To organise an event is not easy at all. From planning the program, hiring crew, music and graphic design, and more. Needless to say, we work hard to create a memorable event. And the role of videographer in an event, is to capture every precious moments, and also to compile the footage into a video work, so that people can playback the event.
During an event, everything happens is ONE take. Every shot to videographer means “You get it or miss it”. Of course, videographer would try their best in performing their role. However, everything that happens in an event is unpredictable. Therefore, by pre-knowing what are the important shots for videographers, and helping them a little, would secure your event highlight video outcome. At the following paragraph, I would state out the 5 important shots that your videographers shouldn’t miss it, and how you can help them to achieve a better video quality.
1. Stage set up/decoration/poster/banner scene without crowd
These scenes in the video will act as ‘Establishment Shots’. They are the important shots to tell the audience what your event is and how your event looks like at the beginning of the video. To have a good video, it is important to make your establishment shots look grand, elegant, and most importantly clean. The clean here means, no crowds or other crew to be in the frame.
Here’s the 2 tips for event planner/ coordinator to make sure your videographer get the shot:
Making sure videographers reach at least 1 hour earlier before guest arrival at the venue
This is to ensure that they have enough time to shoot what you need for the video. Also, you can have more time to brief them on the event flow too.
Helping out videographers to arrange a 10 minutes slot to clear people in the hall
Before the event starts, there would be a lot of crews in the hall, doing their own tasks. So, videographers have to wait until every crew finishes their job to take the clean establishment shot. It would be really great if you can help videographers to coordinate on this, such as clearing up people in the hall. It can help videographers to take their shots more efficiently and start shooting other happening events outside of the hall. This would ensure a nice opening shot for your video!
2. VIPs arrival and marching in
Arrival
If you have important VIPs that are coming into your event, you would definitely need to include their appearance in your video. Therefore, you need to communicate with your videographer to standby at the entrance before your VIP arrives. Also, you need to tell them how many VIPs you have. You might need to consider hiring 2 videographers if you have a lot of VIPs to cover.
March In
Other than the arrival, the march in is also significant for an event. It can make your event look elegant and spectacular. Coordination is very important in this part for a good shot.
Firstly, coordinate with the lighting crew. Make sure they can follow the VIPs during march in. This is because lighting is very important for the camera to get a beautiful shot. It will directly influence the brightness of the scenes, the harshness of the shadows. It would affect the VIPs’ appearance on the video too.
Secondly, coordinate with the VIPs on
Walking position and sequence
If you have a lot of VIPs that you need to cover during the march in, you might need to arrange their position when they walk on the red carpet. Some of them may walk clumped together. In this case, we are still able to take the shot, but the scene would be ‘not-that-right’. If they are able to ‘queue up’ cleanly during the march in would be the best.
The walking speed
Some VIPs might get too anxious and walk too fast on the red carpet due to the loud exciting music and the cheers from the crowds. If they walk too fast, it would be harder for videographers to track them. In this context, we would like to help videographers to secure stable and longer shots. The optimal condition would be to leave a distance or space for the videographer to zig-zag cross among the VIPs, so that the videographers are able to capture nice moving shots of every VIPs.
The Usherettes
Thirdly, coordinate with the usherettes. On some occasions, you may need usherettes to accompany or guide the entering VIPs. Sometimes, usherettes will block the camera accidentally. To prevent this, you need to tell the usherettes on how to make place for the videographers to get perfect shots.
*We believe that every videographer is professional. Here are just some tips to help them out to secure the perfect march-in scenes in the final video.”
3. Speech and Performance
If you have VIPs who are giving out speeches, you can remind your videographer to take the clean audio from the PA team. You can also tell the videographer where the VIPs would give their speech. At the rostrum? Or they would walk freely on the stage? In the case of performance, would the artists go down to the floor interacting with crowds? This may help the videographer to do more preparation work to secure the whole event completely and flawlessly.
4. The launching gimmick moment
Gimmick launching is a moment to highlight an important aspect of a product or an event. You might need to tell the videographers the gimmick special effect that you planned for the event. Is it ribbon cutting? Balloon popping? Confetti? Button-pressing? Fire show? Not only it can help videographers to prepare the shots, it also prevents them from getting hurt by the special effect. If the videographers are not aware of the sudden gimmick, they might be too close to the stage and get hurt from the popping effects of the confetti, the fire, and etc. Of course we would not want anyone to get hurt in the events. So, it’s important to inform them in advance.
5. Slogan shot
It is an optional step. Normally, it would be better if your video could end with a group of people shouting out a slogan. It would make your video to be full of spirit, powerful, and memorable. If you need the shot, it would be perfect if you can create a slogan for the participants. Because videographers may create one themselves which does not match the message that you would like to bring out. This is important because the slogan would be great content in your video, and that’s what the audiences remember after watching the highlight video.
In a nutshell, it’s definitely the videographers’ responsibility to make sure they got all the important shots professionally. Nevertheless, they can produce a better outcome if they can get all the help from the event planners/coordinator. Of course, you would have a more secured final video too, which makes what you pay even more worthy!