hardnews.nl: With the festival season of 2015 knocking on our doorstep, we were curious what your favorite stages are. We asked you to vote on Facebook and Twitter and received a massive response! It took a while to look at all your comments, but we managed to compile a Top 25.
5 comments:
This article was particularly interesting to me because I am so interested in festival management and producing. The stage is a very important part of festivals and has started to gain a little attention at alternative and rock music festivals because of their clever names such as Bonnaroo. Example names include This Tent, That Tent, The Other Stage, and Which Stage. What this and the exuberant designs that were presented on the article tell me is that people are now interested in a sense of a cohesive event. Gathering a bunch of artists and having them play music is no longer acceptable. The festival now needs to have a reputation and make a true experience for the festivalgoers. What’s interesting about the festivals listed in the article is that a good portion of the festivals are not located in the United States. I believe that this has to do with music tastes. Most of the festivals on this list are electronic or dance music events, not rock, which is what the typical reputation of a festival here is.
I liked looking at this article because it shows that there is a huge world of design and production outside of the theatrical world that could potentially hold amazing job opportunities. I for one would love to work either as a tech or as a designer for one of these amazing festivals. It’s important to know the opportunities outside the strict category of dramatic arts that the skills we develop here at CMU allow us to pursue. If we realize the versatility of our skills, then we can make ourselves more marketable to more people. Another component to it is that these events are really cool, and often use some of the most recent and interesting developments in technology. If we take advantage of the exposure to that technology, maybe we will be able to learn new skills and problem solving techniques that can be applied in the more traditional markets.
To be a designer for these stages in all aspects from lighting to scenic must have been one heck of a ride. You’ve got to be able to truly think outside the box, to create a design for what looks to be a fairly large stage. There is a reason these are a top twenty five and not just one. How could you possibly pick just one? Each of them bring their own unique flavor and appeal to the performance. Also just by looking at them, I’m sure there was a theme for as to why each one ended up the way it did. If I had to pick I would choose number 7, 15, 22, and 23. Everyone has their own tastes, and that’s what draws people to these events; the atmosphere. Being in a space with everyone who is there for the same thing, to have a good time with friends, and enjoy the events of the day and night. What I would want to do, is break down the different components to get an idea as to the construction involved to make these structures possible; and I’m sure I’m right when I can say plenty of steel was used.
A lot of these sets look really cool, and I’d be interested in seeing what sort of “things” they could do. Like, if there’s any built in automation that does super cool stuff or how different it would look under different lights. It would be great if the article included a brief blurb under each thing that listed some of the cool things about the stage, maybe the budget, who designed it and who built it. One of the comments on the article was rally interesting because it was asking if anyone knew who the designers were. It’s great to see that there are people who appreciate the stages enough to want to know who to credit for designing them. Something that surprised me about the article was how cohesive some of these designs were. Typically I’ve seen concert pictures that have a cool design that works, but it’s not cohesively telling a story. Some of these ones though had a ye olde vibe or a dragon sort of theme, and it was interesting to see these stages that were very thematic. Besides seeing iconic things like a Rolling Stones Tongue or other band logos, I hadn’t really seen this sort of cohesion. I’m not sure how I felt about some of those designs, but I did appreciate how they stuck to a theme.
These venues are really cool looking. It just goes to show what awesome thing you can do with festival design and set design. Since I don't really want to do scenic design this article really appealed to me because I like to see the opportunities outside of the theatre. The opportunities in festival, venues, and pavilion design really interest me because of their connection to worlds fair and themed entertainment. From early on festivals have had a stigma around them that make you expect the same thing over and over. but seeing different venues like this really makes each experience unique and special to the guests going to see them. Many people just like to see these while going out but many people don't realize how much a great design adds to a festival experience. I hope they continue to innovate this field in new ways and come up with more designs like this.
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