Most event videos are as exciting as watching grass grow. Engage and attract your audiences by applying all ten of these ways to craft event videos that will be memorable… for all the right reasons!
1. Script everything – You might think you want to keep your event coverage spontaneous but the most experienced event producers have their videos thoroughly planned long before the event. You don’t have to script out every word, but having an approximate blueprint to follow will make sure you cover everything you need.

2. Avoid shooting handheld – A tripod eliminates the shaky hands factor and will make sure your shot is as still as possible. When you shoot an event without the steadying effect of a tripod you can take the chance of making your audience seasick with the constant jitter.

3. K.I.S.S. – You really must keep everything short and simple. If you cannot grab the viewer’s attention in the first few seconds, they will most likely leave your video and never come back. Open up with a call to action or a short introduction, then get to the point without dawdling. Keeping your videos under the two minute mark is ideal for the very short attention span of today’s audiences.

4. Mind your data storage – When you’re recording a lot of footage in HD it won’t take long before you start running into serious storage problems. Investing in an external hard drive or additional memory cards will keep your footage safe from accidental overwriting, provide you ample shooting capacity, and ensure you can easily transfer the footage and use it on multiple devices.

5. Find the best location – Events can be chaotic, hyperactive, and noisy… and all of those elements are enemies of proper videos. Before you start shooting make sure you find the calmest, quietest, and most highly controllable environment so that your video doesn’t have any unnecessary distractions in the background you won’t have to confront noise that could distract the audience or worse yet, make the dialogue unintelligible.

6. Keep the lights on – You have no choice but to ensure that you have proper lighting for your videos. Even with a professional camera you won’t obtain any reasonable results recording in a very dark corner of your event. Your video will be marred by gobs of grain and noise which will chase your viewers away. Record in daylight in a room with plenty of windows or get a simple lighting kit in order to make sure your video looks great!

7. D.I.Y. Editing – Save yourself the huge bill for a professional editing suite and an editor who gets paid more than your lawyer. All you need is iMovie for Mac or Windows Movie Maker for PC. They almost always come with your desktop or laptop computer and are powerful enough for your basic video editing needs. Even YouTube has an acceptable video editor that will work well if your video is less than 15 minutes long.

8. Quality before quantity – Shooting a lot of mediocre videos at your event will make sure that only a few die-hard event fans will ever watch them. In order to establish an engaging relationship with your audience, you will need to offer something interesting to them in return for them giving you several minutes of their valuable time. Make your videos interesting, simple and easy to follow.

9. Maintain the right distance – The viewers should be able to hear your subject clearly when you talk and be able to see any facial expression they make. However, you should set up your camera far enough for the audience to be able to see any gestures they make. A general advice is to frame the shot from the middle of the abdomen up. Mix it up – The last thing you want is to create an event video which is nothing more than talking heads. Boooooooooooooring! Mix up the blahblahblah by cutting away to charts, images, captions or graphs in order to add some variety to the video.

Inject your event videos with professionalism and excitement to ensure the maximum audience engagement!