How to get usable content out of a live event

An event is the one day a brand has more happening in front of it than it can possibly use. That sounds like an easy brief. It is the opposite: the failure mode is not too little footage, it is a hard drive full of clips nobody ever edits, delivered three weeks after anyone stopped caring.

What follows is how we work a venue, whether it is an art fair, a design festival or a product launch.

Plan a route, not a schedule

The instinct is to build a timetable around the programme: this talk at eleven, that panel at two. The problem is that the best material at any event is unscheduled, and a crew tied to a timetable spends the gaps standing still.

We plan a circuit of the floor instead, and walk it repeatedly through the day. Every area gets covered several times in different light and different crowd density, and the edit has a predictable supply of material rather than a feast at eleven and nothing at three. Scheduled sessions sit on top of the circuit as fixed points, with a position taken before the room fills.

Decide what each piece is for before you shoot it

Event footage usually has to serve several jobs, and they want different shots:

• Same-day posts that tell people the event is happening now, and that they should come.
• Speaker and interview clips that work on their own, long after the event, as evidence of who was there.
• A recap edit that carries the event past its final day and sells the next edition.
• A stills library for decks, recaps and next year's promotion.

A crew that knows which of these it is feeding will shoot the same moment differently. Without that, you get footage that is almost right for everything and correct for nothing.

Same-day beats perfect

The single biggest lever is an edit station running alongside the shoot, on site. Footage cut and published while the doors are still open reaches people who can still act on it. The same cut, polished for another two days, reaches people for whom the event is already over.

A rough edit posted at four in the afternoon is worth more than a beautiful one posted on Thursday. The event is the deadline, not your export settings.

This changes what you shoot. If the edit is happening in the next hour, you shoot with the cut in mind: fewer takes, cleaner in and out points, audio checked at the source rather than fixed later.

Interviews need a position, not a plan

Catching speakers and guests is a matter of standing in the right place rather than booking slots. Find a spot with a clean background, controllable light and foot traffic between sessions, then stay there. People who would never agree to a scheduled interview will give you ninety seconds on their way past.

• Keep the question list to two, so the answer stays short enough to use.
• Record a name and title on camera, or you will be chasing spellings for a week.
• Watch the background as the room changes through the day.
• Burn in captions: most of this will be watched on mute.

Light and sound are the two real constraints

Venues are lit for the audience, not for the camera, and the light changes stand to stand. Halls are loud in a way that ruins otherwise usable interviews. Neither is fixable in the edit, so both have to be handled in the room: a light you control for interviews, a microphone close to the speaker, and a position chosen for what it sounds like as much as what it looks like.

Give the exhibitors something to post

If you are covering for the organiser, the cheapest reach available is content the exhibitors will share themselves. Cut a few clips that put an individual stand or brand at the centre, and hand them over. Each one goes out to an audience the organiser does not own and could not have bought, and the goodwill makes next year's access easier.

What to agree before the day

• Who approves posts, and how fast they can do it from the floor.
• What goes out live versus what is held for the recap.
• Where the edit station sits, and whether it has power and a reliable connection.
• Who has the authority to pull a clip if a guest objects.

None of this is glamorous, and all of it decides whether you leave with content or with footage. If you have an event coming up, tell us the venue and the programme and we will put a coverage plan together.