Feature || What Festival Aftermovie's Hide

5 Things They'll Never Show You In The Aftermovie

By: Eugene Carolus

For all the week-long hype surrounding the Ultra South Africa aftermovie a few months ago and the impending social media explosion upon the release of the Tomorrowland and Ultra Miami aftermovies soon to follow, we couldn't help but feel a sense of severe amnesia, whether or not induced by one too many tequila shots, from having attended these events and not remembering the crowd being 90% hot girls raging at full capacity for 7 hours straight. For all the impressive video editing, colour correction and impossible camera angles, there's now such a disparity between what's depicted in an aftermovie and what you're actually experiencing in reality that we've taken it upon ourselves to list some things a potential festival attendee commenting in excited all caps in a YouTube comment thread is not being made aware of in the aftermovie.

Yes, people actually sweat:

Now, being a human walking around in a fully functioning meat suit you can expect things to get a bit hot and sweaty when in a crowd of scantily clad attendees packed tighter than a can of Lucky Star sardines, all gyrating and writhing in a collective, sexless mass of limbs that would even make Satan gasp. Don't go into it expecting everyone to look like they've stepped off a Dove commercial set, you'll have your fair share of contact with the guy in front of you's bacne and unshaved armpits that'll have you having severe flashbacks to your mother's personal hygiene lectures in the middle of a Hardwell set.

Irritable and territorial gym bros

We've all seen them, riding into the event parking lot with a tub of protein shake powder and creatine on the back seat blasting psytrance on a budget sound system. Thing is, in a crowd situation you might as well be dancing next to a nuclear reactor strapped to a pair of legs. So much as brush against these fellas or look at their girls while squirming your way back through the thicket to your spot in the crowd and they will explode in a fit of testosterone, faded tribal tattoos and WWE one liners straight out of 2005. Like chill, I'm not that into girls whose last Facebook update was about how The Fault In Our Stars gave them so many feels and a fake Marilyn Monroe quote tattooed on their wrists.

Queues, queues everywhere!

Going to festival? Then prepare to be in a queue at some point along your journey because there's no escaping those long, snake-like manifestations of impatience. Whether you're at bar annoyed because of that one friend who didn't buy a drink with everyone else earlier and now you're missing the fifth play of Animals that day or whether you're in a queue outside a blue portable toilet wondering if the last person who went in passed out in there, you're going to wait. So engage with your fellow queue mate in no matter how drab a conversation you can because shit is about to get real. Wow, that was a terrible pun.

"EDM girls are so hot!" lol

Screw what you've seen in the aftermovie, the majority of the human population aren't that hot in real life, despite what that one good angle they keep using on their Instagram might have you believe. It's easy to assume that you'll be partying it up with Victoria's Secret models when only a certain archetype is depicted dancing with hair flowing in 120 frames per second. Reducing the colourful South African crowd to a single demographic is a downright shame. Yes, yes, it's more marketable that way but the amount of confused foreigners commenting on the Ultra South Africa aftermovie about the lack of black people in attendance kind of raised a valid point, despite how ignorant and uneducated those comments were. There were lots of black, indian and coloured people there, something you definitely wouldn't see at your traditional EDM event locally, which is great for the scene, why not show that to the world a bit more?

"Did you see that!" "No, I didn't"

Yes, girls on shoulders are a problem. Great for the DJ and camera, but not so great for me standing directly behind you. Being in a packed crowd, it's not like I have much alternative to resort to when  you decide to form a human giraffe in the middle of a concert. We're left having to hope someone from the back has an empty plastic cup and a primary school cricket team bowling history or that your boyfriend skipped upper body workouts this month and wears out sometime in the next ten minutes. EDM crowds are a fussy bunch and so help you if you block our view of Steve Aoki fiddling with another knob.

Don't get me wrong, festivals are great and you're most likely to have the best time of your life at one or at the very least a spiritual awakening that could rival any religious icon's foray into the desert for 40 days and nights, but when you're attending with thousands of others, all just as hormonal, moody and imperfect as the next guy, things can tend to get a little hairy. Hell, phone up your unemployed philosophy major buddy and even he'll tell you that Nietzsche found beauty in such a concentrated mix of human experience all partaking in collective suffering and euphoria. Festivals are not the sterile, edited and well-scored bursts of energy and sexual tension they're marketed to be and in light of that there's the interesting prospect that reality, as vivid and devoid of glamour and the Nashville filter as it is, just may be better after all.