Thursday 24 September 2015

Bucks Audio & Music Production Students Working @ Glastonbury


GLASTONBURY 2015


Five lucky students were selected from Bucks to work on the Pyramid stage and The Main Stage at Glastonbury this year. We've asked them to give some idea of the jobs they undertook, their highlights and whats been happening since....here we go....


Sam Newman



I was working for Skan PA on the other stage. In the load in i got very hands on with everything, including flying the PA (a d&b j-line rig), running multi's, building front of house (which consisted of 2 avid profiles on a flip-flop system and spare cat 5 lines for any visiting desks), running out stage VEAMs and building monitor world (2 PM5Ds on flip flop, also with spares for visiting desks) 



During the show days we were patching in the satellite boxes on the rolling risers and placing microphones. Got to work with some awesome bands, highlights being Jungle, the chemical brothers and Ella Eyre. We also were involved with changeovers and stripping the risers of microphones after every set. 



Since Glastonbury I went out on tour doing FOH and Monitors at 5 festivals throughout the UK. I was on a Yamaha ls9. These festivals included Y Not festival, Truck (in Oxford) and Tramlines in Sheffield. We provided full production across 3 stages. On our stage we had acts such as Don Broco, Lower than Atlantis and The Xcerts. 



Since then I was offered work by Skan to do a European tour with Crosby, Stills and Nash, being a system tech for the monitor engineer. 




James Desnapp



i was working with Skan Pa on the Other Stage. 

Skan invited me down to their warehouse before the estival in order to meet the team, while i was there they had me build some Yamaha Rio Racks for one of the headliners FOH system and help them load all the arctic lorrys ready for the festival.



On the Wednesday we got to fly the main PA system which was comprised of two main hangs and two side hangs of D&B J 8's and 12's and a number of subs across the front of the stage. On the Thursday the rest of the Skan crew arrived and the day mainly consisted of getting all microphones, cables etc ready for the Friday and testing and tuning the system



The rest of the weekend i spent working as one of the two mic and cable teams as part of Skans AB (or Flipflop) system, this consisted of meeting with bands, techs etc who weren't self contained (Bring own crew, mics, cables etc) and getting all microphones ready of stands and micing up everything on risers back stage, then cabling and line checking every band before they went on. 



Over the whole weekend i got to work with some incredible bands including: Jamie T, Ella Eyre, Clean bandit, the Maccabees and the list goes on. 
out of the whole weekend though, the Chemical Brothers where the stand out act.



Paul Abdullah



I was allocated a position to work with the crew at Neg Earth, one of the leading lighting company in the entertainments industry.



I met up with the crew for the Pyramid stage in the warehouse for a day before the festival. The day involved marking up truss, by numbering and colour coding each piece, so upon arriving on site the truss can be assembled quickly and also marking where each lighting fixture is to be rigged as well, such as the moving lights and strobes.



The day before the main arena opened, I headed over to the Other Stage, which is run by a different bunch of crew from Neg Earth. Here I fitted in well with the crew, which had a much more relaxed atmosphere than the Pyramid stage, which was heavily influenced by the fact everything had to be spot on for TV.



After chatting with Tom Lesh, the guy overseeing the lighting aspect at the stage, he showed me the lighting desk they were using, Grand MA 2, and let me have a play with it through the use of the connected visualizer (Wiziwig) of the lighting rig.



From there, Tom invited me back the next day when the stage opened to the punters and had me doing lights for the various artists that did not have Lighting Operators. These artists included some really big names, which was amazing for me! I ended up doing lights for Ella Eyre, Everything Everything, The Maccabees and many more.



I also had the delight to build the lighting rig for Kayne West, which ended up with me being given 5 local crew for me to instruct on how to build, which was a surreal experience, but a good learning curve on how to instruct people and keep everyone occupied.



After the festival I sent an email saying thanks to both the crew at the Pyramid Stage and the Other stage for having me. About a month after, I got an email from Tom Lesh, the guy running the Other stage, asking if I was available to work for Neg Earth up in Glasgow for their festival at Bellahouston Park. I was meant to be on holiday in Holland that week with family, but I did not want to miss an amazing and possibly once in a lifetime opportunity, so I took up the offer to work for Neg Earth.