After spending a lot of time speaking with promoters, organizers, and the general public (those who attend live events), and trying to sift through the news (what is hype, what is real), we are left with as many questions as there are answers.
We are still seeing events cancelling, and we are seeing events still on course. Some of the small town festivals have made the decision to postpone until September or October, and then scale down their festivals.
I think this is a sound call to make. If you can afford to, expecting the real possibility of a 50 percent downturn in audience, scale it to one day/evening. Before Memorial Day, surveys indicated at least 52 percent of the live event public would attend a live event. Memorial Day seemed to show different numbers. Parks, beaches, open air live events had folks flocking to them. Was it safe for them? I don’t know if we can really answer that. We are still under-tested in the states. Upticks may be coming simply from more people being tested. And now there is talk that asymptomatic carriers may not even infect others.
So, what do we do when we have the event?
Matt Polashek, an audio/lighting engineer, talks about the details from the sound tech side – what festival organizers may want to be thinking about for the safety of the talent and the crew.
Your guests, most importantly will want to feel health-safe.
– You’ll want to make sure you have extra sanitizing stations placed
– Staff will still need to be masked and gloved
– A nice touch would be to have a supply of paper masks to give to guests who want one
– Have a quick “health check” station at entrance. (Take temp, etc)
Allow extra time in between music sets for quick equipment sanitizing. And if possible yellow tape or gate off social-distance area around production area.
We can help you with the implementation ideas.