A Harbour-Side Festival Weekend Seen Through One Client's Eyes

Dan runs a small music festival on a field above the estuary, and he rang us in the late summer with a problem he described plainly. A regional broadcaster had agreed to carry two hours of the Saturday evening line-up, and a screen at the site needed the same picture. He had never produced a live feed and did not want to learn the hard way in front of four thousand people.

I took the first call because the question was mostly about signal: where the cameras would sit, how the pictures would travel, and who would answer if something dropped. Hannah handled the scheduling side. We asked Dan for the stage plan, the running order and the name of the broadcaster's duty desk, and we agreed to walk the site before anything was quoted.

That first conversation set the tone. Dan was clear about what he wanted: a steady picture, no surprises, and one person to phone.

A site visit in mid autumn is a different thing from one in July. The light goes early, the ground is soft, and wind on an exposed field becomes a real consideration for cable runs and camera positions. We went on a damp afternoon with Dan and his stage manager and marked out where each position would go.

We settled on four cameras: a wide from the back of the audience area, a front-of-stage position, a handheld in the pit and a second handheld roaming the crowd edge. Priya, who would lead the operators, checked sightlines against the lighting rig, because a spotlight pointing at a lens ruins a shot for a whole song.

Marcus, meaning me, spent most of the visit looking at the ground rather than the stage, tracing the shortest safe route for cable back to a covered position behind the mixing tent.

• Four camera positions agreed against the stage plan
• Cable route chosen away from walkways and drainage
• Covered control point identified behind the mixing tent

The hardest part of any festival feed is rarely the cameras. It is the road from the field to the broadcaster. Dan's site had no fixed line worth trusting, so we planned a primary route over bonded cellular connections and a second, independent route as a fallback, each monitored on its own.

We tested both the day before with a short camera run, sending a picture to the broadcaster's desk and asking them to confirm format, levels and audio. Tom, who manages our delivery links, agreed the handover details directly with their duty engineer so nobody was guessing on the night.

A fallback you have never tested is only a hope. We would rather find a weak spot on a quiet Friday afternoon than during the headline act.

By the time the doors opened, the crew had been on site for hours. The first act went out as a rehearsal for everyone, including the broadcaster, who joined the link early to check timing. I sat at the control point with a monitor wall, watching each camera and each connection, and Priya talked to her operators over intercom.

Halfway through the second set the main connection lost quality as the crowd grew and the local network filled up. The monitoring flagged it before it showed in the picture, and we moved to the fallback route during a camera cut. The broadcaster's desk noticed nothing, and neither did the audience at home.

That is the whole point of the work: a problem that is handled quietly is a problem that never becomes the story.

• Both routes monitored separately throughout the broadcast
• Switch to the fallback made on a cut, unseen by viewers

Dan rang on the Monday, not to complain but to talk through the weekend. He said the screen on site had given the back of the field a proper view of the stage, and that the broadcaster had asked whether the same arrangement could be repeated next year. He was relieved, mostly, that he had spent the evening watching the music rather than his phone.

We went through what had gone well and what we would change. The roaming handheld had been the most useful camera for the broadcaster, so we agreed to give it a dedicated operator and a clearer brief. We also noted that earlier access to the site would give us more time on cable.

None of this was dramatic, which suits us. A good festival feed is mostly preparation that nobody sees.

Dan's weekend is a fair picture of how these jobs usually go. The client rarely needs to understand the technology, but they do need a clear plan, honest answers about risk and a named person to call. The cameras are the visible part, yet most of the effort sits in the site walk, the second route and the checks made the day before.

If you are organising a stage with a broadcaster attached, start the conversation early and bring the stage plan, the running order and the duty desk contact. Those three things let us say sensibly what is possible, what it involves and where the weak points will be.

• Bring the stage plan and running order to the first call
• Name the broadcaster's duty contact early
• Allow time for a site walk and a test run