A guide to Conference Video

Conference Video Title
A quick guide to the benefits of commissioning a conference video

Thinking about a conference video?

With conference season about to kick off in earnest there will be many organisers still pondering on the thought of recording the event on video. I mean, it’s a whole lot of hassle isn’t it? Well no it isn’t actually. Producing a conference video can be the simplest of things to do and comes with range of benefits for the organisers, the speakers and the delegates – not to mention those people who were not able to attend!

A conference video can be anything from a single-camera production with basic intro/outro graphics and then shared online either publicly or privately to a selected audience – right through to a multi-camera extravaganza, with live external feeds to stage, post-event interviews with keynote speakers and so on, and so on. If your event is only weeks away your ambitions are probably going to be quite modest, but to let the opportunity of capturing something of the event slip by might be regretted. Reject having a conference video at your haste – repent at your leisure!

The benefits of commissioning a conference video

OK, at a very basic level, video is a great way to record an event for archiving or keeping a record of what has been said. It might not ever be used in any other way, but even at this level there’s great value in recording on video what we do. They are historic documents and could at some stage in the future be extremely valuable in illustrating a period in time or development of your business.

However, the real value to all concerned is to look to create a video record to be shared and used – and possibly create additional revenue for the organisers. You’ve probably invested considerable time and resources into the venue, speakers and general event management so you’ll certainly want to explore every possible revenue stream in order to make the event more profitable. Post-event conference video sales to attendees and non-attendees can be a very lucrative thing to offer. Password-protected and secure online video delivery is reasonably straight forward these days – or you could simply revert to DVD release to add more value.

Filming a Team Building Event lighting
The stage is set for another conference video

Producing a conference video might also help you to attract sponsors – certainly if their brand is going to be exposed to a broader online community. A properly indexed and tagged video hosted on YouTube or Vimeo will get to the right audience and, at the same time, help with your own search engine optimisation and online presence. You might find that a sponsor covers all the costs of production and distribution and the content is provided freely to anyone who wants to see it.

If your next event is just one of many then you’ll no doubt understand how useful a promotional video can be in selling your next event, and it doesn’t take much planning and imagination for a good video production company to have this in mind whilst shooting for a standard long-form conference video. Over time, with a number of events recorded, you could have a promotional video which reflects your history and expertise more accurately – updated periodically to keep it fresh and relevant.

For little more investment you could also consider transmitting your conference live (almost) over the internet as a webcast. In it’s most basic form there are ways to do this freely, but there’s all manner of webcasting tools available to you today to make the whole experience more interactive and audience-focussed. For instance, you could allow online delegates to post questions to speakers or panel members and engage “live”.

Conference video costs

There’s no logical way to menu-price a conference video service, but at the very basic end of the scale you could get your event professionally recorded for a few hundred pounds. In addition, tidying up the output and putting it into an online-ready format for distribution might only take a day to do – and perhaps just a little more investment post production could result in really useful promotional tool for your future events or purely to share with those involved.

If your ambitions are beyond the basic level then it’s going to take a little more effort in preparing a detailed proposal – which should also give you some further ideas on how you can start to benefit from commissioning a conference video. Either way, please contact us today if we’ve raised your interest enough to commission a conference video. Please call 020 3602 3356.

Note: Here’s a selection of case studies based on conference video and event coverage …

Case Study 1
Case Study 2
Case Study 3
Case Study 4