Blue Fire Street Festival is a free, open-air arts festival in Dublin’s Historic Smithfield Square. It showcases food, music, and dance from the local cultures. The event is fun and friendly, mostly run by volunteers.
Project Background
The Blue Fire team wanted a simple highlights video to celebrate their event. They also planned to use it for future funding applications. The video needed to show festivalgoers enjoying food, dancing, and having fun. It had to appeal to the public and funding decision-makers. The video needed to be polished and exciting, capturing the day’s vibe and the potential for larger future festivals.
Weather was a challenge since it was an open-air event. Thankfully, it was sunny that day. Another challenge was capturing every festival element when the crowd was most engaged. The audience changed throughout the day so we had to keep an eye out.
Concept Development
We researched other festivals to see how they marketed themselves. We focused on showing ‘happy, smiley people having fun’ as a visual testament to the event’s success. This approach is common at festivals and concerts. We planned to take wide shots of key spots in Smithfield. Meanwhile we captured moments of joy in slow motion, moving toward sounds of laughter and cheering.
This strategy would give viewers an overview of festival attractions. It was also show genuine reactions from attendees. It aligned with Blue Fire Street Festival’s goal of engaging a broader audience and appealing to funders.
Pre-Production
Blue Fire Street Festival provided us with a schedule for the day. We prepared for bad weather and packed a camera, zoom lens, neutral density filter, an audio recorder, and a shotgun microphone. We also planned to interview the Festival Director for an overview of the events.
Production
We filmed everything in slow motion at 60fps, except for the Festival Director’s interview, which was shot at 25fps. We brought a small LED light in case it got too dark at night and to help with the interview lighting. The festival continued into the night, but the band stage had plenty of lights.
Post-Production
We chose a fun, bubbly editing style that matched the music. This style highlights the family and community atmosphere along with the smiles and laughter we captured. We used on-camera audio for the interview, but since we didn’t have a separate sound recordist, our sound variety was limited. The final sound included our stock music choice and the Director’s interview. This is common for highlights videos. We recommend including a separate sound recordist or camea to get more environmental sound.
We heavily saturated the colours in our colour grade to make the flags, costumes, face paints, and food stand out. The Blue Fire Street Festival logo was used as a closing graphic for better brand awareness.
Execution Details
Idiosync had one week to complete the video after the festival, which was manageable since the edit was simple. We used one videographer and one video editor. The festival’s budget was limited, but we adapted well. It was a fun event, and we enjoyed filming the bands at the end of the night. The relaxed atmosphere made it a joy to film.
Results and Impact
The final deliverable was a ~3-minute highlights video in landscape 16×9 full HD. We also offered a square format for social media. The video was released but later taken offline. It was used in funding applications for the next year. The festival team praised our work, and we look forward to collaborating again at the next Blue Fire Street Fest!
Lessons Learned
The main challenge was to capture as much of the festival as possible, focusing on smiling faces to convey joy and engagement. We shot in a run-and-gun style with minimal equipment to easily move across the Square and catch moments of laughter and dance.
This project succeeded because the festival was a success, with a strong community and family presence. There were many things and people to film throughout the day.
Conclusion
Idiosync delivered real value to Blue Fire Street Festival through hard work. By staying present in the Square all day and night, with plenty of batteries and memory cards, we ensured we didn’t miss any festival fun. Our client now has a fantastic video to showcase their successful event. Their video packages aided in fundraising and promoting future events.
Lessons
We recommend having at least a second videographer. The second camera should have a shotgun mic to capture all the festival sounds—music, singing, laughter, cheering, and cooking. Environmental sound effects would have enhanced the video and provided more editing options. We’ll keep this lesson in mind for future projects.