Rock The Vote at Southern Lights to be Broadcast Live
“It’s like the Avengers of Dunedin are assembling” so said Max from Bunchy’s Big Score when talking to Kupe on Radio Control this morning.
Max was referring to this Saturday when fifteen of Ōtepoti’s best acts from the much lauded all-ages music scene take to the Biggest Stage and Biggest PA yet this coming Saturday.
For all of you around the motu, who have been wondering what the heck is in the water down here, yet haven’t been able to see most of this bands as they are from a criminally music industry underfunded area, this is your chance.
Dunedin’s sharpest sounds will be streamed live to the world, Tyler Cox tells Tom McKinlay. There will be nothing like being there, at Saturday’s Rock The Vote festival.
But there will be a pretty cool next best, courtesy of a livestream complete with MTV patina, laid on by more of the city’s young talent.
Logan Park High School students Tyler Cox and Akira Cotton, via their media production company Retrospect Entertainment, will be filming and broadcasting the festival live from the Southern Lights yard.
The retro aesthetic planned for the stream takes a leaf from Tane Cotton’s online WarPossumTV initiative, in which he records live bands sessions on early digital and VHS cameras, Cox explains.
“They’re published like that to give it that analogue feel. And we’ll be doing that with the live stream.”
“We’ll be using modern hardware but we want to give it the character and the texture of an early MTV broadcast. We’ll be doing film emulation or VHS emulation on the stream to give it that character and that texture.”
The plan is to have eight cameras at the festival. A couple of fixed broadcast cameras, then up to half a dozen other cameras, some roaming, perhaps a couple providing alternative views of the stage and one attached to a drone. That’ll all be mixed through a broadcast desk – courtesy of Strawberry Sound – and some open source streaming software.
“We’re also using different software for on-screen graphics and we have a completely separate mixing suite to mix the audio for the stream.”
Hosting the stream will be Dunedin comedian Will Murphy, who’ll be inhabiting his popular Campus Watch Craig Daniels persona.
Some of them will help to wrap Rock The Vote’s enrolment kaupapa into the stream.
Cox and Cotton have amassed a good bit of production experience in their young lives – across the likes of gigs and short films – but the Rock The Vote festival presents as a new level of challenge.
“We’re definitely a little bit nervous but we’ve got a few good years of experience around the broadcast environment and in cameras and events,” Cox says.
It also won’t hurt that a couple of Strawberry Sound techies – Dave Bennett and Jordan Edwards – are volunteering their time to help out.
The opportunity to be involved is clearly special for Cox.
“I’m so excited because all of these people, all the people who perform, I heavily look up to them – they’re all incredible, they’re all incredibly creative people,” he says.
“It’s an honour to be able to air these amazing bands and this amazing talent. It’s so exciting.”
And to support the enrollment effort as well. Cox, 17, won’t be voting this year, but he’s enrolled already.
Rock The Vote at Southern Lights
Saturday October 3rd from 12.50pm – 7.45pm
Bunchy’s Big Score, Coward!, Deaf Raccoon, Dolly Possum, Grace Gemmell, Motheaten, Rheumy, Seek Help!, Sivle Talk, Sogg, Strap, Talking Furniture, the pink opaque, U-No Juno, Vagina Dry
