The document provides an evaluation of the 'Cranford International Festival' organized by the author and their school. It describes the various roles the author played on the day of the event, including setting up equipment, helping with stage decoration, and assisting performers. Several technical issues arose during performances, such as sound problems and missing performers, but the author was able to solve them in a timely manner. Overall, the festival was deemed a success, though the author notes some areas for improvement if held again, such as earlier rehearsals and the use of radios for communication.

1. Evaluation of the‘Cranford International Festival’<br />-10477574168000This is my evaluation of the ‘Cranford International Festival’. On Saturday 2nd July we held the festival. It was a great success however we did have our ups and downs. We all had to be at school by 8:00am in order to get everything perfect and ready to hold the festival which would start at 12:00pm. <br />My role for the day was ‘stage hand’ alongside Marie, Sathma and Khatra but I didn’t start my role till the actual festival started. So, the first thing that I had to do was that I had to get all the flip-cams empty so that they didn’t have any videos on it so that we could film a lot of videos of the festival. I had 4 flip-cams that I had to empty and I also had to charge them. That was pretty easy as Mrs Saroya opened up the files in which the videos had to go in. However, charging one of the flip-cams was annoying because it took really long for it to be fully charged, so instead of using that flip-cam we used a different one. <br />After I was done with the flip-cams Mrs Saroya took one of the flip-cams and told me to go to Miss Cartwright, Mr Wasiq, and Mr Bray and give them a flip-cam each. The one that Miss Cartwright was meant to have, had to be on the tripod so I set up the tripod and took it out onto the concourse and put it in the place where it would be for when the performances took place.<br />Once I set up the flip-cam that was on the tripod I had to film people that were helping with the stage i.e. decorating it, prepping it etc. After that I had to go to the drama room and film people over there that were blowing up balloons. Then I had to film George, Michael and Mr Wasiq sorting out sound.<br />4471670120713500Then when I was finished filming I had to sort out all the t-shirts and give the right size and right role printed onto the shirt to each of the C & M Team. That didn’t take long at all, but then when Zahra got here she didn’t have a shirt so I had to go around to every single person and check that they had the right shirt. It turned out that Sathma was wearing her shirt when she was meant to be wearing her own costume for the parade, so I had to sort that out which I did.<br />When I was finished sorting out that problem I went and helped Naveena with the decoration of the stage. We had to cover the sides of the stage with black fabric. We couldn’t find the same shades for the black so we had to make do with two different shades of black. Once we were done with that because it looked too plain we decided to add a red bow going throughout the black. That was quiet hard to do but it looked much better and much more put together at the end. After we were finished doing both sides of the stage, the bows looked completely different to each other so we had to fix that. However, at the end they looked really good.<br />After I was finished doing the decoration for the stage I had to help Mr Bray and the other teachers put the tarpaulin up over the stage so in case it rained none of the sound equipment or wires would get damaged. Putting up the tarpaulin was really difficult because it was really heavy for us to hold up and get it right into place. The tarpaulin had to be held up by cable ties and that was hard too because the hole that was in them was really small so two people had to be there for us to get each corner right into place, which took much more longer than we thought it would take.<br />Once that was done I had to go and get some equipment for the performers as my job was to be back stage and get everything ready there. So I had to go to music rooms and get chairs, instruments etc. That didn’t take long at all because where I was told to go I found everything I needed to get. <br />-542925122936000Mrs Prunty then told me to help Marie put signs and directions up around the school to make it easier for people to know where everything is. That was really confusing because Mrs Prunty just gave us the signs, so we had to figure out where everything would be. We weren’t able to figure out where everything should be so I went to Mrs Prunty and asked her where the signs should be put up. That helped a lot because it was much clearer on what we had to do. After knowing where the signs should be stuck up we done that in 10 minutes max.<br />During the Festival I didn’t only play one role I also had to take over the runner, because whilst I was backstage some of the performers had to get out of the green room for some reason so I had to escort them out and back in. <br />My main role during the day was ‘stage hand’ so that meant I had to stay backstage most of the time. George was the stage manager so he had to tell us what equipment we would need for the upcoming performance. That was great help because we knew exactly what was needed and when it was needed so we could set it up in the order it would be needed on the stage. I also had to help the steel band take their equipment out onto the playground after they performed on the main stage.<br />43529259334500Right at the end of the day I and Marie had to go back out onto the playground to help the steel band bring their equipment back onto the stage because they had to perform again. Doing that was kind of annoying because we had to keep running back and forth. <br />As I was doing my job I had to take over filming the performances because no-one was there with theh flip-cam. That wasn’t actually my job but I still done that, and because I was doing that Marie and George had to take all the equipment off the stage themselves. But I was only gone for one performance so that wasn’t that bad.<br />After the festival was over I was asked to take down the tarpaulin. That was really hard because the scissors that I was provided with weren’t strong enough to cut the cable ties, however I had to make do with the scissors I had. It did take a little longer than it would have taken if we had sharper scissors but I still finished the job. Then when I finished taking it down I also had to help other people fold it. That took pretty long due to it being really long and heavy. <br />We all worked together as a team to pack up the stage as it was huge and one person wouldn’t be able to do that on their own. So that was hard because it was really heavy but we all worked in twos packing away bits of the stage, and because all of us were working on it, the stage was packed away neatly really quickly.<br />The whole festival wasn’t as simple as it may sound. Firstly, we had many technical problems. An example of that is when one of the performers had a microphone and started to perform but when she started to sing the microphone wasn’t working. We had to instantly stop the performance and give her a different microphone that actually did work. <br />Another thing was that we couldn’t find the French singers. Three of them were already in the green room and that was it. So what we done was we took one of them each and told them to come out with us and tell us who else is meant to be there. That worked and we found all the people that were meant to be performing.<br />During a performance we had a stage problem. What happened was that one of the wooden planks that were holding the stage up fell. We all kind of started to panic, that’s when I and Marie decided to go to Mrs Saroya and tell her what happened. She told Mr Bray and he went under the stage and fixed that.<br />-53340077089000The last main thing that went wrong was that at the last minute an act didn’t turn out. There was nothing much we could do about that. However, the good thing was that the act that dropped out was towards the end of the day so we were able to cut the performance out.<br />‘Cranford International Festival’ was a very successful. I was really happy that all the problems were solved on time because if they weren’t then all the performances could go wrong. The thing that was successful for me personally was my job. I was able to get all the equipment on and off stage on time which was very important because if we weren’t quick enough we would cause a delay in performances.<br />As well as that the whole festival ran smoothly and the people that came to the festival really enjoyed themselves and loved the performances, especially the ones that we chose ourselves. <br />378079047752000If we were to organise the festival again there are a couple of things that I would do differently. One of the things I would do differently is that I would ask the performers to come in a little bit earlier so that they had a chance to perform on the main stage once before their big performance.<br />Another thing is that it would have been much easier if we had radios to communicate to the people that we had to talk to about something. That would be good because then we would have been much more organised and that would mean we wouldn’t have had to be running up and down to find people.<br />Overall, the Festival was a great experience because I got to learn a lot of things over the process of organising it as well as running it. <br />