When you’re preparing an audio visual budget for your event, there’s a lot more to think about than simply how much money to allocate for themes, lights, sound and vision. To ensure you’re getting the most value for money from your event’s AV design, a solid knowledge of the capabilities of both technology and your audio visual company are essential.
Here we give you our top 6 audio visual tips for creating a successful event.
1. Look for creativity in your audio visual supplier
When looking for an audio visual provider, you traditionally seek service, price and reliability. All are good measures of a quality audio visual company, but to truly do justice to your event, creativity needs to be a central part of their product offering. Advances in projection and event lighting technology mean that the old business model of simply hiring out and operating gear for a client is no longer an adequate level of service.
To really ensure peace of mind when selecting an audio visual provider, ask about their history in presenting similar events and their history at the chosen venue. Look at some examples of their work closest in scope to your event. If they have documentation of their work at your chosen venue, even better!
2. Set your event vision and share it
Having a clear vision of the aesthetic feel and tone of the event is crucial at this stage of pre-production. Storyboard your event like a movie director, discuss themes and images with your key staff and audio visual team. Don’t get fixated on what you have seen done before or know to be possible; a good audio visual company should be able to take on board any creative idea you have and translate it into a practical suggestion.
3. Remember the importance of sound for your event
The sound system employed to deliver, should match the content. Important things to look for are adequate coverage of the room to ensure all attendees get crystal-clear sound as well as the full impact of any musical material. If you are employing high-energy music or cinematic sound effects ensure the system can replicate the full range of sound.
4. Think digital
Discuss with your Audio visual company about methods to digitally enhance your event. Can they digitally brand your conference with projections and then successfully transform the same space for a gala dinner? Entire ballrooms can be changed into another world, and the walls of an auditorium can ripple at the arrival of a new product. A custom built set design can be transformed into a living, breathing animal. Pretty much anything is possible, and an in-depth conversation with a design professional is invaluable to help direct your thinking in the planning stages. Understand what design and creative support the audio visual company offer and whether the in-house designers have the skills to shepherd you through the concept creation, implementation and delivery of just aboutanything your imagination can conjure.
5. Get Mobile
Almost everyone now a ‘Smartphone’ in their pocket. This makes them capable of not only absorbing your content but also interacting with it. An audio visual company should have a lot of fresh ideas on how to make this work for your event, extending your theme and offering greater engagement with your audience.
A key technology for presenters are apps to enable snap event polling of audience members and instantly display aggregated results on a main screen. For attendees, important information such as timetables, maps and key messages should be easily accessible from an app or network.
6. Ask your audio visual team the right questions
Questions about the technical details are excellent for getting a sense of competence and good organisation. Is the PA suitable for speech reinforcement only or can it deliver loud, exciting music if you need it? What combination and numbers of lighting fixtures do they usually use – LED, moving lights, wash lights? Again, it’s not necessarily the specific information that you need, but the assurance of their confidence in answering. If you’re satisfied with that, then ask them what they recommend, or better yet, what they have always wanted to do given the opportunity. You’ll soon establish whether you’re in good hands.
