Get to Grips with the Music Festival Aftermovie.

The music festival aftermovie is quite standard in the modern era and is expected to be published soon after the event by festival-goers and followers. What can festival organisers do to ensure that they produce and publish a high quality aftermovie in a timely manner once the event has finished.

Prior to the advances in technology a music festival aftermovie was often released sometime after the event dates and issued in VHS or DVD formats. They were usually sold on a mail order basis through the festival merch store. These formats are now just distant memories and all content is now streamed online and technology enables high quality video content to be produced and published quickly.

Planning.
For any festival organisation that wants to produce an official aftermovie it needs to be part of the planning process well in advance and not an afterthought. Allocation of budget and resources will be a priority and in most case the work of filming and editing will be outsourced to a professional crew. The objectives should be clearly defined with movie length and launch date along with any potential restrictive parameters like format and bandwidth that may impact on final delivery for online consumption.

Equipment. 
Any large festival organisation will probably outsource the filming and production but for smaller festivals with limited budgets they may opt to do everything themselves. The final product may not be a high quality production but with the right equipment it can get pretty close. Using a top specification DLSR camera will always produce better results than any smartphone. The DSLR cameras also enable footage to be captured in a raw format making it easier for editing at a later stage.

Editing. 
Anyone tasked with capturing footage will generally shoot endless hours but it is the editing process where 3 days of content is reduced to between 5 and 20 minutes. In directing content it is vital to capture the essence of the festival including festival-goers, stages and acts along with the overall venue. Festival organisers should have provided a comprehensive brief in the planning phase of what they want to capture and anyone responsible for shooting and editing footage should refer to this. 

Release and Timing. 
Any official aftermovie will usually be released within a week or so after the event although this may vary depending on the resources allocated to produce the aftermovie along with any approval process. The aftermovie is always eagerly anticipated by festival-goers as it gets them to relive their experience of the event in a way their own video content never can. It is also recommended that a short 30 second clip be produced from the full aftermovie. This can be used for future promotional work and is useful for website home pages and social media posts.

Formats. 
The final format selected for streaming is vital and can be a constant complaint from people who wish to consume the content. The format will need to be compressed some way without compromising quality and the method of content delivery is vital to prevent killing people’s browsers. Take a look at our previous article on this subject to learn more Music Festival Websites Are Killing My Browser.

For festival organisers planning their events using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors, guestlists, ticketing, cashless payments and contactless ordering.

Photo by Terje Sollie via Pexels

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