CC-Lab

Advertiser funded TV coverage of the Isle of Wight Festival 2004, including creating sponsor credits for Nokia

CC-Lab worked with promoters Solo, sponsorship organiser Hothammer TV, Nokia and Channel 4 to cover the Isle of Wight Festival.
The brief was to capture the unique nature of the event, using an approach influenced by classic festival documentaries.

2004’s three day Isle of Wight Festival was the biggest since the festival was reborn three years previously. Headlined by The Who, David Bowie and The Stereophonics, it was one of the highlights of 2004’s festival season.

Filming in High Definition with nine stage cameras, two interview cameras and a documentary unit, CC-Lab produced two 60’ specials for broadcast on Channel 4 over the weekend of the festival, and two 90’ specials for international distribution.

The unique spirit of Isle of Wight demanded a fresh approach to festival coverage, and so we decided not to use presenters, and instead to package the live material with documentary style footage to capture the essence of a festival weekend.

Three days of perfect sunshine and great performances gained an element of additional drama from England’s first match in Euro 2004. Three on site edit suites running alongside the OB truck worked to create each of the one hour specials on a very tight turnaround.

As well as the festival coverage, CC-Lab also created the sponsorship credits for Nokia, which were shot and post-produced in house.

The live programmes were directed by Matt Askem, with creative director Tim Qualtrough and producer Celia Blaker. Executive producers were Jason Hocking, Justin Rees and Frank Lampen. The sponsorship credits were directed and edited by Nick Parish

The first broadcast of Saturday’s show drew an audience of 407,000 viewers, 48% of whom were 16-34. Sunday’s show, in a later timeslot, drew just over a quarter of a million viewers.

Both shows have since been repeated by Channel 4.