Choosing the Right Equipment
Step by step, identify all of your equipment needs. Consider aspects such as lighting and sound. These are areas often overlooked, yet they are vital for quality production and may affect the success or failure of a video!
For simple internal corporate communication or small-scale public information videos, it may be better to hire a production house that already has the necessary equipment. This will save you the costs of buying the equipment, and the production team should be experienced in its use, giving you a higher quality end product.
The decision to shoot on film or tape will often dictate the rest of your decisions. In Singapore, tape is often the more desirable and practical format. It’s cheaper, simpler to store, and easier to transport. However, if you are aiming mainly at an international market, many TV stations will only accept video footage shot onto film. This is where costs can start to spiral. Professional film equipment is very expensive, and the costs for processing can be massive.
It is no secret that the quality of production is often closely tied to the quality of equipment. This is often true. Before you start purchasing equipment, consider charges and costs carefully. Remember that the costs of equipment go far beyond simply the purchase price. Factor in costs for maintenance, possible overtime for staff using new systems, potential rental for necessary follow-up equipment, etc. These costs all add up over time to often far exceed the initial purchase price.
Planning and Preparing for a Live Stream
This can take form in many ways, but for someone producing a live show, it is most useful to have some equivalent of a script with annotations on how to handle problems that may arise. Write out what you intend to do in the show, and also make notes on how it’s supposed to get done. Sometimes, particularly when coordinating a large production team who are new to the process of producing a live show, it’s useful to walk through the entire show while taking note of the time each segment should end at. By doing this, it becomes easier to integrate an audio or video stream because you already have a clear idea of when each part of the show will take place and how much time each segment is allowed.
Live broadcast is uncertain because it’s live. A live show is more difficult than others. For instance, a simple interview conducted in a live format involves incredibly complex planning and timing in the preproduction phase, a method of timing or queuing speakers, narrowcasting to direct the end product to an audience of no more than 800, and after all of the above is accomplished, constant monitoring of the live broadcast on the off chance that something unforeseen occurs and an intervention is necessary to prevent the viewing audience from noticing an error and becoming confused. All companies need to prepare for the “what if” scenario of when something goes wrong. Therefore, always be ready to set up plan B to rectify the problem without the audience noticing.
Engaging the Audience during a Live Stream
Another way of promoting it is by creating an event on social media to notify followers of the date and time of the event. This technique should be started in the planning phase to give ample time for promotion. An example of successful engagement before the actual live stream is the Highlands Youth For Christ Live 3. This event was one of the most successful live stream events in Malaysia with almost 2,000 viewers from Malaysia and other countries. Prior to the streaming, the committee engaged the people by posting many video teasers that showed the activities and also testimonies from previous years. This has successfully gained interest from many people, and during the broadcast, the audience was much larger compared to previous years. This clearly shows that good promotion could attract more audience to live stream events.
Before the broadcast, one of the effective ways to engage the audience that will tune into the broadcast is by promoting the event using social media, a blog, and a mailing list. The promotion should be done frequently prior to the event, and it could be teasers, sneak previews, or even highlights of what could be expected during the broadcast. This also works as a reminder to the existing audience and the followers of the WebTV. All of these promotional materials should always link back to the live broadcasting page on the site. This would help to optimize the audience traffic to the live streaming Singapore page.
There are numerous ways to engage an audience during live stream events. This section discussed the techniques that could be done before, while, and after live broadcasting that will keep the audience interested. By following these steps, it could also help to attract a bigger audience and keep them coming back.
