Holi. Festival of Colors. 2011

THE NEXT HOLI IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER! Learn about the March 2012 event at http://www.utahkrishnas.org or http://www.facebook.com/FestivalofCol...

Music by Happyman! DOWNLOAD THE SONG AT http://ilovehappyman.com


Every year the Hare Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork, Utah puts on the biggest Holi (festival of colors) celebration in the Western Hemisphere. In 2011 the Spanish Fork Police department estimated that over 40,000 people attended in the first day alone of the two-day festival. Organizers carefully rationed their stash of approximately 120,000 bags of colored powder.

Participants come from all over the country (and some from abroad), but the majority of attendees for the Festival of Colors are students from Brigham Young, Utah Valley, and Utah universities.

The Holi Festival of Colors celebrates the triumph of good over evil and ushers in the spring season. The festival commemorates a Hindu myth about a witch, Holika, who burned children in a fire. One child repeated the Hare Krishna mantra as he was carried into the flames and the witch was burned instead. At the Spanish Fork festival, rock and roll, R&B, and other modern interpretations of the mantra are played by musicians throughout the day and chanted in a call and response game between performers and attendees. The main event of each festival is the coordinated throwing of colored powder, when the sky above the crowd is filled with rainbow puffs of dye.

This video is a tribute to the Utah version of Holi, which the director, Evan Carpenter, has attended faithfully for the last six years.

This video was produced by Plaid Social Labs, a video and social media marketing company based in Provo, Utah. www.plaidsocial.com

The performers featured in the video are Namrock and C.C. White's Soul Kirtan. Learn more about Namrock at www.namrock.com and find C.C. White at http://www.facebook.com/pages/CC-Whit...

Technical notes: This video was shot on Canon t2is at either 24 fps for normal speed or 60 fps for slow-motion. Some clips were slowed down even more using timewarp in Adobe AfterEffects. The color was achieved through careful color correction of images that were shot fairly flat (meaning the blacks weren't that black, the white weren't that white, and the color wasn't overly saturated, which gives you a lot of information to work with in post-production) and with the help of a plugin called Mojo. The composer Aaron Hatch (aka Fresh Big Mouf) created magical beats from his home in Los Angeles.

For more from director Evan Carpenter, subscribe to his channel Evan Meets World or follow him on Facebook or Twitter.

youtube.com/evanmeetsworld
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Help the Utah Krishnas build their new temple in Salt Lake City by donating to their paypal account at facebook.com/ColorfestVideo

Get a free download of the song at freshbigmouf.com

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