Organizing corporate events demands an investment of teamwork, time, and collective effort. Maximizing your brand and event awareness is a number one priority in 2024, especially when it comes to visually-captivating video content.

In this guide, we’ll review in detail crafting event highlights video that tells the story of your unique event. We’ll cover:

• The Principal Styles of Event Highlight Reels
• Potential Obstacles You May Run Into
• Suggested Best Practices to Follow

What Exactly is an Event Highlights Video?

In a nutshell, event highlights video goal is to capture the most impactful, emotional, and memorable moments from your event. This could be for all kinds of companies and occasions. A groundbreaking seminar, a bustling convention, an intimate company town hall, or even a fundraiser.

There are two primary varieties:

The Highlights Video

These reels chronicle the total experience after the fact. They underscore the most meaningful moments and speeches that left an impression. Like a photo album showing a momentous journey.

The Hype (Teaser) Video

This dynamic video boosts exhilaration before the main event transpires and compel spectators to take the plunge. It makes your event stand out in the saturated event landscape.

Event highlights video production

Why Dedicate Resources to Event Highlights Video?

The benefits of this investment are worth mentioning:

• Strong ROI: Event video is an evergreen asset you can leverage to promote future happenings and events, years after the event, if filmed professionally and edited trendy.
• Multiplied Brand Recognition: Over 9 in 10 marketers get new followers and clients through social media videos

However, you may encounter obstacles in jumping in the event video production, if taking on this production project by yourself:

The Time and Resource Quandary

Producing a remarkable event video requires a tremendous investment of time, effort and creative juices. From storyboarding to shooting to post-production and sound design.

Skill and Knowledge Gaps

This is a specialized craft, that covers expertise in pre-production, videography, editing, graphics, and more.

The Inspiration Hurdle

Trying to stay creative during the grind of event planning can prove an unbearable challenge.

The solution is joining forces with a professional event video production powerhouse like IT STARTS! media. Our event filming services offer end-to-end support – from conceptualizing the vision to storyboarding, filming, post-production editing, and distribution.

Serving companies and brands across the nation in cities including New York, Chicago, Seattle, and more, we craft event videos that leave indelible impressions and boost your brand awareness.

Event highlights videos are a great way to showcase the most memorable and impactful moments from an event. Is it a conference, gala, expo, startup event, or any other type of event? Highlights video allows you to capture the energy and excitement in a shareable format.

Event video production is both an art and a science. If you dare, follow these 10 best practices to create wow-worthy event videos that delight audiences and benefit your brand.

1. Plan Ahead for Your Event Highlight Video Shoot

The key to producing great event video is planning ahead. Decide on your video length, format, story arc and other creative details before the event date. Improvising doesn’t help much, just take our word for it. Map out the moments and speakers you want to capture.

You’ll also need the right event videography equipment and team in place. Two cameras, portable lighting, gimbals, audio recording gear. Sounds like a lot? The way out is to work with an experienced event video production company to handle the filming and editing. Discuss the schedule, budget, technical requirements, shot lists and deliverables in advance.

Key takeaway is – planning ahead ensures you’ll get all the necessary footage and angles to craft an engaging video after the event. It also allows your team to be more focused on creating art that inspires instead of just documenting.

Tech event

2. Use Multiple Camera Angles

While it’s possible to shoot an event with a single camera, your video quality will benefit greatly from multiple angles. Use a combination of wide shots to establish the scene, medium shots for speakers and presentation materials, and close-up shots to showcase reactions from the audience.

Shooting B-roll footage like crowd reactions, table details, signage, and venue spaces allows for more interesting editing. You can cut these clips between segments to add energy and dynamics.

For large events, having cameras positioned in multiple areas of the venue and manned by a team of videographers will provide the best range of coverage.

3. Capture Quality Sound

Audio is just as crucial as visuals when it comes to event videos. Muffled or inconsistent sound will diminish the quality of your event video. Invest in professional microphones and audio equipment operated by an experienced audio technician. We recommend Sehhneiser MKE600 Shotgun mic, Zoom recorders, and Rode Wireless Pro Lavalier Microphone set.

Lav mics allow you to capture speech directly from presenters and speakers. Audience mics placed strategically throughout the room let you incorporate crowd reactions and ambient sound. If you place mics near demonstration areas or stages, this will ensure important moments are recorded with quality sound.

4. Shoot Steadily with Stabilized Gear

Shaky footage sometimes is a good idea and adds more life to shots. When misused, it looks amateur and will be distracting and off-putting to viewers. To keep your event clips smooth and stable, film with cameras that have built-in stabilization or optical image stabilization (OIS) features. Other stabilization tools like gimbals or tripods also minimize camera shake. We use DJI RSC2 gimbals for stable footage. This model is a perfect combination of performance and weight. Make sure you practice with it before the event, and set it up according to your filming style and preferences. Also, gimbals need to be balanced and calibrated, after the camera is installed, which takes some time, especially when you are doing it for the first time. Keep it in mind.

When shooting handheld, have videographers keep elbows tucked and make slow, fluid movements. Using wider angle lenses and faster shutter speeds can also prevent jittery clips.

Tech event in San Francisco

5. Get a Mix of Shots and Perspectives

An engaging event highlights video provides visual variety to keep viewers interested. Make sure you get a mix of wide master shots, medium shots, close-ups, detail shots, camera movements and perspectives.

Wide shots of the full venue establish the scene and scale. Sweeping shots panning over the stage and audience add energy. Close-ups emphasize emotions and reactions. Shooting from a low angle makes speakers look more powerful. There are even more shots to utilize, make sure you do some research on that, and practice before the event.

Accenting your main action footage with these creative shots brings excitement and emotion to the edit.

6. Focus on Event Video Storytelling

Great event videos are more than just a compilation of clips – they tell a story. Maintain continuity by threading a narrative arc or theme throughout your edit. Showcase the event’s purpose, highlights, special moments and takeaways.

Structure your video with establishing shots (usually wide shots) and transitions (but don’t use a lot, it makes the video look lacking style). Use speakers’ quotes, titles and graphics to emphasize key messages (again, don’t overuse!). Choose music tracks that set the right tone and elicit the desired emotional response. We use Artlist.io for licensed music.

7. Provide Attendee Perspectives

While speaker presentations are central to many event videos, it’s also important to showcase the attendee experience. After all, events are ultimately for the benefit of attendees.

Capture clips of attendees networking, engaging with displays, enjoying meals, laughing, and other social aspects. Concentrate on the energy and ambiance of the crowd.

Providing these attendee perspectives allows those who missed the event to get a sense of the vibe and excitement.

8. Shoot Like You’re Making a Movie

Approach your event shoot as if you’re filming a documentary or movie, not just documenting a meeting. Look for creative scenes and beautiful visual details you can capture artfully.

Evaluate lighting, composition, camera motion, audio and sequencing as you shoot. Pay attention to transitions and flow. Maintain consistency from clip to clip. Keep an eye on camera settings. Thinking cinematically will naturally take your video quality to the next level.

Tech event in San Francisco

9. Get Pickup Shots and Cutaways

After the event wraps, there will likely be moments you wish you captured more footage of. While it’s ideal to get everything you need during the event, it’s common to realize gaps in useful B-roll while editing. That’s why it is highly recommended to overshoot events. More footage never hurts!

But if it didn’t work out, there is still a solution. Schedule a pickup shoot day after the event at the venue to capture cutaways, missing shots and anything else you need. Bonus materials like intros, outros and title cards can be shot then too. Having this extra footage makes the editing process much smoother.

10. Tell a Complete Story

Event videos don’t have to show every session and moment, but they should tell a complete story from start to finish. Establish the event purpose and location at the beginning. Show attendees arriving excitedly. Jump into event highlights and key moments. Capture speakers sharing impactful quotes and jokes.

End with wrap-up moments like awards or closing remarks. Emotive music helps message the story beats. With artful editing magic, you can craft a compelling narrative that captures the event’s overall themes and achievements. For video editing, DaVinci Resolve is highly recommended. This video editing software has free version, with pretty decent functionality available. What’s especially valuable for event videos production is the Voice Isolation feature (removes the background noise completely, without damaging the main speaker’s voice). AI powered face refinement makes wonders as well, and is very useful, because there is no time for preparations and matting make-up during the event filming.

Tech event in Los Angeles

Producing Flawless Event Highlights Videos with IT STARTS! media

As you can see, professional event videography requires an experienced team, high-end gear, technical know-how and artistic creativity. Our video production company IT STARTS! media has the expertise to handle all aspects of creating standout event highlights videos.

Based in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and serving clients nationwide across the United States, we are leaders in producing visually stunning, and inspiring event videos. Our talented creative team will collaborate closely with you to understand your vision, goals and brand voice. We use state-of-the-art equipment and utilize advanced filming techniques to capture your event’s energy and story from every angle.

Our post-production skills and artistry bring your event footage to life through compelling editing that accentuates the moments and messages you want to highlight. We utilize graphics, music, Hollywood level color correction and other enhancements that align with your brand identity. The end result is an event highlights video you’ll be thrilled to share for years to come.

Check out our latest event highlights video: