This is a personal account of my years working at the Glastonbury Festival Cinema.
Between 2008-2012 I have been lucky enough to work at the Glastonbury Festival in the cinema field, screening films and enjoying the festival. Here I thought it was worth sharing what happens behind the scenes and a bit about the equipment which is used. The cinema field has been part of the festival for a number of decades run by Michael Denner.
In 2008 I was one of the eight crew who work as projectionists during the three day festival. The crew come from all over the country and have a large variety of backgrounds and experience of being projectionists.
There was both an outdoor screen and a marquee all of which was either DCinema or ECinema equipmment – the first time that there hadn’t been an real film in the history of the cinema at the festival. The outdoor screen was running a Christie projector with a Dolby showplayer and showstore and a CP650. There were three films each evening on the outdoor screen starting at around 21.30 when it hard got dark enough for the image to be seen on the very large screen. The marquee looks more like a circus big top and ran from 11.00 each morning through until about 04.30 in the morning, finishing just about the sametime as the outdoor screen finished.
In 2009 there was also only the indoor screen with the same DCinema setup but with the return of a 35mm projector and cut down tower for a sprinking of the films. Instead there was just the marquee which also moved location geographically within the festival site, around to the accosustic field, bringing it much closer to the theatre and circus fields and the rest of the main festival. 2009 also 
saw the first 3D film screenings to take place at a music festival anywhere in the world, using the Dolby 3D system, and the same digital setup as the year before. However a Westar projector and customissed tower were reintroduced, with the ECinema setup taking a rest of the year. The projection room was made up panels at the back of the macque and was fairly spacious – it was also realistively easy to dismantle at the end of the festival.
The Glastonbury Festival despite being held in June is more famous for its mud than the sunshine, the heat was one of the biggest problems which the cinema was presented with. Not only did the heat affect the very large audiences which filled the tent for many of the films, but it also had a significant effect on the equipment, especially the digital equipment. Several large air conditioners were errected in the projection room and large fans also acquired. One of the largest problems was removing the hot air out of the tent and replacing it wth cooler air.
Screenings start early in the morning, well shortly after breakfast and are more or less non stop until 3.00am. Obviously the outdoor screen can only start once it is dark enough for the pictures to be seen.
The audience at Glastonbury is very different to that which you will normally encounter in a cinema. The audience is vocal -. They boo the bad bits, cheer the good bits, clap the serious speeches or dialogue, sing along to the songs and let you know when you have got it wrong – no tthat there are many mistakes, but things do go wrong when you are in the middle of a field! But best of all there is a a round of applause at the end of every film and a group of people who really do seem to appreciate what you are doing.
Michael Denner who is in charge, has a team of people who put up the tent and screen in advance and 
the equipment is installed in the projection areas. In 2008 the outdoor screen was a porta-cabin on top of a storage container for the projection room. This worked really well and was of course reasonably secure. The marque in 2009 had a wooden construction for the projection room which had previously been used for the same purpose at another event.
There are a number of main differences between running a film in a ‘normal’ venue and one at a venue such as Glastonbury. The main one is the weather, it has a bigger impact than in a purpose built cinema. If it is wet then the audience tends to not turn up to the outdoor screenings, but the indoor screenings are over subscriber, the grass quickly turns to mud and the tent tends not to be completely waterproof.
Of course if the weather was like 2009 then there are difficulties around keeping the tent and projection room cool enough for both equipment and people while at the same time not letting in too much day light. One of the other challenges is around being a temporary cinema, in the middle of nowhere for only a few days. Not only does it take ages to get across site, but getting on or off the site and back to any civilisation can take the best part of the day to achieve, so it means that problems have to be dealt with at a local level and a temporary fix has to be found.
Over the long weekend there are a significant number of films run (each film is only shown once as a rule) which means that there is a constant change and flow of films being made up and broken down if they are on 35mm or ingested and deleted if on digital. It is probably one of the great advanteages of digital projection is the speed and ease at which films can be changed. But the downside to that number of films, is that there is no chance to do any sort of rehearsal of the prints before they are shown to the public, which is one of the reasons for always working in in pairs so that you can watch eeach other s backs. It does however, mean that things like keys work first time without any problems which has not always been the case.
Both 2010 and 2011 were simliar affairs to the 2009 year, except that in 2010 it was even hotter than 2009 with no rain at all for the whole of the Glastonbury event, which caused issues for other reasons, as keeping the tent cool was near impossible. There was also a very very small amount of content which was shown on film, with the majority as a DCP.
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Below is a video blog from the 2011 Glastonbury Festival and the experience:
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