During the first lockdown, when festivals and venues all had to cancel dates, Hull’s Freedom Festival worked in partnership with BBC Introducing to showcase leading musicians performing in unusual Hull locations – think The Beatles on the roof of the Apple Corps building, but 50 years later in ‘ull… and, er… not The Beatles.
There wasn’t a huge budget and (due to lockdown conditions) we had a very limited amount of time in each venue but it was important to bring some style and polish to the production. Thanks to BBC sound staff being involved in the recording, we would be supplied with a polished mix of the performance after the event. So we took fairly minimal lighting, we shot the set-up, did a short interview with the artist as an intro, then shot the performance on two cameras (one locked, one roving handheld – both 4k allowing us to crop and get multiple shots from each). As you’ll see from the film at the Deep with Downtown Kayoto we added a short bumper/ident type-thing, cut the interview with the set-up and then cut the performances split-screen with some added lens flare.
