The Magic of Pre-Recordings
March 17th 2020: We nicknamed it “Black Tuesday”. As with most, it was a dark day in Playback Now history where we, like the rest of the world watched helplessly as sporting events, businesses, airports boarders all shut down in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Atlanta, Ga at the Playback Now headquarters, the calls and emails came at a numbing pace as all events were canceled or put on hold for the foreseeable future. For a company built solely around onsite conventions and conferences, this was truly a devastating blow.
But as Playback Now has done since its creation in 1978, we began to look ahead to different opportunities in the virtual-only world. Suddenly the cancellation calls turned into brainstorming calls. How can we still give our association partners the opportunity to get their valuable content out to their memberships?
One way was quickly realized and put into action within days. Just because we couldn’t go onsite to capture content anymore didn’t mean we couldn’t remotely connect with presenters via video, record their presentations providing the opportunity for presenters to redo any slight mistakes and then produce the final video for virtual consumption. With virtual conferences igniting across the country, this was a new process that was about to become very important for anyone trying to have a quality virtual conference.
Within weeks, we were in contract with multiple associations and organizations that were quickly transitioning to full virtual conferences and in desperate need of content. Being able to easily pre-record these presentations was going to help tremendously as the worry and fret of a presenter not showing, technology not working or the internet not cooperating was suddenly eliminated.
“We recognized early on in the early days of the pandemic that we were going to have to change the way we thought about capturing content for our association partners,” said Matthew Galucki who is tasked with Business Development at Playback Now. “The concept of connecting with presenters remotely and capturing a presentation virtually had never been attempted before, mostly because it was never really needed”. “I’m proud how quickly we adapted to that new need as we tried to figure out where we sat in the new landscape of virtual conferencing.”
The unexpected yet exciting bonus of the remote pre-recordings also allowed Playback Now editors the ability to enhance presentations in various ways. “Whether it is a subtle background shade of color to event graphics or how we can manipulate the presenters on screen, we are able to really make sure these recordings don’t look like just another zoom meeting,” noted Senior Production Coordinator Todd Galucki.
Playback Now quickly put a process in place that allowed associations to share a link with their selected speakers which gave them access to a Playback Now production calendar with dedicated time frames, recording window links, and available designated Playback Now production staff.
Presenters could select from this calendar the time that worked for them but also be assured that the time worked for an available Playback Now recording technician. Once selected, confirmations including login and zoom information were instantly created for both the presenter and recording technician. Now all that was left was the hard part…. the actual presentation. For that, we even created a video “Tips & Tricks” for the presenters to access in anticipation of their upcoming remote presentation.
Presenters have raved about how easy we made the process and converted a potentially intimidating and stressful presentation much more manageable. The biggest assist we gave was the ability for presenters if they’ve misspoken or didn’t particularly like a direction their talk went to pause a moment and let our recording technicians make a note of the timing and simply edit that piece out of the final version. That made presenters much more comfortable when online presenting.
After completing over 2400 remote recordings in 2021, our production team is very much looking forward to a few slower weeks this holiday season in preparation for another year of remote presentations capture and production. Click here to read reviews that remote presenters left our team.
If you’d like Playback Now to assist you in capturing remote recordings or the traditional onsite live streaming or content capture, click here to schedule some time to discuss your project.