Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock
by Franny French and Rudy Joggerst
For one week each year, the desolate Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada is host to the biggest temporary city in North America, Black Rock City. Last year alone marked a new record: More than 36,000 people populated the barren spot and turned the sweltering playa into a weeklong event of art, music, and peace that culminated, as it does every year, in the burning of a 40-foot wicker man on the final night of the event.
Most of us have heard of Burning Man. The event has been mentioned in TV-shows (South Park, The Simpsons), magazine articles, and news reports, but it rarely receives the fair coverage it deserves; it's much more convenient to discredit the gathering as a freak show.
Shot over the course of a year and a half, Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock is a feature-length documentary that tries to change that perception. Not simply about the weeklong event itself, the film takes a closer look at the people who founded Burning Man, their philosophies and ambitions; the artists who work on huge sculptures and installations for months, only to see their art go up in flames; the thousands of volunteers who build, run, and clean the city under the harshest of conditions; and the massive organizational machinery that is put in place to turn the seemingly chaotic festival into a well-run event.
Just weeks before the burning of the 21st neon-tubed effigy, Reel.com spoke to the producer of Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock, Mike Wilson, who became an expert on the event after spending a considerable amount of time in and around the inner workings of the organization.
Reel Tell us how the idea of making a documentary about Burning Man was conceived?
Mike Wilson: Basically, I just went to the event, sort-of unsuspecting, not really knowing why I was going or what it was about. Just at the urging of a good friend of mine. We went out there and I was completely blown away by what was going on. I also had a lot of questions about it and walked around and tried to figure it out for a few days. When I went home, I tried to find more information on it via the Internet. There's an awful lot of Burning Man websites that will give you a better idea who they are and why they're doing the whole thing, but I still wanted to understand it better. So I went out the next year and shot some still photography, put together a little short piece, and was really just amazed to find out that this thing was going on for twenty years and there has never been a real documentary done on it. There's been a few efforts, but not really films that would answer the questions that I would think someone might have after going out there or hearing about. After nine months, they finally agreed to let me come out and do it.
The whole thing has been marginalized by the media so much that they're very weary of the media. The only reason the organization exists is just so they're able to sustain the event. Finally, I was able to convince them that one of the biggest battles was that people don't know what the event is.
Reel: I wanted to talk about the negative press about Burning Man. Tell us more about the effort it took for you to gain the trust of the people involved?
MW: Like I said, it took a long time. I just didn't go away. I worked on a previous project called Substance TV, a video magazine on DVD. I guess they saw my work there and realized that I wasn't interested in commercially exploiting them. I was able to convince them that I love the event and that my documentary will uncover something that I'm really excited about. The more I got into it, the more I genuinely realized that these guys are the real deal. They really are putting all their money every year that they make back into the event, and keep very little in the bank. They work on very modest salaries all the way up to Larry [Harvey—the founder of Burning Man]. It was pretty clear he wasn't hiding any fortunes.
Reel: How much time and effort did it take to complete the movie?
MW: Let's see, we started bugging them in early 2002, and we started shooting, I guess, in the middle of 2002. We shot a little bit before the 2002 event and then followed the characters all the way through 2003. I guess we shot for about eighteen months altogether, and it took another year and a half to edit it. It was about a three-year project.
Reel: How did you select the artists that were portrayed in the movie?
MW: We put the word out via a newsletter that we're doing this film, that we're looking for people who were starting on their projects for next year. We got a fair amount of submissions, and we chose characters that we thought were interesting. We wanted to demonstrate that there are people all over the world who work all through the year. I was hopeful to follow people in Ireland that were putting together a big piece, but their project ended up falling apart. It was just sort of by chance, asking people to step up. David Best, I knew him, he always does something big. He was an obvious choice, and he has a strong personality.
Reel: The festival is all about the arts, being a free spirit, open-mindedness, and non-conformism. One thing that really struck me was how well organized and planned out everything is. What are your thoughts on these conflicting ideals?
MW: That's really what attracted me and made me want to understand the event. When you're out there, it feels like this completely free, chaotic, sort-of gypsy city. There's no obvious sign of authority or organization. Then I saw somebody get hurt, and just out of nowhere this ranger popped up. I was like, "Somebody is running a really beautiful production here," because you feel completely free but you also feel completely safe. Once you start seeing the signs, you can see that it's a really beautifully run production. That was what peaked my interest in the beginning, learning who these people are and how they put it on. It's really amazing, given that almost all their people are volunteers. Trying to hire a bunch of volunteers to pull off something that complex is not the easiest thing in the world. These people are just so dedicated.
Reel: How was the feedback you received from the event organizers after you completed the film?
MW: The organization has been amazingly supportive of our film, and I think it's because it's the first one that really tells their story. It's really gratifying to hear from people who work there. One of the most common pieces of feedback we get is, "Finally, I can show my mom what it is I do." You watch that and you go, "Yeah, that's the real job." They don't want the event to just be a party for thirty-five thousand people, they want to spread their basic principles throughout the world, and the film is obviously an important part of that. But we have made the film for people who have never been and will probably never go, just so they understand what it is. It's certainly not for everybody, but for me it was a refreshing thing. There's a lot of depressing things going on in our country these days, and with our country's identity. I think it's pretty cool that this thing goes on in America every year, and it's probably the only country [in which] it could go on every year, as a lot of the international visitors told me. I think it's something that people can take pride in and learn from, even if they never will make it out to the Nevada desert.
Reel: Can you share some of your most memorable experiences during the making of Burning Man, something that didn't make it into the movie?
MW: We shot about two hundred and fifty hours and got it down to under two, so there's an awful lot that didn't make into the movie. To me, the most powerful thing out there is just meeting people from all over that live in ways that you thought weren't even possible. We're going to school and college and [we] get a job as quickly as we can and kind of shove ourselves into one of these boxes. That's kind of an understood, acceptable way to live in modern society. Meeting these people, not just the organizers, but the people that make their way out there every year, makes you realize that there really are as many ways to be and.live that you can imagine. These people are living proof. They're happy and they're healthy, and they're doing well enough that they can make their way back to the desert every year, from wherever they're at. A lot of the artists out there are lawyers and accountants by day, and [Burning Man] is the one time of year that they can be artists. Then there's other people that live sort-of in that childlike freedom all the time, because they found alternate ways to live. They don't have a mortgage or a condo. Some of them live in communes. Then you have executives who run major corporations that are just awestruck by this thing and even bring their teams with them for teambuilding. There's celebrities who go out there who costume up and stay anonymous. The event is not about celebrity. Everyone who is performing is performing for each other. It really attracts all kinds of people that live all kinds of different lives, and I think that's why its so powerful and impacts a lot of people. There's no dogma or politics attached to it. It's really inviting to anybody who is curious about it. You end up with an amazing mix of people who are operating under the same sort of social contract: "Hey, we're going to treat each other with respect and be kind to each other and learn from each other." You never see this many people gathered together and behaving that well.
Reel: Working on this film, did it influence what you're going to do next?
MW: It did, and I really wasn't a filmmaker, and never really aspired to be one. I ran a videogame publishing company and kind of burned out on that. One thing that Burning Man does, it may inspire to change your life completely. Or what it did for me was sort of get me a new perspective on my life. I realized that my life was okay and that working on something like videogames doesn't make me a bad person. It inspired me to start a new videogame company. I finished another film after this one, and I don't know if I may do another one.