Author: sparksight_admin

Highlight Reels are a great addition to have at any event or conference to keep the excitement high and showcase the success of your event for future marketing purposes. At Sparksight, we produce a wide range of highlight reels for multi-day conferences or single day productions. Here are a few tips and tricks we’ve incorporated into our list of best practices when filming a successful highlight reel.

Bring the proper equipment

Most events and keynote presentations take place in lower lit rooms, so it’s important to bring a solid set of DSLR cameras that perform well in low light. Using a combination of long telephoto and wide-angle lenses allow you to capture enough dynamic shots to keep your video interesting, while helping you keep still during crucial keynotes or presentations. Portable tripods, sliders, or glidecams are also important pieces of equipment to bring along. They help create a static-like or simple shot look more complex, while keeping background noise down when you’re moving. Here at Sparksight, we also like to incorporate Go-Pro’s in some of our productions. The Go-Pro not only provides a great time-lapse feature, it can also act as a ‘spy camera’ for continuous recording without disrupting the conference.

Capture the attendee’s best side

When shooting a highlight reel with the video team at Sparksight, we often produce final videos that incorporate a lot less footage than we shot. We’d rather overshoot an event and use our best footage than trying to use it all. Capturing your attendee’s smiling, laughing, and having a great time provides much better footage than shooting dull faces or people just staring off into space. Remember, you are creating a story of the event you’re shooting. Capturing the beginning, middle, and end will really boost the overall video, rather than just providing a myriad of shots at various times. Don’t be afraid to hover your finger over the record button and wait for attendee’s to laugh or clap to capture the best in-the-moment reactions. Also, food and snacks during event breaks often provide some of the best smiling and laughing shots we often use. Getting a little sugar in your conference-goers does wonders to the morale, and an increase in happy attendees means happy results!

Use sound bytes!

Take your highlight reel to the next level by incorporating interviews and simple “Man on the street” sound bytes. Don’t be afraid to ask for opinions about the event from the attendees. Asking a simple question such as, “What’s your favorite thing about this conference so far?”, can really add to your final product. Remember, you’re documenting the entire conference and event. The people you’re filming not only have pretty faces, but have a voice as well. Getting sound bytes from your audience or some keynote speakers can really take your highlight reel to the next level and add a whole new dimension to your event.

Have any tips of your own when it comes to filming an event highlight reel? Please share in the comments section below! We’d love to hear some of your ideas and techniques.

Over the last seven years, I have worked with many clients in an event manager role producing their user conferences. Coordinating an event can be a very difficult task with many different pieces. The key to a successful event is always in the pre-planning and vendor coordination. By working together and managing all the details, I have been able to run countless successful events no matter the size.

Sometimes the trickiest part of an event, whether it is a tech happy hour or a large corporate user conference, is the overall coordination of different roles and different vendors. The smaller events will not have as many managed roles so this blog will mainly focus on larger corporate events, user conferences, and sales kickoffs of 200 people or more.

With an event of 200 or more there are a wide variety of different services and products needed for the planning and execution. In addition to just managing the bare logistics of the event you’ll also need to coordinate the efforts of event marketing, AV selection and management, graphic design, registration, etc. If these are not carefully managed through one event team, you will likely find yourself with an army of vendors with no clear direction or management. So where do you start?

Hire an Event Management Company.

The event management company is there to complete any task you assign them. A lot of the time I have found that it’s best for the client to take on the event marketing, speaker management, etc. as they typically are able to form their own internal event committee and event marketing team. They know what message they are trying to convey and the goals of the company so they can work with current customers and guest speakers in a more streamlined capacity. The event management company will handle the technicalities of the event.

Consolidate your vendors.

The event management company will likely have a lot of specialties inside their company to help with your event. This way instead of just a consultant, they can provide a lot of your other needs such as graphic design, environmental branding, video production, stage design, general session management, etc. By doing this you’re combining as many possible vendors into one. If they don’t have someone in house to provide a specific service you are looking for, they will have a list of go-to vendors for you to choose from. Ask them to manage these vendors on your behalf. Managing multiple vendors can be a headache so try and hire someone who can do it all!

Embrace an event management company as part of your team.

You can’t manage what you can’t see. Keeping your event management company in the loop is the best way to ensure the completion of tasks so you don’t have to worry about them. I have built a lot of respect and trust with my event clients because they know they can give me a set list of tasks and they get done in a timely and efficient manner. The main reason for that success is that I am aware of their event goals. Event goals differ from client to client, so make sure you communicate these goals with everyone you work with including vendors and your event management company.

Make friends.

Creating relationships with vendors has been an important part of my success as an event manager and project leader. I strive to keep them up to date on my goals, my client’s goals, timelines, and expectations which in turn proves to them that I am interested and engaged in providing a successful event overall. As a result of this behavior on my part, my vendors are all invested in the overall success as well.

The excitement and thrill of pulling off a thousand person, 3 day event, is so rewarding knowing that the coordination efforts and advice I gave was utilized and embraced. Think about involving an event management company for your next event and really involve them in your company’s goals as well as your goals as an event manager and you can’t lose!