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.
