Lessons Learned From Live Events
When our company got its start, live events were actually our focus, and the lessons that we have learned from our live events experience have given us incredible insight into how to connect with an audience. We still incorporate many of these underlying principles in every piece that we make, no matter what type of client or industry each piece is for. Here’s a look at three of my biggest takeaways and lessons that I’ve learned from live events.
Eliciting a reaction from the audience should always be your goal.
Nothing is more rewarding than creating a video or animation for a live event that gets an immediate reaction from the fans as soon it plays. To get that reaction, you have think about when the piece will be played. What will the mood/energy of the fans be at the time it runs, what type of reaction are you looking to get from them, etc. Thinking about these types of things also will help make a video for a corporate client successful. Let’s say it’s a video about a new product that needs to grab the audience’s attention. Where will they be watching it? What do you need to do to grab their attention? What type of response do you want them to have to the video? Is it an action, an emotion, increased brand awareness or maybe to start a conversation with the people they’re with? Everything you do when creating a piece should be with the audience in mind.
Being prepared for everything is vital.
If you ever look at a script for a live event, you’ll see that it has a ton of elements. Way more than most fans would ever guess! That’s important because when you go into a live production with a thorough, well-designed plan, it allows you to calmly adjust and react when the inevitable changes come up over the course of the event. The same type of careful pre-planning is also vital when doing a video shoot. What a client should see is a well-organized, seamless shoot from setup to execution to tear-down. But the blueprint for that is laid out well in advance. Before that shoot event happens, we create a project outline, hold a meeting with every person on our team involved in that project, review everything that will happen, create a gear checklist of every single item that needs brought on that specific shoot, and create a shoot outline explaining who will be on the shoot, all of the locations, the timeline, and any other special notes. It seems like a lot, but doing this allows our team to make the day of the shoot look effortless and allows us to quickly adapt to changes that might (and probably will) come up on-site. This turns a complex process into a much easier one for our client.
Teamwork makes the dream work.
Okay, that might be a corny way of saying it, but it’s true. When producing a live event, it only looks seamless to the audience, because all the members of the production crew are on the same page. Everyone performing their tasks the way they should makes everyone look good. A successful video project requires this exact same type of teamwork. Sure, a video project might take place over a few weeks or months, as opposed to a few hours, but there are so many people involved in making sure everything goes as planned, from the people on the video shoot to the editors to the project manager. Everyone must execute their role so the process runs smoothly. So remember, whether it’s a video or animation project or a live event, the easier it looks, the more thought, planning and teamwork that went into it.
