2020 may have been the worst year ever for events and live performances... with an audience anyway.

Government guidelines have presented a unique set of challenges to be overcome when it comes to live performances, however, the Bolder Visual team were more that happy to provide a Live Stream for The Speak easy's acoustic stage at Freedom Festival 2020.

Despite the current crisis that we are all going through, this year's Freedom Festival from home; with the addition of the new Freedom Festival app may have had the widest reach that it has ever had, not to mention the increased accessibility that live streaming brings to those that would have barriers to attending the festival or even previous festivals.

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Strategy

Really quite simple for this event: Director/vision mixer, camera operator and a live stream sound engineer.

we wanted to restrict our movement to maintain social distancing so we mainly opted for 3 static cameras with one camera operator on the FS7 to get close ups and follow the action.

A big part for us as a production company is that the sound is crystal clear, (you can forgive bad video but bad sound will cause most viewers to immediately switch off) cue Pat who is an incredible studio engineer, he's mixed top 40 singles to working on blockbuster films at Pinewood Studios and I do have to say, as the guy directing the stream, when the sound feed came to me my response was, "Sound's great, nice one... stop bothering me :)

For the cameras we used all sony A7iii's for the statics and the FS7 for the moving cam.

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What was the biggest challenge

Without a doubt, the reflections. It's unavoidable, but it is what it is and for us safety trumps everything and we wouldn't have it any other way.

The screen was big, it was bold and is a true testament to Larkin's for throughout the reopening of bars have continued to maintain and set an example for social distancing and this event was no different.

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What was the highlight?

For me it wasn't anything to do with us, but just the joy that can be seen from artists actually getting some normality back and performing to an audience again.

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Jody - BV

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