Fun Fun Fun Fest Captures Creativity at Lightning Speeds with LaCie Thunderbolt Products

Since 2006, the Fun Fun Fun Fest (FFF) in Austin, Texas has drawn music lovers from all over to experience performances from well-known and emerging alternative, rock, hip-hop, and electronica artists. Follow us behind the scenes with the festival’s production team and get an insider’s perspective on how LaCie Thunderbolt products play a vital role in preserving every angle of the festival.
Fun Fun Fun Fest is renowned for its musical lineups and collection of comedy, food, and artistic experiences. The FFF video and photograph teams, led by video producer “Piggy” and photo producer Alison Narro, are key to capturing the creative, passionate spirit of the festival.

One of the primary challenges in an event of this size is managing the huge amount of visual content captured across four stages over the course of the three-day event. “The problem I face every year is dealing with so much footage from all the cameras I have,” says Piggy. “In addition to the stage cameras, I also have roaming cameras and drone footage, and I have to consolidate it all.”

For photo producer Alison Narro, the LaCie d2 Thunderbolt 2 is critical to getting the job done in fast-paced environments. Narro puts her faith in the LaCie d2, attesting that “over the course of the weekend, my photographers take thousands and thousands of photos – which translates into hundreds of gigs – and it makes it easier to have them backed up and mirrored to each other, making sure that nothing is ever lost. It’s great for us because in years past, photographers have run around all day trying to make sure they’re capturing everything and we’ve had memory cards get lost or corrupted.”

Video producer Piggy has a similar process to ensure that every moment is captured at FFF. “To get the footage that we have scattered all around the festival grounds, I have 2 TB LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt drives that we all bring back to the production area. We transfer [the files], wipe the drives clean, then bring it back to the stage…numerous times over three days. More and more, I’m starting to rely on the LaCie Rugged purely because of the transfer rate, and I can edit directly off of portable hard drives because the transfer rate is so fast,” Piggy said.

For their bandwidth-hungry workflows, the FFF team also uses the LaCie 5big Thunderbolt 2, which offers speeds of up to 1050 MB/s for 4K video editing on top of 30 TB capacity, hardware RAID 5/6 with hot swap, and dual Thunderbolt 2 ports for daisy chaining. Clearly, the 5big Thunderbolt 2 is built for high-intensity work. “The LaCie 5big makes working with 4K RAW so much less painful than it’s been in the years prior and, ultimately, I can have a quick turnaround time on whatever project I’m working on,” Piggy said.

Piggy jokes that there are other benefits besides LaCie’s technical advantages, teasing that, “Besides the fast transfer rates of the Thunderbolt and the reliability of RAID, there’s something about that LaCie blue glow that I like that’s kinda soothing. Otherwise I’d be rocking back and forth in the fetal position in the trailer. Nobody wants that.”

2018-09-04T20:12:37+00:00