A look back at the production that was A Festival of Carols . . . 

This past holiday season FiveCore Media put a wrap on the production of A Festival of Carols, Goshen College’s annual Christmas extravaganza. Any live event production that involves multiple cameras takes a certain amount of skill to coordinate. This particular production involved 9 camera locations, several hundred feet of cabling, a 74-minute program, 11 student crew members, 3 days of shooting and the efforts of several different campus departments. It was a rigorous process, a little daunting, a little stressful; and I loved every minute of it.

Pre-production began in October. Amidst all the meetings about logistics, I was busy working out equipment lists, making production schedules, testing out new equipment and recruiting students. The most exciting part was seeing it all come together. I often think about what it takes to produce an event like the Macy’s Day Parade or even the Olympics. How much time does it take to plan? How many camera locations are there? How many people are involved? It’s amazing to think about productions on such a large scale and what it would be like to be a part of something like that.

Overall, our own production went smoothly. We would have crew meetings before every rehearsal and performance to go over production notes. The students had to know what shots they needed to have for what songs and remember their individual roles throughout the whole production. It was fun working with all the students and seeing everything from the control room where every camera angle was displayed in a nice grid pattern. Although, it was extremely hot in that cramped closet of a room, we managed to work through it . . . with a little help from a fan. After many full days, I walked away from the experience feeling accomplished and assured that we had done quality work.

Luckily, after many crazy days of production, I had plenty of time to recuperate. Christmas break was coming and campus was winding down as students hunkered down for finals. Oh, did I mention that all this was happening the week before finals? This production was such a time commitment for our student crew members, especially considering it was the end of the semester amidst all sorts of final papers, final projects and final exams. FiveCore could not have done it without the dedication of our amazing students.

We are currently deep into post-production. It’s not an easy task editing down multiple performances with multiple cameras, but it looks amazing so far and I’m so excited to see it all come together.