Festival Behind the Scenes | The Northern Lights
One day, one set, no second chances
A festival is not a controlled environment. You get the set, you get whatever access the day allows, and there is no coming back tomorrow to grab the shot you missed. Everything had to happen inside one day at Hodag. So we shot it as a document rather than a production. The walk to the stage, the set itself, the parts of a festival day that audiences never see because they're happening behind a fence. Drone for the scale of the crowd, and interviews to give the footage somewhere to sit. The Northern Lights are a Nashville band with Wisconsin in them, which made playing a big country festival back in their home state a story with something actually at stake in it. That's the spine of the piece.
Who is
The Northern Lights
The Northern Lights formed on Nashville's Broadway strip, started by lead singers Garrett Thorn and Mike Godwin, who came to Music City from Wisconsin and Massachusetts. They released their self-titled debut EP in early 2019.
Access, on the record
The band came away with a document of what playing a major country festival actually looks like from their side of the barricade, which is the kind of footage that keeps working across their socials long after the weekend ended. Shooting it in one day kept it affordable for a working band.
