We’ve all seen the adverts featuring a group of guys doing karaoke on the main stage at an unnamed festival. Genius, pure genius; but how could you host your own festival? And even if it is just you and your mates, surely you would need to be top of the bill!
We set our crack team of festival specialists the mission of helping you with some ideas of how to do it.
Stage 1:Promotion.
The first and most important thing that you need is a name. It’s easy
to choose words that end in fest or stock, but try to be more
inventive. We’ve chosen the inflatable pink garden sessions as ours.
You need to promote your festival so dust off the laptop and Google for some flyers that you like. Search terms such as “festival flyers” or “festival lineups” should give you some examples. Set that colour printer to work or see if you can track down a blah purple old photocopier for that retro feel. Make sure you hand it to your mates in the pub or while they are shopping. Your name, of course, must be at the top of the bill. If you need your friends to chip in for food and drink, why not add it to the top of the flyer?
You can get vinyl banners printed for relatively cheap so why not get
one of these for your house or garden? A good tip for keeping the cost
down is to only use letters (not images) and keep it two colours (one
for the background, one for the letters). You can then reuse this as
the back drop for the stage.
Stage 2: The festival site
Obviously you need to do this somewhere private, your own or friend’s garden or roof terrace could be good. Make sure that you check with your neighbors (or even give them invites in the form of VIP backstage passes). A good idea is to start early so that you can finish (or move inside) earlier to keep the noise down.
Designate 1 room as the VIP area (somewhere like kitchen is good) and brand it up. Make sure that you print VIP passes, wristbands or shagtags and give them to all your mates except 1. Put a bucket out in the open with a sign saying public toilet (don’t actually make them use it unless you think it will be really funny). You could also tell them they’re not allowed to bring in their own food and drink (pretend to confiscate it at the door) and have a sign asking them to buy bar tokens).
If you want to really go for it in the VIP you could get:
• An inflatable Jacuzzi
• Set up a working (but complimentary bar)
Stage 3: The main stage
The obvious sound system to use is a karaoke system but make sure you
have three or four mikes and it is loud enough. Add in an extra CD
player so that you don’t always have to be doing something. In the
absence of a stage why not but it on a raised patio with the main crowd
down below?
If you want to be really inventive do this:
• Either side of your stage put two projector screens
• Hook a video camera up in front of the stage and connect it to two projectors
• Project images from the camera onto the screens
• Add a laptop to one of them as well so you can display messages from the crowd
Oh and make sure the microphones are on a mic stand.
Stage 4: Lighting
Buy some cheap disco lights and set them up at the side of the stage,
make sure they are pointing out at the crowd and not in the faces of
the performers
Stage 5: The big day
As the headliner you should want for nothing. Make sure your “rider” (or shopping list) covers everything that you could possibly want that day. Rock bands don’t pop to the supermarket because they have run out of beer. Make sure you have plenty of ice, limes and champagne. If you want to go down the full J-Lo style diva route demand a bowl of skittles with all the red ones taken out or white lilies in your dressing room. You’ll obviously need some fresh towels waiting after for after your set
Make sure you employ the services of a professional driver to take you home (in the trade we tend to call these taxi drivers)
Good luck on the day, we hope the gig goes well. If you need some inspiration and want to check out one of the UK’s biggest festivals (before you start planning your own) then visit lastminute.com as we still have some of those ever so rare tickets left.
Comments