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What Makes A Great Conference Video?

What Makes A Great Conference Video?

When shooting at a conference its pretty important to capture the event and how exciting it is for all of the participants. When shooting for AWS (Amazon Web Services) at London’s Excel there is a sense of anticipation and energy that this really is the next big thing. Like at many conferences, there are industry experts, sales people, individuals who are keen to learn and people who are there to simply see what its all about.  This will be the same for the people viewing the videos on social media.

Videos of conferences and events can serve different purposes, number of hits on YouTube, email distribution to current customers and updates on Facebook and Twitter. From a conference video you need to maximise your publicity with what I call the three P’s of conference video – PDQ, Presently, Protracted. 

PDQ:

This element is to try and get a buzz on social media right now. This can be in the form of Periscope/ Facebook live videos with a live presenter going around the conference or even a 4 camera discussion setup. Or it can be something that is recorded and edited in a couple of hours and sent out PDQ on all the social media applications. This requires a small dedicated team and some very good planning!

Presently:

If the conference is lasting a few days, having a medium scale approach to video may give the appearance of a more polished approach and can have long lasting impact. Interviews with guests and speakers can edit into the all round atmosphere from the conference. These videos may also be used to send once the conference is over, as a ‘thanks for coming’ and a ‘please come next year’.

Protracted:

This is where we get all art-house and avant-garde, where we can get the big cameras in and really start expressing our inner Spielberg. But seriously, we can do some long form interviews with customers and experts and even get some cutaway shots of their life-long business journey. We can tell their story and how the conference is a critical part of that story. This will give a platform to both the customer and the supplier and can be used for many years to come as cross-promotion on all social media networks.

Video production at a conference can take the form of one or more of these approaches. Not forgetting filming of the talks and Q and A’s etc. Conferences are an ideal platform to get a video production plan into action and the videos you make can help promote your business for many months to come. Some final questions to ask:

Rationale: Why are you making the video and who is it for?

Treatment: Presenter led or customer focused? Do you have any customers/speakers willing to partake in your video?

Platform: What is the best social media platform to get your message heard?

Timescale: When do you need to get your video on social media?

AWS gets their customers involved in their videos long before the conference takes place. Here are some examples of videos from C60Media, shot at AWS conferences; Ocado, First Group and Dunelm (these fall into the ‘Protracted’ conference video).