I really think this video is amazing. I’ve seen a lot of festival compilation videos before, but I’ve never seen one put together this well. The festival commissioned these filmmakers known as Already Alive to make a video that shows the festival in a way that words fail to capture. Instead of it being a montage of the performers mixed in with some freaky shots, the bulk of the frames are focused on the ecstasy of the moment. And despite these guys presumably filming for four days straight, they’re able to make an all-encompassing piece that is under four minutes long.
What really grabs me is the pacing here. The video starts out with a rapid fire of quick shots, and also uses a nice touch of black space between them. It’s almost like someone opening and closing their eyes. Then it pauses and switches to these great slow-mo cuts with extended interviews over the top – really giving it room to breathe. And then the music starts to slowly build again and the images start to come quicker, and by the time we reach the end we’re back at that same rapid fire progression that started the whole thing off. Excite > breathe > re-excite. It’s like they get your heart-pumping but then pull back so you don’t’ get too overloaded, and then they come in for the kill at the end. Killer sequence editing.
Thanks for sharing. I really like this video! I think another reason that it works really well is the amount of different voices we hear. It is not the festival promoter talking the whole time ( like some videos I’ve seen of this genre) but it is the collective voices of all of the different people in the bonnaroo community that are experiencing it together. It goes hand in hand with the theme of the piece and I think the filmmakers nailed it!