Woodstock 2012

One of the most meticulously planned events in recent memory, Woodstock 2012 continued the two-stage tradition of many previous years and saw the introduction of far more video sources than was sensible and shiny new Studio Comms system.

Woodstock 2012
Watch Online
Genre:	Live Music
Broadcast:	Saturday 23rd June 2012
Producer(s):	Sam Nicholson Rachael Sherlock Assisted by Greg Ebdon

Planning

Some time in the autumn of 2011 Sam Nicholson got it set in his head to produce Woodstock, and started quietly dreaming up ideas. Fast-forward to the end of spring term, with dark memories of Woodstock 2011 and an all-night rig, the entire of Vanbrugh first floor is booked up from the preceding Thursday all the way to the following Sunday and planning begins in earnest.

Dreaming big, the production team devised an 8-camera, 10-source rig complete with hiring in a jib, remote roaming cameras and a 2-camera indoor rig in parallel. All this went into a document for Health and Safety and numerous diagrams and detailed plans, all of which (should) be archived in YSTV's documents drive for future reference.

Rigging

Due to a massive planning error, the new Comms system was being built as the rig was taking place, leaving a very thinly stretched team of techies to put everything together. Nevertheless, the rig started well on the Thursday evening, with most of the control room done shortly after midnight, and the team dreaming of finishing early the following day.

This was not to be, with intermittent rain slowing the entire process down, a series of cable failures and John Caine sitting in traffic for most of the evening trying to collect the jib from Manchester. In the end, everyone made it out at about 4 in the morning, getting a few hours sleep before the live show.

Live Show

The standard pre-show scramble ensued, but by and large broadcast started at 12. Due to JSS showing up late to set up their sound rig, we started with no sound and spent the early part of the show with a rifle mic pointed out of a window, and a comms system being hurriedly built by Alex Williams and Elizabeth Pascoe in one of the many spare rooms. By about 4, things had calmed down considerably and while the comms were still dodgy as ever, rain put the odd dampener on the proceedings and cameras dropped out periodically things were going well.

Later in the evening, one camera cable had completely packed up and the Indoor stage got shut down after the camera ops and their equipment were nearly crushed, but overall the show went well.

Aftermath

To save a late night on the Saturday, de-rigging was Sunday morning's problem, so the tech team diligently showed up and took everything apart (grumbling that almost no-one else had shown up to help them). Reviewing the footage later it turned out the audio had been running too hot for most of the day and some of the indoor camera angles were a bit dodgy, but after a week or so of editing the main stage went up online, with indoor following later on, see the link in the box for all the results.