Ella Cobb

A little less than a year ago, I started working for the Office of News and Media Relations at Middle Tennessee State University as a Student Social Media Producer. In my interview, Bonnaroo was mentioned as a potential event that I could work. 

All year long, I crossed my fingers and hoped that I could be one of the students on the team to work at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. As you can probably tell from the title, it did work out for me. 

I am always the first to offer to help or work at an interesting event. I love the job, and I love the opportunities. I also love music and have attended Bonnaroo previously (but from the regular attendee side).  

I found out a few months before that I was being promoted to the Student Lead Social Media Producer and would get the opportunity to attend Bonnaroo with MTSU. I was so excited and counting down the days until Bonnaroo started. 

A few weeks before, I was asked if I wanted to be in a news package for WKRN’s Local on 2. I immediately said yes. Watch my Local on 2 package below!

The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival was scheduled for June 12-15. MTSU went to the festival early on Wednesday to start setting up. We used that day to film our news package and prepare for the weekend.

Around 50 MTSU students had the opportunity to work at Bonnaroo in some capacity this year. Our Media Arts students ran the This Stage. They rain the audio, cameras, directed, produced and more. It was incredible to see. 

We also had photography students and our student newspaper, Sidelines, was also there chasing stories and writing around the clock. 

For our Media Arts students, some of their live production work was even sent to Hulu to be live streamed. All of our students were so excited and proud of the work they were doing. They were also getting class credit for this experience. 

We centered our news package around showcasing what our students were doing around the farm. We interviewed students and showed everyone around. I have to say, I am so proud of how our news package turned out.

We came back prepared Thursday for the first real day of the festival. I spent some time before the festival researching trending audios and creating video ideas for the weekend. I was ready to have the best weekend and soak it all in. 

Walking around backstage and in the media tent of a major music festival was such an out of body experience for me. I just kept thinking that this was the kind of room I wanted to be in in my future career. There were media professionals everywhere working on editing photos, videos, writing stories and planning. It was so amazing to see. 

I walked around in awe. We finished filming some last-minute b-roll for our package and started to investigate on the farm. We enjoyed some really expensive, but incredible lemonade. 

I worked on filming and editing the first reel of the weekend: An Introduction to the Bonnaroo Social Media Team. Unfortunately, it ended up being the only reel for the weekend. 

After listening to Thursday night’s headliner, Luke Combs, we headed home to rest before the next day. 

We showed up Friday morning and wanted to run a few quick errands before we started to work for the day. I ran to grab some merch, and another team member needed to make an emergency visit to the wristband stand because his was too tight. 

By the time we made it back to the media tent to start working, it started to rain. Hard. They evacuated us and sent us to our cars due to lighting. While we were in the car, we watched our news package on WKRN’s Local on 2. The rain and evacuation went on for the next five or six hours before we finally went to get our stuff and head home. 

We definitely thought we would be back Saturday morning. We were sadly mistaken. Bonnaroo decided to cancel the rest of the festival for the safety of the campers and other people attending. The farm was just flooded

As heartbroken as I was for the rest of the weekend, I can understand why this needed to happen. Now I look back on this experience as one of the most incredible opportunities I have experienced through MTSU. 

It confirmed what I already knew I wanted in my career. I want the opportunity to tell people’s stories. I want to be in the room. I want to use my skills to share the world with everyone else. 

Who knows? Maybe I’ll be back in the media tent at Bonnaroo one day.