Leila has been a member of the Standard Bank Jazz Festival team for over 7 years as a venue manager and logistics assistant, but in 2020, with the pandemic in full swing, we had to shift gears in how the Jazz Festival and National Arts Festival would be happening. OCTOPI was brought onboard to run the content side of that process, and produce videos for 23 performances between Joburg and Cape Town in June of 2020 so that the festival could now be seen across the world.
With a team of videographers in Cape Town and Joburg, editors dotted across the country, and a rather precarious AWS system, we moved footage across great distance in order to have the videos ready in the nick of time. Still in level 4 lockdown at the time, it truly was a bizarre experience standing in the Artscape Theatre with world-class musicians performing to an empty auditorium.
