Event Coverage Video Case Study: Bumbershoot

Bumbershoot Festival — New Rising Sun

Live Events / Event Coverage

Ongoing Support: 2023–2025

The Challenge

After a multi-year hiatus, Bumbershoot — one of Seattle’s most iconic music and culture festivals — was entering a new chapter under the management of New Rising Sun. With the festival essentially being rebuilt from the ground up, the team needed to reintroduce Bumbershoot to the city while laying the foundation for its future.

The ask was ambitious: capture the scale, diversity, and energy of a sprawling, multi-day festival in real time. Content needed to serve multiple purposes simultaneously — same-day social recaps to drive ticket and concession sales, evergreen storytelling around new initiatives and sponsors, and a robust content library to support future marketing efforts. All of this had to be accomplished in a fast-moving, unpredictable environment with countless overlapping events happening at once.

Our Approach

Element 7 approached Bumbershoot as a live ecosystem rather than a single production. With dozens of performances, installations, fashion shows, cultural presentations, and spontaneous moments unfolding across the Seattle Center campus, success depended on preparation, coverage strategy, and adaptability.

Working closely with New Rising Sun and their social media agency, We Are Unicorns, we developed a comprehensive capture plan built around two parallel objectives: real-time social storytelling and long-term evergreen content. Using a detailed map of the festival grounds and a full list of programmed activities, we designed a zone-based coverage strategy that allowed a small, nimble team to cover a massive footprint efficiently.

Each roaming cinematographer was assigned specific zones and time blocks, while a dedicated evergreen team remained on call to capture interviews and storylines as opportunities emerged in real time. For social content, we focused on producing short, high-energy sizzle edits centered on specific moments and themes (Food & Drink, Fashion District, Music & Stages, etc.) — keeping messaging clear, punchy, and aligned with the pace of the festival.

What set Element 7’s approach apart was the balance between meticulous planning and flexibility. By knowing exactly where we needed to be for key moments, we created space to react quickly when unexpected highlights surfaced.

Production Highlights

Filmed entirely across the Seattle Center campus during peak summer conditions, production took place in dense crowds, outdoor stages, and constantly shifting environments. To manage the scope, we employed a divide-and-conquer strategy across roaming camera operators and drone teams.

A two-person edit team operated on-site from base camp in the Armory Building, using a shared local RAID system to enable a collaborative, rapid-turnaround workflow. Media was ingested continuously throughout the day shuttled by runners, allowing edits to be assembled and published while cinematographers could continuously shoot the festival as it unfolded. Walkie-talkie communication connected all teams in real time, ensuring fast coordination and coverage shifts as needed.

With the festival’s playful, eclectic personality, we leaned into creative visual tools — including FPV drones, fisheye lenses, and kinetic camera movement — to reflect the constant motion and offbeat energy that defines Bumbershoot.

The Result

Content was edited and delivered on-site, then published directly to Bumbershoot’s official social channels throughout the event. Same-day posts helped drive excitement, foot traffic, and ticket sales for subsequent festival days, while the broader content library continues to support marketing for future editions of the festival.

New Rising Sun’s leadership noted the visibility and effectiveness of the coverage, commenting that it felt like Element 7 was “everywhere” across the grounds — a significant achievement given the size of the venue and the scale of activity relative to the team’s footprint.

Takeaway

Bumbershoot thrives on spontaneity, scale, and variety. By pairing detailed pre-production planning with systems designed for speed and adaptability, Element 7 enabled a small team to capture far more than expected — without sacrificing quality or cohesion.

This project reflects a core Element 7 philosophy: intentional preparation creates freedom. When the groundwork is solid, teams can move faster, think sharper, and elevate moments that no one could have planned for.

At its heart, this story is about community — the artists, organizers, and attendees who give Seattle & Bumbershoot its character, and the moments that transform a festival into a shared cultural experience.