I bloody love this industry. Not just for the obvious reasons, but because of where the real magic is.
At Zeal alone, we had 17 shows over the last few days, from festival headliners through to touring packages, as well as projects we can’t talk about.
Like many other people, we’ll be sharing the end results from some of the projects we can talk about soon enough, with some impressive videos and images.
But the real magic won’t ever be captured in them. The real magic starts long before those 90 minutes of anxiety and/or euphoria fly past. The magic is in the process, the sometimes mundane, unseen and often unexpected places that are filled with head scratching, blank pieces of paper, and inevitable frustration.
It’s in the moments of camaraderie. The creativity. The cacophony of ideas thrown around, many of them still laying on the studio floor, yet to be realised.
It’s in the technical, operational and warehouse teams working together to find solutions to inevitable technical or logistical challenges. The marginal gains of meticulously working through every nut and bolt to make ambitious productions happen smoothly, and make the challenging look easy.
The overnight programming sessions where everyone is relentlessly striving to make the show just that bit better, despite simultaneously craving to call it a day and go to bed.
And all being done calmly, professionally, and being injected with a constant stream of fun and humour. I guess without that, we’d all quickly lose our sanity.
So, when you see all the fancy images coming up from so many people after what is a mega weekend for our industry, just keep in mind it’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are small armies of passionate and utterly wonderful people behind the scenes, from those back in warehouses already cleaning and maintaining kit that’s caked in crap ready for the next shows, the operational and project teams, through to the creatives who are already debriefing about how they level it all up, and asking, what’s next?
