With the fact that a lot of presentations, festivals, fundraisers, and galas are needing to have an online event, having a live stream version of the event has been the go-to solution when in-person events aren’t feasible. The problem is that having an entirely live-streamed event is very complicated to pull off, prone to complications during the stream, and can be very costly. The best solution has been right in front of you the entire time, pre-record the event, and broadcast it as if it is live.

The Potential Issues

When pulling off a live-streamed event, EVERYTHING needs to be perfect and in place. One minor problem could cause the entire stream to fall behind or even derail completely. You have to expect the unexpected, and even when you are fully prepared things can happen that are out of your control. We’ve all had our fair share of internet drops, computer issues, or random power outages. During an important Zoom meeting, a nice squirrel decided to blow up our block’s power transformer… who knew we had to account for sabotaging squirrels now? While these aren’t controllable, your audience will be wondering what happened and most likely turn away from your stream. Luckily we were able to hop back on the call with our phones, but the same can’t be done for a full-production live stream.

Additionally, you may require multiple teams of people, presenters, and a large group of personnel to tackle the production. With Covid restrictions, managing this many people can be tough in a single location. Our team at Colectivo Creative is great at wearing multiple hats and juggling various tasks, but we can’t do it all. It takes a large team to manage great productions. Unfortunately, people do get infected and safety is our number one concern. If someone has tested positive, they would not be allowed on our set, no matter if they’re the director, main talent, or catering. This would be highly problematic in the case of a real live-streamed event. There’s no rescheduling. We’d have to make the best out of a bad situation, and that’s not what we’re about.

Doing it pseudo-live

To avoid all of the above possible problems (AND MORE) is possible through MAGIC… or rather filmmaking magic. The easiest way is to not do it live at all. The trick is to film every segment you’re wanting to include in separate portions and combine them together through the editing process. There are a lot of Pros to this process of pre-recording that prompt us to lead our clients to this option. This may take some more production time to produce all the segments and put them together in the edit, but you eliminate all the risks of an actual live production.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t treat it as a live stream. Your speakers, segments, acts, and all other pieces can still give the feeling of a live session. You don’t want to give up that live stream look and feel.

In the Can, Just in Case

If you routinely produce a live stream, whether it’s a live interview with a guest, a live music performance, or just to change up your media offerings, it may be beneficial to have a couple of pre-produced just-in-case. Life happens sometimes, maybe your camera-person gets sick, you have an emergency, or you’d just like to step away for a bit, having a few canned live-streams could be your saving grace.

With our Soundbox Sessions series, we recently recorded a couple of canned performances for these reasons exactly. We had a scheduled performance that had to be postponed due to Covid concerns, but we had no backups in place. To counter that problem from happening again, we asked a couple of local performers, EB the Younger and Miranda Kennedy, to come in and knock out a couple of performances. We still put in 100% into the production, but can have these live sessions in case of emergency. All we need to do is have someone ready to throw the videos up as a stream, and we’re good to go.

As live streams continue to grow and become the norm, consider taking your online presence into the live video world. We’d love to chat with you and see how we can make that happen. Whether you’re just getting started or want to improve your live stream production, we can get help! Give us a shout!