Dynamic Duo: Sophia Productions reflects on their recent music festival ‘bummerfest’

What started out as a simple text bemoaning the pandemic became Sophia Production’s virtual music festival “bummerfest” held last month. 

Juniors Sophia Barber and Sophie Moser — both majoring in music industry and co-founders of their production company Sophia Productions — had found out in December that a concert that they were planning was likely going to be virtual and experience budget cuts because of the pandemic. 

“We were texting each other on the side and [saying things like], ‘This sucks. What a bummer, they should rename it to bummerfest,’” Barber said. “And then Sophie’s like, ‘Oh wait … that’s a great idea, we should definitely do that.” 

The pair decided to plan their own musical festival, called “bummerfest,” kicking off months of planning for the pair — all conducted through Zoom save for two meetings at USC Village — which culminated in a musical festival featuring six USC artists and attended by 200 people.    

Bummerfest was far from Barber or Moser’s first time planning a music event. Both of their experiences in event planning stretched all the way back to middle and high school. 

The pair grew up playing classical music — Barber with the cello and piano and Moser with piano and voice — but realized that they gravitated more towards creating musical events rather than performing.    

“I started my own summer [music] camp when I was … 11, because there were a bunch of little kids in my neighborhood that I babysat,” Moser said. “[It] kind of grew into a bigger thing that I did all throughout high school … And that was when I realised like, ‘OK, the performance side isn’t for me, but I really like this whole management and leadership approach to events.” 

Once just a camp for 15 children, Moser’s “Play Camp” eventually grew over the course of eight years into a full-scale theatre camp for 50 children.  

As for Barber, her first experience in event planning was when she threw a charity benefit at a tavern for the youth organization “Youth on Record” in 2017. 

“[They help] the youth of Denver get back on their feet after they’ve experienced hardships through music,” Barber said. “I had heard about them before, they’re big in the Denver scene … [I’d] seen them around and admired their mission.” 

Spurred on by their respective successes in music event production, Barber and Moser applied to the Thornton School of Music, where they first met each other in their introduction to music industry class during their freshman years.  

“We both ended up sitting by the same girl, Andrea, and both of us became friends with her and then she brought us together,” Moser said. “Then we just realized how much we had in common besides the name thing [and] that led us to want to work on stuff together.”

Once they worked together on a group project for their concert production and promotion class, the pair started to realize that they potentially had a golden partnership on their hands. Grouped with three of their other music industry friends, Moser and Barber were expected to throw a benefit concert. 

The group, who together called themselves “TGFC Productions,” threw on a show called “TGFC Presents Ashes to Amber and Cordelia.” Taking place at a downtown venue, the event featured an array of visual and performance artists and was attended by nearly 70 people. 

“I think we had something really cool there … We just connected people from a lot of different areas,” Moser said. “That doesn’t happen all of the time … we saw this opportunity of bringing together people from all different places that really needed each other’s skills to benefit and grow and make cool projects.” 

Fresh off the success of the benefit concert, Moser and Barber approached the rest of TGFC Productions with a plan to continue their efforts outside of the class. When their group mates said they weren’t interested in concert planning, Moser and Barber took it upon themselves to start their own company.  

“Having our own production company that we can do a bunch of different things under, but has a cohesive space and name, really helps us grow out of just a class project or opportunities we find through school,” Barber said. “[It] allowed us to … create our visions.” 

With the goal of “breaking the divide between creatives and the industry in music through concerts, conversation and entrepreneurship,” Sophia Productions also hosts a podcast called “That’s Showbiz, Baby,” which is now in its second season after its inception in October 2020. 

On the podcast, the duo discuss the current music scene, comment on new music event trends including holograms and invite USC students from all facets of the music industry as special guests. 

“We both realized that people view the music industry as kind of this … cool, mysterious thing … and a lot of people want to get to know more about it,” Moser said. “[Since] we were really interested in learning more about it, might as well put what we’re learning out there for other people to hear and follow along with.” 

The pair can’t recall exactly what sparked their interest in making a podcast. 

“I feel like everyone is like, ‘We should start a podcast’ … We just decided to actually do it,” Barber said.

However, Barber and Moser said that they appreciate the opportunity to meet people that they might never have spoken to before if it were not for the podcast. 

“My favorite part about it has been the excuse to reach out to people that I already thought were cool and wanted to be friends with, and now, I have a reason to do it,” Moser said. 

Barber and Moser split the podcast episodes so that it would roughly be 50-50 between interviews and commentary, intent on creating a space where they could mix a variety of topics related to the music industry.

Despite being avid podcast listeners — they named “Song Exploder” and “Switched on Pop” as podcasts that they listen to regularly — Barber and Moser had never done a podcast before, and felt some trepidation when doing their first episode. 

“In the beginning, I didn’t realize how scary it would be … to just sit there on a computer, but with a microphone in front of you, knowing that other people were going to listen to it,” Barber said. “So I think the first couple episodes we were trying our best, but they’re a little tense, you could tell we were a little nervous.” 

However, with two seasons now under their belt, Barber and Moser now find themselves at ease while crafting their podcast episodes. 

“[We’ve become] a little more natural and … go back and forth a little bit more,” Moser said. “It can be easy, just like in our planning stages, be like, ‘You say this’ [and] have it planned out, but [now] we’ve grown to leave a lot more room for just naturally responding to what the other person is bringing, and I think that helps it be a lot more relaxed and fun to listen to. 

One of their most recent episodes, released April 6 and titled “Behind the Scenes of bummerfest,” details the months of planning and preparation that went into gearing up for the event. 

It’s a bit astounding to see the level of detail required to plan a music festival when you listen to Barber and Moser break down their pitching, networking and marketing strategies as well as the network of support they formulated over the course of the planning. 

After their fateful text conversation, Barber and Moser set out to reach out to various musical artists at Thornton whose music fit nicely within their theme — dancing through the sadness or a “bummer,” if you will. 

They asked the potential acts to attend a Zoom meeting, where they presented their pitch deck, walked them through the plans for the venue, gave them a basic outline of the project and laid out the benefits for the artists’ participation. 

Out of the eight USC artists they reached out to, six signed onto the event: Guspy, Amir Kelly, Lizzy Cameron, Ella Collier, Tippy Balady and Walkabout.  

Opting for a hybrid musical festival, Barber and Moser had the musical acts perform outdoors at Shadow Hills Ranch and festival attendees streamed the music festival through Moment House. 

“They gave us in-ears so I could actually hear myself,” Collier said. “It was just a quality performance, definitely was one of my favorite performances … the banter between us and the crew was really fun so it felt really comfortable.” 

As for the promotion of the event, Moser and Barber went for a social-media heavy approach on their Instagram page @sophiaproductions. They announced each bummerfest act daily during the last week of February, launched a merch giveaway, released a trailer and then posted short snippets of each act’s performances. 

“Something that I’ve been learning over the course of the pandemic, in general, is that the more you can get something out there from different people, the more credible it becomes to people in their minds,” Moser said. “Like if you see … one friend post something one time, it kind of fades away but if you see 10 or 15 friends all posting about the same event, it’s going to stand out to you a lot more.”   

While they had done similar promotional work for Ashes to Amber and Cordelia, they had never done so much marketing between just the two of them. But as a result of their promotional tactics, user engagement with their page jumped by a whopping 153,900%. 

Along with their team, Barber and Moser estimate that they spent 20 hours each during the harder weeks working on the project, a notable feat considering most of it was conducted virtually and this was their most ambitious effort yet.  

“There are definitely a few times where I remember just sitting at my computer and being like, ‘What am I doing, I can’t do this, this is so much work,’ and just powering through in those moments … like, OK, what’s the next step,’” Moser said. “That made it look a lot more achievable than backing up and looking at the bigger picture.” 

Their film team — Jon Joei and Kian Broder Wang — helped them through the logistics of planning a virtual event since they had done one in the past, but for the most part they simply walked through what it took to plan an in-person event and shifted it to a virtual perspective. 

“It came pretty naturally to us besides the super technical parts,” Barber said.  

Moser points to the filming process as the most memorable part of the project because she was finally able to meet the artists they had talked to in person. 

“Obviously there weren’t audience members there to appreciate it but when we were filming it, it was just fun to interact with people and hear a little bit of the music,” Moser said. 

Vivan Gray, who was responsible for the event’s production design and video editing, recalled the pair’s leadership during the filming. 

“There was this horse fountain that kept going off [at the ranch] and we were like, ‘What should we do about this,’ and [Barber and Moser] were like, ‘Eh, it adds character,’” Gray said. “They’re very good at going with the motion and they kept the energy up even when we did have technical difficulties… they were great at communication as well.”  

Collier also noted the pair’s skill in organization, saying, “They have all the details handled… they’re always very prepared.” 

Ultimately, 200 people attended the event, making bummerfest Sophia Productions’ biggest musical event. 

“I had a lot of fun doing [bummerfest], and I think it definitely confirmed that it’s something that I like to do and I’m capable of doing,” Moser said. “The night of the show, [I was] watching it with a friend… that was so rewarding because just all the work we had put it in to make sure it was a high-quality event, it paid off, it really showed itself.” 

While the pandemic still is casting its shadow over their future projects, Barber and Moser are still planning smaller-scale events for 2021, as well as a possible 2022 bummerfest. 

“[bummerfest] was an incredible amount of work and I don’t think I knew how hard it was going to be going into it, but I love working with Sophie,” Barber said. “Because we’ve been working together for a while now, we know each other’s strengths and I completely trust her to just handle a task.”