Jess during the manic ticket sale week trying to keep up with the manual orders when we crashed the system!
It’s 8:30pm on a Friday night… I’m still at the Easterfest office… the dad jokes are getting worse – considering all the males in the office have ACTUALLY gone home early tonight!
There is a nervous sense of excitement looming as the days before ‘bump in’ close in on us. The program is being designed… proofed… redesigned and reproofed… the marquees orders are being checked on… final sponsors are being locked in… this list goes on and on. I stumbled upon an absolutely fascinating spreadsheet the other day… 800 lines of everything that needs to be dropped off… picked up… moved… set up.. stood up… and who’s doing it and whether or not the task has actually been followed up yet. So next time you’re wondering obliviously around a festival (maybe even Easterfest)… that rubbish bin… that powered light that miraculously appears in the middle of what normally is a soccer field… yep you guessed it… it just didn’t “APPEAR”! Someone planned for it to happen and who knows how many where involved to make it happen and how many visits to the council where made to get it “APPROVED”!
There are four kinds of people who go to festivals
[Inserting disclaimer here... these views are totally my own and are by no means any reflections of Easterfest and are VERY generic... ok?!!]
Claire our awesome graphic designer burning the midnight oil to get the program ready for final proofing
Firstly, there’s those that actually love going. They’re happy to pay for tickets and obliviously wander around barely realising how it all got there. They dance… eat… drink… and just enjoy everything put before them. They occasionally wonder why the lines to the toilets are so long… but mostly they are just happy!
Secondly, there’s those who think they should get in free because their girl friends, aunty’s, best friend… is playing on the up-and-coming stage and they are taking photos for them. These people just don’t have a clue. Oh really?! It costs money to put on a festival?
Thirdly, there’s the event organiser type persons – firstly you can barely sit through an entire concert and secondly you definitely can’t sit through without analysing everything! If you’re a sound engineer you know what sound system’s cranking and you’re wondering why that don’t fix that annoying reverb! Or if you’re into logistics and you’re checking out their ticketing process or wondering how many ‘freebies’ were in the audience and how much they had to pay the band! You’ll even travel oversees and ‘volunteer’ to get into events so you CAN get behind the scene and see what’s really going on!
Heather is the chick who actually coordinates all crew... all 800 of them!
Fourthly, there’s the acts. You also wander around oblivious to all the work that has gone on to ‘prepare the way’ for your absolutely amazing performance. You wonder why your stage water is cold instead of room temperature like your rider requested. You wonder why the rainy weather has put your sound check back… or why there isn’t free wireless in the green room for you to tweet your fans… or why lasagna is on the menu again… and of couse there is always one more favour you need… and some of you are even paid to do all this! (I can pay out the muso’s cause I’ve worked with them and have even been this person! We’re just painful at times – albeit obliviously!)
So whoever you are and however “oblivious” you are (I’ve really overused that word this post!) just enjoy your festival or event experience! Those of us who put them on wouldn’t actually be doing it if we didn’t actually like it. No one does 18 hour days for weeks on end without some secret event obsession… hey Dave? I’m just hoping I get the adrenalin rush everyone’s promising me during festival… because I NEED my sleep and I DON’T drink coffee!
To close, why not have a listen to an interview done by ABC with two of the hardest workers on staff – Dave and Linda – here. (They’ve got some good tips here for upcoming artists too!)
Shameless plug – if you want to be blown away by this incredibly well organised event come check out Easterfest this year. More details www.easterfest.com. This festival is not just a festival contained in a park… it takes over an ENTIRE city! Over 100 artist are playing actually in Toowoomba City this year on top of what is already happening in the park.