Leading post-production house Optimus is the official production partner of the Pitchfork Music Festival, a three-day event showcasing over 40 of independent music’s best bands and artists on three stages. This marks the fifth year running that Optimus has had the privilege of collaborating with festival Director Mike Reed and Content Producer Johnathan Crawford, founder of Domowit, to provide original content and handle live video feeds of the performance and crowds during the show. The Pitchfork Music Festival takes place at Chicago’s Union Park July 15-17.
This year, a team of 25 Optimus employees will be operating cameras and managing data flow both on- and off-site. Optimus also will create animation for the independent music festival and its sponsors, as well as assemble a reel that will be played on jumbotrons between bands and on the live stream.
Optimus Audio Engineer Joel Anderson leads the team responsible for helping coordinate, shoot and produce the live video feeds. “Our work with Pitchfork is very much a passion project that reflects our dedication to the indie music scene, and it provides the folks at Optimus with a great opportunity to step out and do something a bit different,” comments Anderson. “By working on a festival such as Pitchfork, we gain a creative edge that makes us better at our day-to-day work.”
Optimus Creative Director Mike Ciacciarelli and his team have partnered with Pitchfork as a design partner to develop bumpers, animated logos and animation for an app. “For this year’s festival, we developed custom bumpers representing each Pitchfork stage to match the festival’s laid back ‘summer day’ theme. They will play between acts on the three different stages,” says Ciacciarelli. “In addition, we developed an animated logo for Pitchfork sponsor eMusic that will play as part of the sponsor reel that loops between acts. Finally, we developed animation for a festival app that Pitchfork developed with Diacarta to give attendees information about what bands are coming up next, where they’ll be playing, set favorites and more.”
For more information on Optimus and the Pitchfork Music Festival, please visit www.optimus.com and www.pitchforkmusicfestival.com.
About Optimus and ONE at Optimus
Optimus is a leading post-production and production house with offices in Chicago and Santa Monica. Optimus offers a full suite of creative services, including production, editing, film transfer, color correction, visual effects and design, audio mixing and finishing. With ONE, the company’s live-action production arm, Optimus offers all production services, from shoot through post, under one roof – a singular, streamlined creative-driven machine. For more information, please visit www.optimus.com and www.oneatoptimus.com.