Case studyFestival · Newcastle
Northern Pride, Newcastle
Six editions of Northern Pride, covering the festival and the march. Live streaming, IMAG to the stage video walls, site WiFi and video production, with streaming sponsored by Maldron Hotels.
- Client
- Northern Pride
- Location
- Newcastle upon Tyne
- Sector
- Festival, charity
- Editions
- Six, including UK Pride 2022
- Services
- Live streaming, IMAG, video production, site WiFi, photography
- Sponsor
- Streaming sponsored by Maldron Hotels
The brief
Northern Pride is the largest Pride event in the North East, and dwmedia has covered six editions of it. The work spans the festival site and the march through Newcastle: a live stream branded Live at Pride, IMAG to the stage video walls through an ATEM, video production across the weekend, photography, and WiFi for the site itself.
One of those six was UK Pride 2022, and two were delivered entirely as a stream during the pandemic when the festival could not happen physically at all. That is worth stating plainly, because a festival that cannot gather is the hardest version of this job: there is no room to fall back on and the stream is the entire event.
Gateshead College
Six volunteers from Gateshead College’s Media, TV and Film department worked operated stage cameras and other positions across the weekend.
That is not a token gesture. A student who has run a stage camera at a live festival, in front of a crowd, with a director in their ear, has done something no classroom exercise replicates. It also means the college can point at real credits when their students go looking for work.
It works because a festival has enough camera positions to carry people who are learning alongside people who are not, which a single-camera corporate job does not.
2024: multiple sites
The 2024 edition ran across several new locations around Newcastle rather than one festival site. That changes the job considerably. Coverage has to be planned per location, crew and kit have to move between them during the day, and connectivity has to work at all of them rather than at one well-surveyed field.
It is closer to covering several small events on one schedule than one large one, and it needs the plan agreed weeks out rather than on the morning.
A studio in a marquee
The part of this we are proudest of is not on the main stage. Across the site we built a working broadcast studio inside a marquee and streamed live interviews out of it through the day.
A marquee is a bad room for a studio and a good place for one. Bad because it has no acoustic treatment, no fixed lighting, canvas walls that move, and daylight coming through the roof that changes colour hour by hour. Good because it is where the artists, the organisers and the community groups already are, so nobody has to be walked off site to be interviewed.
Solving the room is a lighting and audio problem rather than a camera one. Controlled light so the picture does not shift when the sun does, clip microphones rather than anything trying to fight the canvas, and a set dressed well enough that it reads as a studio rather than a marquee with chairs in it.
IKEA supplied the furniture on site, which is why it looks like somewhere you would actually sit down and talk. That is a genuinely better outcome than a hired flight-cased set: it is warmer on camera, and the guests behave differently in a room that feels like a room.
It is also the thing that produced the most usable footage. A main stage stream is one long piece nobody watches twice. A day of short interviews from a studio is a dozen clips the festival, the sponsors and the community groups can all use afterwards.
“The footage has been used to showcase our activities to sponsors, supporters and also as evidence for grant applications. dwmedia’s work is of the highest standard and we’ve received many many complements of our video footage. dwmedia excelled themselves during our biggest event by capturing footage throughout the day and editing this into 2mins short recap videos posted online same day, which helped us reach those that couldn’t attend. This has driven high social interaction and also feedback from our contractors on how impressed they were.”
The result
Six editions across a relationship spanning years, including the two pandemic streams and UK Pride 2022. Being asked back to the same event six times is a stronger statement than any single year’s figures.
Newcastle is our own back yard. We are fifteen miles up the road in Ashington, which means we know the venues, the loading bays and who to ring, and we can come and look at a site before the day without it costing you anything.