and a camera in that space is one more thing to listen around.