Evaluation of the‘Cranford International Festival’

This is my evaluation of the ‘Cranford International Festival’. On Saturday 2nd July we held the

festival. It was a great success however we did have our ups and downs. We all had to be at school

by 8:00am in order to get everything perfect and ready to hold the festival which would start at

12:00pm.

My role for the day was ‘stage hand’ alongside Marie, Sathma

and Khatra but I didn’t start my role till the actual festival

started. So, the first thing that I had to do was that I had to get

all the flip-cams empty so that they didn’t have any videos on

it so that we could film a lot of videos of the festival. I had 4

flip-cams that I had to empty and I also had to charge them.

That was pretty easy as Mrs Saroya opened up the files in

which the videos had to go in. However, charging one of the

flip-cams was annoying because it took really long for it to be

fully charged, so instead of using that flip-cam we used a

different one.

After I was done with the flip-cams Mrs Saroya took one of the flip-cams and told me to go to Miss

Cartwright, Mr Wasiq, and Mr Bray and give them a flip-cam each. The one that Miss Cartwright was

meant to have, had to be on the tripod so I set up the tripod and took it out onto the concourse and

put it in the place where it would be for when the performances took place.

Once I set up the flip-cam that was on the tripod I had to film people that were helping with the

stage i.e. decorating it, prepping it etc. After that I had to go to the drama room and film people over

there that were blowing up balloons. Then I had to film George, Michael and Mr Wasiq sorting out

sound.

Then when I was finished filming I had to sort out all the t-shirts and give the right size and right role

printed onto the shirt to each of the C & M Team. That didn’t take long at all, but then when Zahra

got here she didn’t have a shirt so I had to go around to every single person and check that they had

the right shirt. It turned out that Sathma was wearing her shirt when she was meant to be wearing

her own costume for the parade, so I had to sort that out which I did.

When I was finished sorting out that problem I went and helped Naveena

with the decoration of the stage. We had to cover the sides of the stage with

black fabric. We couldn’t find the same shades for the black so we had to

make do with two different shades of black. Once we were done with that

because it looked too plain we decided to add a red bow going throughout

the black. That was quiet hard to do but it looked much better and much

more put together at the end. After we were finished doing both sides of

the stage, the bows looked completely different to each other so we had to

fix that. However, at the end they looked really good.

After I was finished doing the decoration for the stage I had to help Mr Bray and the other teachers

put the tarpaulin up over the stage so in case it rained none of the sound equipment or wires would

get damaged. Putting up the tarpaulin was really difficult because it was really heavy for us to hold

up and get it right into place. The tarpaulin had to be held up by cable ties and that was hard too

because the hole that was in them was really small so two people had to be there for us to get each

corner right into place, which took much more longer than we thought it would take.

Once that was done I had to go and get some equipment for the performers as my job was to be

back stage and get everything ready there. So I had to go to music rooms and get chairs, instruments

etc. That didn’t take long at all because where I was told to go I found everything I needed to get.

Mrs Prunty then told me to help Marie put signs and directions up around the school to make it

easier for people to know where everything is. That was really confusing because Mrs Prunty just

gave us the signs, so we had to figure out where everything would be. We weren’t able to figure out

where everything should be so I went to Mrs Prunty and asked her where the signs should be put up.

That helped a lot because it was much clearer on what we had to do. After knowing where the signs

should be stuck up we done that in 10 minutes max.

During the Festival I didn’t only play one role I also had to take over the runner,

because whilst I was backstage some of the performers had to get out of the

green room for some reason so I had to escort them out and back in.

My main role during the day was ‘stage hand’ so that meant I had to stay

backstage most of the time. George was the stage manager so he had to tell us

what equipment we would need for the upcoming performance. That was great

help because we knew exactly what was needed and when it was needed so we

could set it up in the order it would be needed on the stage. I also had to help

the steel band take their equipment out onto the playground after they

performed on the main stage.

Right at the end of the day I and Marie had to go back out onto the

playground to help the steel band bring their equipment back onto the

stage because they had to perform again. Doing that was kind of annoying

because we had to keep running back and forth.

As I was doing my job I had to take over filming the performances because

no-one was there with theh flip-cam. That wasn’t actually my job but I still

done that, and because I was doing that Marie and George had to take all

the equipment off the stage themselves. But I was only gone for one

performance so that wasn’t that bad.

After the festival was over I was asked to take down the tarpaulin. That was really hard because the

scissors that I was provided with weren’t strong enough to cut the cable ties, however I had to make

do with the scissors I had. It did take a little longer than it would have taken if we had sharper

scissors but I still finished the job. Then when I finished taking it down I also had to help other people

fold it. That took pretty long due to it being really long and heavy.

We all worked together as a team to pack up the stage as it was huge and one person wouldn’t be

able to do that on their own. So that was hard because it was really heavy but we all worked in twos

packing away bits of the stage, and because all of us were working on it, the stage was packed away

neatly really quickly.

The whole festival wasn’t as simple as it may sound. Firstly, we had many technical problems. An

example of that is when one of the performers had a microphone and started to perform but when

she started to sing the microphone wasn’t working. We had to instantly stop the performance and

give her a different microphone that actually did work.

Another thing was that we couldn’t find the French singers. Three of them were already in the green

room and that was it. So what we done was we took one of them each and told them to come out

with us and tell us who else is meant to be there. That worked and we found all the people that

were meant to be performing.

During a performance we had a stage problem. What happened was that one of the wooden planks

that were holding the stage up fell. We all kind of started to panic, that’s when I and Marie decided

to go to Mrs Saroya and tell her what happened. She told Mr Bray and he went under the stage and

fixed that.

The last main thing that went wrong was that at the last minute an act didn’t turn out. There was

nothing much we could do about that. However, the good thing was that the act that dropped out

was towards the end of the day so we were able to cut the performance out.

‘Cranford International Festival’ was a very successful. I was

really happy that all the problems were solved on time

because if they weren’t then all the performances could go

wrong. The thing that was successful for me personally was my

job. I was able to get all the equipment on and off stage on

time which was very important because if we weren’t quick

enough we would cause a delay in performances.

As well as that the whole festival ran smoothly and the people

that came to the festival really enjoyed themselves and loved

the performances, especially the ones that we chose

ourselves.

If we were to organise the festival again there are a couple of things that I would do differently. One

of the things I would do differently is that I would ask the performers to come in a little bit earlier so

that they had a chance to perform on the main stage once

before their big performance.

Another thing is that it would have been much easier if we had

radios to communicate to the people that we had to talk to

about something. That would be good because then we would

have been much more organised and that would mean we

wouldn’t have had to be running up and down to find people.

Overall, the Festival was a great experience because I got to

learn a lot of things over the process of organising it as well as

running it.