Bournemouth Air Festival 2013 (26th August - 1st September 2013)
It has been a brilliant experience this past week working with the Fonix crew on the Bournemouth Air Festival this year. Preparation in the office prior to the event has been intense these past couple of months but thanks to an amazing crew, this year’s Air Festival has been declared a success and the company’s best yet – so hats off and well done to all, the intensity was worth it!
The Air Festival was broadcast live over 4 days, 12 hours a day, to 9 giant LED screens placed throughout the 5km site to a record breaking 1.3 million. As part of the air festival’s television production team, I worked as the graphics controller and as a stand in vision mixer.
I’d be lying if I said working on this particular event wasn’t challenging at times. There were instances where I had to prepare visual graphic content such as lower thirds, news tickers, stings, live twitter and weather streams under pressured time constraints, whilst live on air!
Unlike working on a live show as part of my university course, where there is some degree of complacency given the educational nature of the environment; playing such a key part of a team working on such a huge event really threw me in the deep-end. Nonetheless, it has certainly been an experience I will highly value, seeing as it taught me just how to adapt to working in a busy television studio environment where stress levels can get unbelievably high at times.
My personal highlight of the event was the aviation displays but this was nothing compared to being given the opportunity to take on the role of technical director on the final day, which meant directing visuals for the evening’s aviation displays – an experience I thoroughly enjoyed!
I shall be uploading some pictures from this incredible event, so do keep an eye out!
Read more about it on the Fonix LED website at: www.fonixled.com/bournemouth-air-festival
Roll on Bournemouth Air Festival 2014! It’s going to be even bigger and better!