ARRI Multicam at Glastonbury Festival

“Glastonbury Festival: Live at Worthy Farm” was shot over seven days at Worthy Farm, home of the UK’s Glastonbury Festival, using ALEXA Mini and AMIRA cameras controlled via the ARRI Multicam System. It comprised 11 music performances and nine spoken word interludes, with each artist captured and cut live on location, to create a six-and-a-half-hour global livestream film. It was broadcast 24 hours after it finished shooting to viewers at home around the world and to over 300 theaters, delivering a more cinematic look than any previous coverage of the festival has ever achieved, not just in terms of scale, but specific image attributes such as depth of field and colorimetry.

Director Paul Dugdale shares details about the ambitious project and the talented team and cutting-edge technologies responsible for recreating the spirit of the festival in film form. 

What did your initial discussions about the look and feel of the film include?

One of the best things about actually being at a real Glastonbury Festival is stumbling across things that you weren’t expecting, whether it’s hidden bars, surprise DJ sets, interactive theater, mind-blowing art installations or simply an artist you had never heard, whose music you become obsessed with. We really wanted to grasp that feeling of never quite knowing what’s around the corner and translate it to the screen.

Because the film has such an extraordinary ensemble cast, we had a great opportunity to create a sense of movement and a journey around the farm. We wanted the performances themselves to have a feeling of spontaneity and adventure, and to help promote this we didn’t shoot the performances multiple times. I wanted it to feel like we were balancing on a line of documentary and movie, where performances felt super real and honest, but in an environment that we had manufactured or embellished. 

Another key thing was that it was vital that we moved this project away from the regular festival coverage aesthetic and created something new that would feel at home in a cinema. The project deserved and earned that elevation, and I think that in this instance, changing the aesthetic like that demands the audience to be less passive in watching it because it feels like something less familiar, which is crucial to hold engagement.

How did you make a film based around live performance feel cinematic?

I approach every live gig or performance like I would if I were shooting a drama scene. For me, music performance is about humans and their relationships. We are documenting people creating something, so I always want to capture real passion, real tension, real drama, real escapism. There are so many tropes and bad habits in capturing music, often emerging from television performances driven by the fear of people turning the channel over. The appearance of something that is cut fast might ‘seem’ like it has energy and excitement, but often it doesn’t, it’s just a distraction.

We aren’t interested in creating false energy like that. Creating true engagement with a viewer comes from somewhere else. The most basic example is having a close shot of a singer when they are not singing. In a lot of TV music coverage that would rarely happen, but the currency of seeing that, and the emotion on their face, is worth so much in creating feeling, which is what it’s all about. Every decision is made to accent the drama of the music, just as one would do with a movie script. It’s as simple as that. 

How did you capture the action of the live performances?

Our method for capturing the action was different for every artist. A common key value across the performances was always switching between something intimate and something epic. Shifting the sense of scale throughout the capture and reminding the viewer that this is all happening in a really interesting and amazing environment. Generally, though, the approach for capturing action had to change each time because of the variety of setups and environments we were shooting in.

For Coldplay, for example, I requested a circular stage so not only could we easily get around the whole band, and look in every direction, it also really promoted linking the band members together and seeing their relationships, as well as all the different instrumentation they had on stage. Kano, on the other hand, was more like a contemporary theater piece. We covered it with a focus on first-person perspective, as though the viewer was on stage with him a lot of the time. It made the drama of the lyrics so powerful and direct, but also meant that when we stepped away from that angle, the change felt more impactful.

How did you approach the grading?

Before each artist we would set a camera look. In the past I have used live grade, where we have been coloring using Resolve in real time, during live-to-air broadcasts, to great effect. On this project, to protect budget and workflow, we painted the cameras live through the truck. Vision supervisor Mark Dunning, under the guidance of DP Brett Turnbull and myself, would set the aesthetic ahead of recording. The postproduction workflow didn’t allow for each set to be colored post-record, so live painting was the only option. Mark and his team did a fantastic job in realizing our vision.

What lessons will you take away with you?

For me, it really crystalized ideas about what the essence of live music capture is all about. Identifying the key values and ingredients that are required to make a record of something special. I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to be part of a project that attempted to do just that.

To see an extended version of this article, please visit www.britishcinematographer.co.uk