Live Streaming Production Logistics

Having quite a few live streaming productions under our belt, we thought it would be good to share some of our insight to future clients including some of the design elements to consider, potential pitfalls, and of course, the logistics involved in organizing your broadcast successfully.

Getting into the planning process of your broadcast should focus primarily on content and promotion, as all the fancy production setup in the world won’t do much good if your viewing audience doesn’t care about your content or perhaps wasn’t even made aware of it during the live broadcast. In addition to your own content, our advice is to build in the ofollowing to your broadcast:

• An interactive component, which may enlist the help of a moderator to screen Q&A or similar forms of interaction.
• A pre-roll montage of graphics, photos, or pre-recorded videos.
• A post-show montage featuring heavy calls-to-action.
• Additional calls-to-action built into dialogue as well as shown via on-screen graphics.

If you need assistance in the creation of any of the above, please do reach out to our team to facilitate their production. Please don’t forget to have a plan of action to promote your broadcast on various online platforms, email blasts, and any other forms of regular communication with your customer/fan base. A point to remember is that even the Avengers movies still ran ads, trailers, and other forms of promotion despite everyone knowing full well about their release. Don’t assume your broadcast will be watched without sufficient promotion of it in advance.

If you are coordinating event A/V with a third party company or the venue, please provide the contact information for the company’s representative so that we can ensure the appropriate A/V is in place for live streaming. Having proper A/V to cater to both your in-person audience, as well as your online audience, is critical. The good news is, one setup can serve both simultaneously in most cases. This is especially the case with nothing but speaking events where a simple microphone setup will suffice. Our recommendation is to use handheld wireless mics, a podium with a fixed mic, or earset/headset microphone. Here is a link with more information on these microphone setups. The choice of mic should account for whether or not your presenters plan to move around or stay in one spot and whether they prefer to have both hands free or don’t mind holding a microphone for potentially extended periods of time.

As for lighting, room/ceiling lighting is potentially sufficient for video, though it tends not to be the most attractive light for video. It is important that if a projector screen is simultaneously being used with room lighting that doesn’t wash out the screen in the process. Event lighting setups can be brought in by third party providers, and we never mark up those type of services on our own estimates.

Lastly, please inform us if your event uses any type of graphics during presentations, whether through PPT or similar program. We will always attempt to interface with the computer presenters use to transition slides. At times, it’s easier to manually switch slides with a copy of the presentation on our end, so that the presenter’s own system can maintain independence or if a connection simply can’t be made.

A floor producer can be someone from your team or ours. This individual knows the live streaming production logistics inside and out and can coordinate on-camera talent, provide queues to the production team, and keep track of other aspects of the show as needed. This role can be absolutely crucial in more complex broadcasts as having production crew double up on managing technical elements simultaneously can potentially lead to problems. Additionally, on-camera talent may or may not be familiar with the run-of-show themselves and can require coordination on nuances of their involvement.

Once we establish the scope of your live stream, we’ll determine whether a floor producer is recommended or not and whom best to fulfill that role.