Lights, camera, action! Events of all genres are embracing Hollywood-style production values in 2017, providing attendees not only with information, but also full-on entertainment.

Will Curran, Founder of US-based AV production company Endless Entertainment, shares the AV trends and technology impacting events across the pond and what we can expect to see here in the future. You can read even more on this topic over on Endless Entertainment’s blog.

Looks matter

“We’re seeing a lot more money being spent on the atmosphere of events. Clients want to make their stages look pretty because people are realising that the black drapes and uplighters don’t look cool any more. The trend is being influenced by big conferences like INBOUND, Dreamforce and South by South West. They look amazing and people want that.

“A lot more people are focusing on the way their content looks too. Everyone is figuring out ways to display it differently, not just the high-end clients. Traditionally it was two screens on either side of the stage and a scenic piece in the middle but now every other client says we’re doing a third screen in the middle rather than a scenic piece. They’re using ultra widescreens, triple wide screens and custom dimensioned content.

“They’re also making things a lot more entertaining by doing 15 minutes here and 15 minutes there, adding exciting intro music and showing videos. People want to turn it into a production and keep things constantly changing to cater for the ADD mind of today!”

Everyone’s going live

“A huge trend we’re seeing, that almost every event is implementing, is live streaming. Three years ago people said, “Why would I ever live stream my event? I want people to go to it, I’m afraid if I live stream it they’re not going to buy a ticket.” And now we’re getting to the day and age where every one of our clients is saying, “How do I live stream my event?,” or just doing it on their own in a simple way, on their phone with Facebook Live, Instagram Live or Periscope.

“It’s great because it’s a really accessible technology, but if you use a production company like us to do it more formally, using something like Livestream or your own custom platform, you can do things like voting and polling and you get a high definition, awesome live stream.

“The marketing benefits of live streaming are huge. For example, my first experience of an event doing live streaming insanely well was Ultra Music Festival over in Miami. If you do it the right way it’s an amazing marketing piece for you.

“Sure, there are the people who won’t fly out to Miami and buy the $400 pass for the weekend, but to be honest those are the people who probably wouldn’t have paid for it anyway. What ends up happening is all those people watch the live feed and are like, “This is so amazing. Look at all these artists. I want to go!” You not only get the direct benefit of selling more tickets but also the word of mouth.

“For the longest time no one had heard of Ultra Music Festival, it used to be the small festival attached to the Winter Music Conference but now it’s the headline. Everyone knows it because they’ve seen the live streams.

“In addition to live streaming, they also had all the content – all the recordings of the DJ sets. They gave the recordings to the DJs and they published them on their YouTube channels, which helped them promote their appearance at this music festival. It creates a long term marketing gain both in content and that FOMO aspect, that people say, “Man, I am missing out by not being there.”

“Once you recognise the marketing value in live streaming, it’s about creating great content beyond that. The people who do it really well are not just saying, “Here’s a keynote. Watch it for an hour and then switch off.” They’re also doing things like hosting event interviews.

“For example, HubSpot’s INBOUND conference did this really well where they were cutting between keynotes and breakout sessions, but in between they were doing one-on-one exclusive interviews with Anna Kendrick, the keynote speaker – none of the attendees even got to see that, so there was this super exclusive content just for the live stream watchers.”

Virtual reality for virtual attendance

“Before we only saw the high-end marketing activations asking for virtual reality, for example 360-degree filming at the Golden Globes, that sort of stuff, but now we’re starting to see lower end clients say, “How can we incorporate this into our event?”

“I think the biggest way we’ll be able to implement it is not actually on-site at an event. Attendees aren’t all going to sit in a room and put headsets on for a keynote that’s going to be somewhere else.

“Maybe there’ll be a couple of headsets so someone can do a cool activation and something fun with it, maybe on the marketing side, but it’s really going to affect the off-site experience. Going back to live streaming, we’re getting requests for it now; people want to do a 360-degree virtual reality live stream.

Orah 360 camera

“With the cost of 360-degree cameras dropping and cool technologies like the Orah, the possibilities are really opening up. The Orah is a 360, 4k live stream camera with ambisonic 3D sound that connects straight to YouTube Live or Livestream. You can literally just put it in the middle of the room and people can have a 360-degree view of your event. So, I don’t think it will be long until we see people putting on Daydream headsets and getting a front row seat.

“We’ll also see VR and AR affecting the event planning process, with far more site visits happening virtually. When you contact a hotel, the first thing will be to get their 360-degree tour, pop your headset on and see what the venue is like. People will start using it for rendering things out, for example we currently do 3D renders and video flythroughs but soon we’ll be doing 360-degree renders so clients can virtually experience what their AV is going to look like before the event. It’s very common in real estate already.”

Audiences are interactive

“In 2016 we saw the mass adoption of interactivity apps like Slido, Crowdmics, Glisser. All these big tools were barely being picked up two years ago, now our clients come to us and say, “How can we get our attendees to use their smartphone while people are doing presentations? How can we do polling? How can we do chat?”

“They’re insanely popular now. People love it because the introvert who didn’t want to ask a question, or the person who wants to ask a hard hitting question but remain anonymous, can now do that.

“We sell a lot of clients on alternative microphones like Crowdmics and Catchbox. They’re saying “We want a question and answer mic in the middle of the aisle,” but we tell them there’s a better and more exciting way to do it. When you see someone throw a microphone box across the room and the person barely catches it, it adds excitement that wasn’t there before. It’s that kind of energy that is so important to keep attendees coming back.”

Conclusion

AV has the power to turn your event into a spectacle and leave a long lasting impression on all who see it – whether they attend in person or not.

Endless Entertainment has resources to help you make an impact including an AV checklist and a Guide to Removing In-House AV Restrictions, so you don’t get locked in to using a venue’s preferred supplier.