Live or Look-Live?
There are only two reasons to go live:
- Urgent news that needs to get released all at once.
- You want feedback from the remote audience.
Unless it’s number 1 above, I want to urge you to do a “look-live” followed by a live Q&A, instead of an actual live event. Please read Sorry Hamlet, To ‘Go live’ or to ‘look Live’, THAT is the question
Who’s Going to Introduce the Presenter?
You want the presenter to have some street cred. She can’t brag about herself and tell the viewers how great she is. You’re going to want somebody to introduce her and to tell the viewers why she is da bomb!
Copy Edit the Slide Decks
Unless you want to be fixing a million things later in an edit studio, make sure you get the powerpoints copy edited prior to the broadcast otherwise it will be on you if this is mismanaged.
Starting Soon Graphics
What are you going to show before it starts? An empty chair? The presenter getting sound checked? No! You’re going to show marketing material and “starting soon” graphical stills or other marketing videos!
Lower Third Graphics
Get a list of the participants and their titles and make sure they’re copy edited. Then double check that the graphics were produced correctly. There is nothing that they’re going to want you to fix more than somebody’s misspelled name.
Backdrop
For corporate communications, our favorite go to is the ol’ step and repeat banners. An 8×8 costs about $200 delivered anywhere in New York City and the can do it in 24 hours. Give your logo to a designer and then have your video production team bring some C-stands or buy the stands from your printer.
Pre-production Considerations
The evite, the registration, the confirmation emails. This subject was so long that we created a separate post about Live Webcast Pre-production Considerations.
How are you going to handle the Q&A?
Are you going to give hand-written notes to the presenter? Are you going to have somebody read the questions off camera into a mic? Are you going to let the the presenter read them off twitter? We’ve seen it all and each method has it’s benefits and pitfalls.
If you want to reach out to us at info@wprny.com to tell us what type of webcast you’re planning, we would love to help you think these details through and support you technically with the production details.