Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Documenting the festival

Because of its unique funding model (i.e. Warren pays), HSB continues to sidestep many of the necessary evils of comparable festivals. Notably, there is a total absence of commercial sponsorship. But in at least one way, the festival is beginning to resemble other large festival productions--cameras. Video cameras on stage, giant booms swinging from stage closeup to audience reaction shots, still photographers all over the place.

I'm not talking about third-party journalists. These were all in-house cameras, apparently documenting every jot and tittle of the festival, way more than I saw in previous years. But for what purpose? One photog told me that it's all for the archives, but what a great concert film could be produced with this footage! Is a feature film or video documentary in the offing?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I heard a rumor that Austin City Limits was filming this year for a special ACL episode.

Unknown said...

HSBF is on this years ACL show schedule which came out a week or so ago. It is scheduled for January.

I was told by one of the cameramen that KQED will be showing 1 hour of the film at some point in time.

All footage will be approved by Hellman.

I did notice, and thought it odd, that the soundboard camera was taken down for the John Prine set. Did not ask about this.