Review: Summer so far and Sound Island Festival!
Working with Fonix over the past fast five weeks have been nothing short of an amazing experience!
It has been quite a while since my last blog post! This was heavily due to having been preoccupied with working on a number of exciting events following my first location job at Buckingham Palace for the Royal Coronation Festival. Now that I'm back home in Birmingham, my summer break begins now! Well actually, that's not entirely true, as I will be returning to Bournemouth prematurely to complete my 6th and final week of my placement at Fonix by working on the Bournemouth Air Festival - something I am really looking forward to!
Until then however, goodbye early 7am starts and hello late nights and waking-up-at-anytime-after-12-midday! I plan to really make the most of my time off in order to "recharge my batteries" as it were, given that it's been a pretty tiring past few weeks. It is also, of course, a great opportunity to update the blog and reflect back on the events I've been lucky enough to work on. So....where to begin?
Madness Concert (19th - 21st July 2013)
I was quite pleased when I was first told I'd be camera operating for a Madness concert. I was not all too familiar with the band at first, aside from their most obviously popular song 'Our House' but nevertheless, I was really excited to have my first experience at broadcast camera operating at a live music event. We worked on the concert for two nights; the first one being at Newmarket Racecourse in Suffolk on the Friday 19th July and the second being at Haydock Park located in Ashton-in-Makerfield which took place the day after (Saturday 20th July). This left us the following Sunday to de-rigg and head back to Bournemouth.
I was given the position of front of house camera operator on both days of the concert and I've found that whilst working on the live music event, the experience felt very much like working on a broadcast studio programme (similar to the ones we make on our Television Production course at uni) in the sense that the director/vision mixer communicates with you via the talk-back headset. Having said this however, the major difference with this live event was of course that it was after all, a LIVE event and so we were not given the privilege of having a rehearsal. If anything, it attributed to the thrill of camera operating at a live event for a music artist - something I particularly enjoyed.
Working on the event also clarified my understanding of setting up the camera in relation to the vision mixer - particularly looking at how BNC, XLR and fiber optic cables work.
Needless to say, working on the event was a brilliant experience - hopefully the first of many more to come.
Sound Island Festival 2013 (26th - 29th July 2013)
I was overjoyed to discover that I was lucky enough to be chosen to work at the Sound Island Festival this year at Quex Park in South East Kent. Even more so to see the WONDERFUL line up of music artists this year. Amongst the many; Rita Ora, James Arthur, Plan B and the brilliant Jessie J!
As expected, the actual event itself was a blast! Even more so since I was positioned as an onstage camera operator this time - which meant I was just inches away from all the artists on stage as they performed! It was difficult at first to concentrate on the camera shots and what your director is telling you to do (especially if it's one of your favourite artist playing) - but thank god for noise cancelling talk-back headsets!
It was quite a surreal experience to walk into crew catering on the second afternoon of the festival during stage sound check to see Jessie J sitting at a table talking to her back-up singers! Yes! - I kid you not!
I was told that artists rarely fraternise with the crew backstage and often keep themselves to themselves in the comfort of their own tour bus - so you can understand my disbelief to see Jessie J chatting to her band members so casually. In any other situation, I would have approached her and asked for a photograph just like any another fan would - but considering the circumstances, I thought it would be best to act professional (Blah!!). Besides, I found it amazing how everyone was just getting on with what they were doing, completely oblivious to the fact that there was a world famous, multi-million selling recording artist in the crew marquee. You can imagine how embarrassing it would've been to the be the one guy to break that professional working conduct. On the bright side, since I was sat on the table next to hers, she did glance and smile at me! Even more so, during her performances on that night - she was particularly attentive towards my camera and was totally helping me get some excellent shots!! I knew she recognised me from crew catering! Haha! Thank god for members in the crowd taking photos and sharing them on instagram and twitter!
Best event of the summer so far!! Was inches away from some of the hottest music artists in the industry right now and nearly even managed to get a picture with Jessie J!
