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Marisa People might be surprised to hear what we think the most important part of a production is. It’s not any certain technology or fancy piece of equipment – it’s communication. That might be surprising to hear coming from a production company, but it’s true!
Whether it be a client communicating with their production team, vice versa, or the production folks communicating within their team, everyone needs to be on the same page. It’ll just make everything run smoother!
So what’re the important things that you should be communicating when planning an event? Glad you asked! because we have the answers.
Everyone working on an event (ideally) is working towards one, common goal: to make the event the best possible product it can be. Therefore, everything needs to be laid and planned out. Event planners know the ins and outs of their specific event, and production teams know the ins and outs of the technicalities of typical events. However, every event is different, and what’s obvious to one side might not be as obvious to the other. That said, here are some things that need to be topics of conversation between event organizers and the production team. Now, by no means is this an exhaustive list, but this is certainly a place to get started!
Things you (as an event organizer) need to tell the production team:
On the flip side, there are some things that you need to be sure to ask the production team to make sure they know exactly how and where to dedicate their resources.
Things to you need to ask the production team:
When you picture a typical AV person working an event, you probably picture this person wearing a big clunky headset. Trust me, those aren’t just a fashion choice. It may seem like a pretty obvious thing to say, but the production team not only needs to be in communication with their client. They also need to be in communication with each other during the event.
Each member of the team is assigned to and responsible for a different item for each event. Not all positions are the same for every single event, but typically for our events, we have one person switching the live stream, a couple people operating the cameras, one person monitoring the live stream, one person in charge of captions, one person as the stage manager, and so on. All of these positions need to be able to talk to each other in order for an event to run smoothly. The director needs to be able to communicate with the camera ops to let them know when their camera is live, the producer needs to be able to tell the stage manager to send the next speaker to the stage, the person monitoring the stream needs to be able to alert the team of any oddities during the stream, etc.
Sometimes this is what our communication looks and sounds like! This was during a gala event where the show ended in a musical performance. We had two people running wireless cameras at the front of the room getting cool shots. Our director called out shots to the camera operators so that they knew when to steady their shots versus when they could work on finding a new one. We were essentially producing a concert! Usually, we don’t have to be this loud in communicating to each other, but when the camera operators are amidst the performance in front of the stage with speakers, it can be a little hard to hear. That’s where Phil’s loudness came in handy!
In conclusion, communication is in fact the most important part of a production! The more you communicate, and better yet, over communicate, and set your goals & expectations, the better your pricing, the better your relationship and the better your event will be overall.
Want to learn more about how we produce events? Check out our work, and better yet, let’s chat!
Phil & Tyler also had a conversation about this very topic in our latest webinar. Watch it on demand to learn more!
