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While most college classes may consist of sitting in a room and listening to a lecture for a couple of hours, MTSU’s media arts students receive a hands-on learning experience in live television production at The Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival.

The university’s Media Arts Productions team has been coming to Bonnaroo since 2015, and their involvement with the festival has increased throughout the years. This year, the program is working with C3 Productions and Sound Off Productions to help bring a live stream of the music festival to Hulu.

“At first, we did some of the smaller stages with the smaller acts where the material would be pre-recorded and the footage would be given to Bonnaroo,” Bob Gordon, MTSU’s Media Arts Productions Executive Producer said. “Over the last two years, we’ve been recording live productions on two of the bigger stages.”

For 2024, the team has set up their mobile production lab and six cameras to cover all of the shows at “This Tent” with a smaller control room and four cameras filming the shows at “That Tent.” With a total of 53 shows to film over the course of the four-day festival, the team keeps a pretty tight and rigorous schedule.

“We meet here (at the truck) at noon, talk about what we’re going to do and make sure everything works right,” Gordon said. “Today, the first concert starts at around 1 p.m., lasts 45 minutes, then there’s a 45-minute change over, then another concert, and another change over and so on until 2:30 am the next morning.”

Along with Gordon and a couple of professional engineers, the team working at Bonnaroo is entirely made of around 30 students from the media arts program.

MTSU’s Media Arts Productions not only covers Bonnaroo, but also a whole myriad of events on and off campus.

“We’re pretty prolific in live productions,” Gordon said. “We’ve shot concerts with the Nashville Symphony, we’ve covered shows at venues like The Loveless Cafe, 3rd and Lindsley and Franklin Theater, we worked 65 sporting events for ESPN Plus last year and we’ve also crewed the TSSAA State Basketball Championships in the Spring.”

MTSU’s College of Media and Entertainment’s John Bragg Building also offers the students the chance to work in a studio environment with LED walls, 24 moving head lights and an XR studio and stage to fit almost any type of production that students want to make.

For the most part, college classes take place in a multi-purpose classroom, but for live production students, a regular classroom can’t quite replicate the world of live television production.

As Gordon explains, “These aren’t quizzes. With every one of the 53 concerts that we’re covering here at Bonnaroo, there’s very little prep to it. It’s live and there’s only one take so that adds a certain amount of pressure to students who aren’t used to that kind of thing, but you can’t replicate that in a classroom. You just have to go with it, accept that there will be mistakes and let them pass you by. It’s good for students here to attain a sense of confidence in their abilities not only as a TV producer, but also as a person.”

It’s that kind of real-world experience that has helped MTSU Media Arts graduates to go and work for sports teams like the Nashville Predators, Tennessee Titans and Memphis Grizzlies, as well as concert tours for the likes of Beyonce, Carrie Underwood, Post Malone and Queen.

When it comes to getting a career started in live television production, MTSU might just be the place for you.