Student working behind the camera on the main stage at Camp Bestival

Students go live at the UK’s biggest festival stages

2 September 2025

This summer, Solent students took on key roles at some of the UK’s most iconic festivals. Their crews worked behind the scenes across outside broadcast, documentary production and photography.

The season kicked off at Glastonbury, before moving on to Camp Bestival’s renowned Castle Stage then, on to Boardmasters. The team wrapped up the schedule later in the summer by covering Southampton Pride and Victorious Festival in the same weekend.

Run by Solent Productions, the University’s in-house production company, the festival programme gives students the chance to join professional video production teams working in and around the main stages.

Delivering both technical production and content creation, students step up in various roles that they learn on their different media courses including broadcast engineers, production coordinators, broadcast directors and vision mixers, graphics operators and AV tech assistants; all combining together to ensure every show runs like clockwork. Others took on creative roles producing documentaries and photography that captured the magic and atmosphere of each festival.

Lee Davison, Solent’s Deputy Head for Film and Media, said:
“We’re exceptionally proud of the technical knowledge and skills of our students, but there’s no substitute for getting out there and doing it. Being able to take our students to the biggest and best festivals in the world with Solent Productions allows them to gain real, practical experience and graduate ready for employment.”

For over 20 years, Solent has maintained strong links with festivals across the UK, with students benefitting from the work experience opportunities from various courses including live event technology, film and TV production, journalism, music business, photography and media production. Delivering 1000’s of hours of live event production work experience for our students each year.

Working as part of the crew is a major operation, run to the highest professional standards. The team’s primary role is to film live music acts for the festivals’ IMAG screens (these are the big LED screens either side of stage) by sending them a feed from our high-spec outside broadcast truck behind the stage. Inside the truck, a student director will cut the show live on the vision-mixer and direct the entire live production by communicating with up to seven different camera operators as well as liaising with the technical crew. The final output of each act shown on the festival’s big screens. Alongside the many headline performances, crews capture the buzz and excitement of the crowds for everyone to see a magnified snapshot of the main stage - an essential part of the music festival experience.

And the jam-packed schedule is different for every show, so students learn to adapt to the needs of the festival clients. Starting their production schedule at Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition in April, students provided outside broadcast for the event and were then back at Pilton farm only two months later for the full festival. The main festival included outside broadcast coverage of the famous Lonely Hearts Club Stage, having acts like Fatboy Slim who celebrated their 100^th gig at the festival, plus roaming crews capturing the action across the site, including the opening of the festival on Wednesday morning that featured on the main TV coverage.

After Glastonbury, they moved on to Camp Bestival’s renowned Castle Stage, featuring acts as diverse as Mr Tumble to Tom Jones, where they not only filmed the main-stage acts, but also fed graphics to the screens as part of the show. A week later, students travelled west to Cornwall for Boardmasters, covering the outside broadcast multi-cam production again, for another main stage. Live vision mixing of the cameras, to the large screens either side of stage, for well-known acts including Kaiser Chiefs, Raye and the Prodigy.

At Southampton Pride Music festival, students again delivered outside broadcast for the main stage, plus live streaming for the two-day event. That same weekend down the road in Southsea, Portsmouth, Solent also delivered video production for Victorius Festival which involved an eight-person documentary crew making content for the world music stage for the Arms Around the World charity.

Roy Hanney, Course Leader for BA (Hons) Media Production, added:
“What really stands out isn’t just the reputation or the pride that comes with being part of Solent Productions – it’s the quality of experience students gain. It goes above and beyond what’s typically available within the structure of a course.”

Joining the festival crew gives students the opportunity to go beyond traditional production roles and allows them to expand their skills into specialised areas of production.

As Siena Francis, who worked as an outside broadcast director, explains: “I’m in the outside broadcast van directing for the IMAG screens, making sure there’s lots of close-ups so the audience are able to get a better view of what’s on stage. At first, I was a bit unsure of taking this role, it was new, but I’ve now learnt trying things for the first time is fine. I would recommend this experience! Just do it, its great, you’ll have a blast!“

Student Katie Northern, BA (Hons) Post Production for Film and TV, worked in the video editing team at Boardmasters: “That's basically me talking to the doco team who are doing all the videography and asking them for specific footage I need; so we’ve been recording a lot of interviews, we’ve got cutaways.”

"I would recommend Solent to anyone who wants to get into editing,” she added. “The facilities we have at the university are incredible for someone wanting to get into post-production. The course itself has given me so much insight into industry, I’ve got so much experience and we get experience outside of university as well.”

Oscar Beale, BA (Hons) Television student, worked as a tech assistant: “As a tech assistant I’m fixing cameras, fixing comms, setting cameras up and making sure they are working. It’s really cool being at Boardmasters, I get to see all the main acts, see all the lighting and sound guys at work – it’s a really good insight into the world of live events.”