The Brief

It was that time of year again – when some of the world’s & SA’s finest black musical talent, travels to Jozi to end the year with a bang! AFROPUNK’s Joburg Festival is the ultimate New Year’s Party, and Mobile Media Mob were tasked to capture, create, produce and finalise it all – the crazy-cool acts, as well as the artist interviews, the killer Festival looks, the build-up and behind-the-scenes, not just for AFROPUNK, but also for their sponsors, partners and media affiliates and outlets.

In parallel, MMM were given the role of mentors to the UMUZI crew. This Joburg Academy equips talented young people with the digital skills they need to access high-value careers. By making the process inclusive, we would upskill these young guns, while supplementing AFROPUNK’s youth content.

This was going to be a BIG new years for the MMMob.

The MMMob Approach

The MMMob kicked off the job with an extensive Pre-Prod a month before the event, and as the Festival day ticked closer, the intensity of our planning process ramped up. The MMM Executive Team and AFROPUNK’s teams, studied the 2-day itinerary, and mapped who was needed when and where, ensuring we ticked all the boxes of this epic brief.

A 10 person team was onsite one day ahead of the first beat dropping, capturing the buildup and setting up ‘shop’. The MMMob commandeered the second floor wing of an apartment block, located within the Festival precinct, where batteries and MMMobsters could recharge, and Social Media teams and Post-Production Teams had a designated space to make magic happen.

For the Festival itself, the MMMob grew to 35, many making up the multiple roving Capture Teams who were tasked with covering the various content themes, including the music, the style, the squads, their hairdos, and the dance moves. And fixed on the earth-shattering stages, we tapped into a multi-cam setup, which was broadcasting action to the big screens, and being repurposed by our content crew.

MMM were prepped to the max with an independent, secure and stable mobile data network, and an industrial Diesel Generator – just in case Eskom pulled the plug on us. Heavy downpours didn’t fizzle our sizzle either – we were prepped with ponchos for our people, and rainwear for our gear.

As the imagery and footage rolled in, the MMM Post-Production wizards whipped up the content at our onsite HQ, allowing AFROPUNK’s Content Team to quench their thirsty Instagram, Twitter and Facebook followers in real-time. Festival Partners and Sponsors, like Con Hill, Budweiser, Martell and Hyundai; could disseminate content live across their own media channels too.

MMM’s (daily) output of content was as momentous as the acts themselves – 1000x photos, 10x 60-second video, a 3min highlights reel, 100x photos and 2x videos for each partner.

And when the dust settled on the 01 January 2019, the MMMob started on the 6min highlights video, and the longer ,22min version for television. Both ready by mid-January.