Week 1+2 Production Task - Glastonbury Festival [Narration Exercise]

Week 1+2 Production Task - Glastonbury Festival [Narration Exercise]

Each production group were given the same 8 minute clip of archive material of the Glastonbury Festival. It consisted of performances of bands and crowds dancing and celebrating, setting up and constructing of tents and stages, interviews with people at the festival as well as the founder, Michael Eavis. A huge montage of footage. 

Our task was to reduce the footage down to 3-4 minutes and to construct and record our own voice-over for it.

List of clips

1. Interview with Insurance worker. (0.00 - 13.07) 
2. Essential technical items for when at a festival. (women) (13.07 - 35.02) 
3. 2 men on camp talking about wind. (35.02 - 45.11) 
4. People setting up tent (45.11 - 55.15) 
5. Old footage from previous festivals. (55.15 - 1.04) 
6. People erecting tents /poles/ gathering wood/dancing/band performance. (1.04 - 2.29) 
7. Guy in car, owner of Glasto (2.29 - 2.51) 
8. 2 old men talking about festivals. (2.51 - 3.01) 
9. Owner old day hippies (3.01 - 3.15) 
10. Hippies at Glastonbury outside their tent (3.15 - 3.30) 
11. Lovely people lovely music lovely festival Owner (3.30 - 3.46) 
12. T.Rex B&W Scene (3.46 - 4.04) 
13. shot B&W interview about Glastonbury being a euphoria (4.04 - 4.30 and 4.41) 
14. B&W hippie band performing (4.41 - 5.03) 
15. One thing that worries - gate crashed (5.03 - 5.10) 
16. Long shot of campsite (5.10 - 5.21) 
17. Another band performing (80s) (baby shot) (5.21 - ) 
18. MS of crowd (lots of heads) (6.53 -6.58) 
19. Bride "The weddings off" 
20. Cows walk in front of frame of LS of Glastonbury 
21. Wish the festival would never end B&W
22. Please don't pollute shot 

We noted down what every clip in the footage given would project. This would would make it easier to select the most relevant clips in reference to what would be said in the voice-over. 
In order to think of how we would approach what we would say in our voice-over, our group shared some ideas that we could discuss within the narration.

Ideas for Narration Script - What is Glastonbury?!
Establish what Glastonbury is:
- Where is it
- How long its been going on for
- Who goes
- What happens at the festival
- People's opinion on the festival 

We each assigned ourselves an area to research and script, then in next week's workshop we would share our script for our section and construct the main script which would be used for the voice-over. My section which I researched was the setting up of Glastonbury which you can see in the section below.

My Script Section: Setting up Glastonbury

With over 175 thousand people annually attending the festival, the Glastonbury Festival takes a huge amount of time and effort to set up and run. The 5-day long festival in June takes months of preparation to set up all the stages, the 8 km fence surrounding the festival and other attractions inside the festival which is this is mainly completed by a volunteer workforce. Michaels Eavis once said "People put heart and soul into the build and that's what keeps it going." With the exception of technical and security staff, the festival is mainly run by volunteers. Oxfam have been working with Glastonbury for years and provide stewards throughout the festival. They are probably the largest recruiter of stewards and helpers for Glastonbury. Most volunteers are paid in free entry, transport and food, while their charities receive the wages the volunteers earn over the event. 


Script Draft for Voice-Over

When it came to creating the final version of the script, it was important that each member of our groups section would lead into the next one, and that no information was repeated. Therefore, some minor adjustments were made to certain sections of people's script when we compiled all the sections into one. Below is our final version of the script in which Luke voice would be the one we used for our group's narration:

Glastonbury Festival is a five-day music festival, it is the world’s largest greenfield music and performing arts event. After the 1970s, the festival took place almost every year and grew in size. This musical event was organised by Michael Eavis at Worthy farm near near the village of Pilton, Somerset, England.

With over 175 thousand people annually attending the festival, the Glastonbury Festival takes a huge amount of time and effort to set up and run. It takes a huge workforce and months of preparation to set up all the stages, the 8 km fence surrounding the perimeter of the festival as well as attractions inside the festival. Michaels Eavis once said "People put heart and soul into the build and that's what keeps it going." In fact, with the exception of technical and security staff, the festival is mainly run by volunteers. Oxfam have been working with Glastonbury for years and provide stewards throughout the festival. They are probably the largest recruiter of stewards and helpers for Glastonbury. Most volunteers are paid in free entry, transport and food, while their charities receive the wages the volunteers earn over the event. 

Apart from contemporary music, other art forms such as dance, poetry, theatre, comedy, circus and other arts also on display. Glastonbury was greatly influenced by hippie ethics and free festival movement in the 1970s and attracted politically minded artists such as New Order and Hawkwind to play. In early 1980s, the festival was held annually. Some notable performers during this decade were Van Morrison, the Smith and Elvis Costello. The 1990 edition was the biggest festival yet with acts like Paul Oakenfold, The Cure, The Prodigy and R.E.M. Artists like Stevie Wonder, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney also took to the stage while band like Muse, U2, Radiohead and Coldplay also performed in the festival.

All sorts of people attend the Glastonbury festival. The most common type of people are hippies. These were the main kinds of people who attended in the 70s. Nowadays hippies still go but it's more indie and alternative people. People of all ages attend Glastonbury, it's popular with older people too wanting relive the Woodstock days. Glastonbury is great for all.


Conclusion

All in all, I felt this was a good task to break the ice amongst our group since it got us working in a team. It enabled us to work on our communication and decision making skills as a group. It also gave us an idea of who was more confident with the course too. I think that the end result of the voice-over sequence we made was successful as it was informative. If there could've been improvements, I would've liked more pauses between the narration and another aspect we could've worked on is matching up the sound levels from the interviews and music in the footage to the narration we had recorded. It was a positive task for our group and a good way to start the module, although I wasn't that confident with my teams overall knowledge and input and I'm hoping to be proved wrong by them