Factors to Consider When Organizing an Outdoor Music Festival

There’s always an exhilarating kind of thrill when planning an outdoor event. Outdoor music festivals are even more exciting. Whether it’s a large festival with big-name artists or a small music festival in your community, you will need professional help with production, stage decorations, and sound and light equipment.

With clear vision and direction, you can produce a successful outdoor music festival. It’s also a matter of surrounding yourself with a core team who share your vision and who will work as hard as you—from preproduction, production, and postproduction. Here are some of the important factors you need to consider when planning and organizing a music festival.

Select Your Artist Lineup

Before anything, you need to secure the budget for the talent fee of your performers. Then to make it easier for you, select your lineup thoroughly. Genre-wise, do you want to go all acoustic? Rock? EDM? Pop? Heavy metal? Or maybe you want to mix the genres up, but their songs need to be according to your theme, be it summer, environmental, socially critical, songs about youth and pursuing of passions—you name it. Be sure to add known artists to your lineup to draw in a large crowd.

Choose the Venue

Since it’s an outdoor show, a large, open location will be needed. Consider the estimated audience size in choosing the venue. The wide vacant grounds in your city’s main park can be an option. If there is an outdoor amphitheater in your area, that will be an excellent choice as well. For large concerts, when you set the stage, be sure to set up large monitors on both sides so you can live feed a blown-up version of the artists. Your audience will love you for it.

Secure the Permits

Be sure to get the permits for your venue. As this is an outdoor music festival and is most likely set in a public area, you will need permits from the city and, if they require it, from the office of parks and recreation. All your efforts will be in vain if policemen demand you stop your festival because the required permits weren’t secured.

Form a Production Crew

Your core production group consists of the director, technical director, cameramen, sound technician, and lighting professionals. Your production assistants consist of, but are not limited to, the following: ground support, stagehands, staff in charge of generator and power distribution, and security. You need to post security people at all entrances and exits as well as along the stage barricade.

Secure Sound and Lighting Equipment

For sound equipment, you will need a PA system (with amplifiers for the musical instruments), a monitor system (if you have bands in your lineup and the stage is too big for them to hear each other), and microphones. Your lighting should be focused mainly on the stage, most of them secured on a stage truss. LED lights, spotlights, and moving lights must be in the experienced hands of your lighting director. You need to have a sound and light check for all the equipment at least an hour before the festival starts. You must also have a spare of everything in case one equipment malfunctions. As an extra, add fog machines to intensify the effects of the stage lights.

Organizing an outdoor music festival is a major responsibility. But as stated earlier, you will be able to go through it alive—and maybe even stronger and more experienced—when you have good, loyal, and proactive people around you. And always remember to stay on the theme, whether you’re selecting performers or setting up and decorating the stage.

Production elements such as sound and stage lighting are only as good as the people operating them. So aside from making sure you have the best equipment, you need to acquire the best talents you can get too. Now get along and organize the most spectacular outdoor music festival in town!