#buckslivepresents

[onthebackline]

SubWoofers 2.0?

This is a quick follow up to the blog just submitted, where I’ll run you through some of the issues that I was more aware of at subwoofers and what should change next year and go into a bit more detail on some stuff I missed. After a de-brief of the Subwoofers, it became apparent that there were many areas that could’ve been worked on, small things that might have improved the day immensely:

Reputable Companies.

One of the most annoying things leading up to the event was trying to assure that we would get enough fencing, as the fencing company required us to have a telehandler onsite to unload it, but we couldn’t confirm when the telehandler should arrive, as the fencing company couldn’t confirm to us when they themselves would arrive. On the delivery day, the poor telehandler operator ended up waiting from around 11 am till 6pm while myself and other team members shouted down the phone at the fencing company to find out where the fencing was. This was one incident that I had to deal with firsthand, but during the debrief we were told how several companies or parties that had been suggested to us, hadn’t really been up to standard.

Most of the suggestions came from the charity, who had previous event experience, but not on this scale, and effectively working for them we couldn’t really reject their orders. Thankfully the small annoyances that came from this didn’t pile together and the event was still a success, but it becomes easy to see the value of reputation after this experience. One amazing example was Entertec, the company who provided both stages, the PA system, Lighting and the main generators for themselves and some of the traders. Coming up to the event they kept good communication with our main stage manager and kept pestering us for the information they needed. When it came to the day of the event they were fully prepared with no issues, and again made my job, as second stage manager, the easiest task that it could be. It's important that if The Hearing Dogs for Deaf People charity want to continue Subwoofers and make it even better next year, then they will need to establish contacts with a good reputation and to invest in networking within the event industry.

(Mainstage provided by Entertec)

Surprise Deck Chairs

So about 2 days before the event, we were told the hearing dogs had just spent a grand on 300 deck chairs for the event. In retrospect, yes the deckchairs were a good idea, even though everyone complained they took too long to clean up. The problem came from the fact that there was a massive lack of management when it came to how and where they would be distributed. The original idea was to have a steward take donations to loan out chairs to attendees, a donate what you like scheme. the chairs got delivered first thing in the morning and I went with a small team of people to help unload them, however, we didn’t know where they should've gone within the site and the delivery driver has just parked in the middle of the field anyway. Since there were 300 of these heavy wooden chairs, we simply made a few piles of them as they were folded and left them in the middle of the field. the story goes that since they looked ugly, stewards were told to arrange some of them in front of the stage before the site opened. This seemed to work out but the fact was there never was a steward collecting donations as no one had any free bodies who could work the entire open time and an easy few hundred pounds in donations were never collected.

Because this was such a last minute addition it was hard to incorporate it into the event anyway, but then there was little help from hearing dogs as they were the ones who suggested having a steward or volunteer, but then didn’t provide one when our team was just about fully staffed itself. this shows that we definitely needed to communicate to the Hearing Dogs better and make sure we had any ideas from them well in advance, but also let them know that we can’t just accept their ideas with such little time and expect it all to go right.

Team Specific lead up

So one thing that really annoyed the production and logistics team was being on site for 3 days around the event and arriving on Sunday at 7 am when the other teams only had to be in from 10 (I think). This could’ve been the grounds for an argument or two but no one really cared enough after a while for anything to happen. Logistics and production did understand the site better than the talent and marketing teams but that didn’t mean the manpower wouldn’t have been helpful to us, especially on the Saturday after the fencing had been late the day before.

The pack-down of the site had happened so quickly as there were around 40-50 people helping rather than just 15, and this would help everyone get an idea of the site if the helped build it rather then just turn up. And it would help reinforce this next point.

Pre-Event Briefing

One of the interesting things about the event is that all our team members had wristbands that allowed us backstage access, access on and off site and made us identifiable to security and other parties without having to be stewards.

I never got one of these wristbands, I never knew who was giving them out or where I got them from. As well as having everyone arrive at the same time to help build the site, it would’ve been beneficial to have even a short brief at the beginning of the day. so everyone can see the map and know the finalized locations of everything, so people without radios would know where the nearest person with a radio would be and simple stuff like that.

Thankfully, There were no serious incidents due to this, but it should definitely happen at a follow-up event, for organizers, stewards and external volunteers. I also missed a proper radio briefly, but apparently, no one had time for these (either to brief someone or to be briefed) and we were given helpful scenario codes.

Late Artists

I said in the earlier blog that around 80% percent of my artists started and/or finished late when performing on the main stage because we had the flexibility for them to overrun, however, we had no control of whether the artist due to be onstage was actually going to arrive on time. I wasn’t too panicked myself, there was enough free time for the artists to be late. but next year, that space could be used much more efficiently, meaning that set changeover times would be much shorter, and meaning having late artists wouldn’t cut it.

Artist variety

Ok, I'm just being picky here but I heard the same Robbie Williams songs on my stage twice and I realised I had way too many solo artists who could fall into the same genre. there was definitely variety near the beginning of the event planning process but it changed so many times and the majority of the artists on my stage ended up being audibly similar.

I feel like the talent team went out to find artists to fill spots on the stage, but I feel next year there should be an idea of what artists are wanted to fill the headline spot, what vibes they want for the crowd, and then have the talent team invest in the local music scene to find artists that match what they’re looking for. They should spend a long time building a lineup than just filling it as quickly as possible.

Conclusion

I think I'm done complaining for another 3 months at least, but before we go, it's easy to see some patterns within these problems and their solutions. The main one being communication. I think this has to be most importantly enforced between Hearing Dogs and Bucks Live. there were loads of little and annoying changes that got thrown on us, made as an executive decision by HD that we weren't always able to dispute. each of the teams should have a leader but i feel maybe a member from each team (maybe the leader, maybe not) could represent the team to HD, and whoever they should consult for info at Hearing dogs. Although, that's assuming that Hearing Dogs will work with the students next year. (I have no idea what their plan is...)

just a reminder, these weren’t the only problems we faced with the event, and some aren’t even important, but these are the ones I feel most comfortable talking about as these were the ones that directly affected my work towards the event. Either way that's all from me for a bit...

Adios amigos. Ill blog again in year 3 probably...

Hendrickx out

[onthebackline]

I am a rock, that is into Rock

Hola Friendioni’s, how be ye?

So it’s March 31st, 2018, also known as Holy Saturday, also known as Easter is an April fools joke tomoz and we’re all doomed. I'm writing a blog because I’m in a “need to start doing assignments and will inevitably f*** myself if I don't” kinda mood and this is definitely one of the better ways to procrastinate.

The most important assignment I have to attend to is to make sure that at Subwoofers music festival, everyone will be able to hear the happy and lively people who turn up to perform and sing. I had been bouncing around quite a bit and had moved from checking into traders at the start of the year into researching which ticket providers would be most suitable for the event to use, looking mainly into pricing and costs per ticket and such. and finally, I got swooped up from the Logistics Management team to help the production team to understand what backline is, how we can acquire it and what we’ll need to provide onstage for each performer. Finally, 3 yrs of Music Technology at college have caught up with me and I'm specifically useful to someone. for the past few months, I’ve been running between the Talent and Production Team to seize the technical riders from performers and compile an equipment list as to suitably support all the artists upon the day. There have been several communication issues from here and there and everywhere, which is always going to be a pain in the bum and it was for a while but it’s gotten much better over the past month and it’s made my job sooooo much easier. now I'm pretty close to coming up with a sort of stage plan if that's even necessary. I'm in an odd sort of place right now, I was in logistics but my services aren’t required for any single task there anymore, and I was never fully inducted into the production when I started helping them out; I feel I am in management team Limbo. And that's not strictly a bad thing, I’ve always prefered independent work then group work, and now I'm no longer taking instructions from either team per se, but rather I’m communicating to make sure my plans will align with the of the teams and the Hearing Dogs. with that being said I'm using the communication streams as if I were in the production team, and sometimes it gets annoying when a performer doesn’t get back to the person doing liaison for them and such, but the closer the event gets the more we get to bother people and I feel that these problems will eventually work themselves out. Or we’ll all fail.

Either way, I'm hoping to soon get chummy with the marketing team and see if I can help them when they go to promote our event, so we can really push the ticket sales up. and then if I'm really bored somehow I think I’ll research into the Biological audio science of Dogs, see what frequencies really mess with their heads, then I’ll get my hands on a funky EQ unit that somehow reaches 60hz and kill all those frequencies before soundcheck on the day. In other words, I want to see if I can make the loud noises “safer” for dogs without ruining the show for human listeners. would be an interesting research to undertake... I'm off to bed, need to get up tomorrow and praise Jesus, eat chocolate and argue with relatives. I’ve been listening to the band A Perfect Circle while I’ve been writing this and if you like progressive grunge (you do), you should give them a peep. (Tool as well)

Adios xoxo

[letthejourneybegin101-blog]

Winterland - The Days Leading Up

On Saturday 9th December 2017, Winterland took place at Bucks New University. There was around 3500 people coming in and out of the event throughout the day with loads of different attractions and activities drawing the public of High Wycombe to come.

For the event to take place it took months of preparation, this was a class effort so within the first week after starting university we were told that we had to stage this event. Initially we were told that there was going to be 4 different groups; marketing, production, talent and logistics & décor. I had previously created an event and I wanted a different role to the ones I had done before. I’ve never done anything to do with logistics and I feel like this was the best opportunity to gains skills in this area and after being put in that group of was nominated team leader.

There were my different this that were going on during the weeks of preparation. There were many things that my team did will and things that as a group we could have done better. One thing that I thought we both did will and there was some aspect that we could of don’t better was the communication we had as a group and communication between the four groups. The communications between my group was advantageous, this was because every week I would have a team meeting to set tasks for my team members and check if they had done their previous task and if there is anything that they had found that they think would could present to the other team member to add to Winterland. One thing that I always made sure that my team did was to keep in regular contact with any businesses that we were dealing with. I was responsible for all the fairground rides, so I had sure to send an email every week to make sure that everything was going to plan and to ask any questions that may have arisen in the discussion we had. If they didn’t reply to me I would make sure to call them to see if they had received my email and ask them the question over the phone, so I would get the response straight away instead of having to wait. However, although the communication between my team was good, the communication between all four groups, university societies that want to take part and other outside businesses could have been manage better. One thing that I thought that I could have done better was when I was approached by a society and they had told that they had my details from a person in a different team and were promised things to do that when they contacted me I had to turn them away and I feel that if we had discussed this as a group earlier we would have approached them a different way.

One thing that I thought we could have done better was both team management and preparing ourselves better. Managing your time when organising an event is something that everyone need to take into consideration and a primary skill that everyone that wants to go into this industry to develop and be able to maintain the highest level possible. Nevertheless, I felt that for this event time management leading to the day of the event wasn’t management to the best that I thought all of us involved could achieve. This can be seen when decorating the props that were going to be used for the event. there was loads of props that I wanted to make to make the event look special but because of the way that I handle my time, when it came to make them we didn’t have anything we wanted because I had sent the order form to late and, so I decided because I this we didn’t have time to make them. Also as a group in a whole everyone said that they would help in the workshop preparing everything for the event but on average there was about 2-3 people in once or twice a week trying to get everything done so when there was only three day left for the day of the event everyone was at the workshop trying to help and I felt that if we had around 5-6 people coming to the workshop every week leading up to the event, we wouldn’t have rushed to get everything ready last minute. I had previously send that time management and preparation was something that we could have done better because I feel that these to aspects are combined because if you manage your time and prepare what you were going to do then you would have to rush everything last minute.

There were many different things that I think we did well and things we could have done better and my advice for the students that will be doing this event next year or something different and advise to myself for my future events is take time management seriously and preparing myself better because with a blink of an eye your event is a week away and you have so much to do in such a small time.