Improving event production happens during planning, execution, and post-event stages. To stand out from your competitors, it is essential to create a valuable event that can offer a unique experience to the audience.

Additionally, keep in mind that it will require more time, effort, and resources for events with mixed online and in-person audiences to succeed.

In this article, we will guide you thoroughly on how you can make the event experience memorable and meaningful by providing helpful tips and insightful recommendations, which can also help increase profits.

Quick Reads

• What Is Event Production?
• Challenges of Event Production
• The Cost of Event Production
• Factors Involved When Producing Events
• Post Event: Assessing Your Event Success
• Event Production Companies Duties & Responsibilities
• Benefits You Get When Working With an Event Production Company
• Top 5 Event Production Companies in the United States
• Use Glue Up Platform in Producing Successful Events

What Is Event Production?

Event production deals with logistics coordination before, during, and after an event takes place. It involves having the right staff to ensure the event goes off without a hitch. It can also include clients during the event production process as much or little as they would want.

Careful planning is crucial to a well-executed event. An event production team helps coordinate everything–from design to food to program. It aims to enhance an event’s live, stage presence to deliver a memorable and meaningful experience to attendees. It seeks to grab and hold the audience’s attention using audiovisual techniques, light technology, and unique presenters.

With the help of an event manager, it seeks to understand clients’ needs, research elements related to events, and hire the right staff. In line with this, they help brief and supervise the team while monitoring the event to quickly resolve issues that may arise.

Event Planning vs. Event Management vs. Event Production

Event planning deals with the early stages of conceptualization and goes all the way to the activities managed before an event. It includes choosing a theme, developing a budget, selecting venues, finalizing event dates, planning the menu, hiring a caterer, and more.

On the other hand, event management involves managing different components of weddings, festivals, conferences, sports events, and parties. It involves registrations, managing staff, overseeing event execution, and resolving event situations on site. In short, event planners plan and prepare activities for all special events, while an event manager takes ownership for the successful event execution.

Event production is the thoughtful planning and execution that elevates an event into an experience. Working with presenters, audiovisual crew, and technology vendors, event production management teams produce and deliver unique live experiences at an event. Get the most professional assistance from any of these San Francisco corporate event companies.

In addition, the live event presentation aims to impact the audience in the most meaningful way by stimulating their attention through audio, visual technologies, and unique presenters.

Pre-Production

The first step in the event production process is pre-production, which can start a few days or a month before the event. After discussing the client pitch with the team, you can develop the event planning timeline.

During the entirety of the production in the event management process, the production team has to evaluate the concept, write the script, create videos and images to support, and build the production schedule.

Keep in mind that it’s essential to book a show crew three months before the event. The production team should coordinate the schedule with technicians and ask about their availability. Another factor to consider when doing an event is budgeting–identifying the amount you have and making some adjustments if necessary.

After this, you can plan the event branding and design. List down all the costs associated with equipment and audiovisual services, among others.

Discussing presentations and collecting scripts is part of the pre-production stage to come prepared during the event. Be open to changes by asking the right questions and removing the unnecessary elements that cannot contribute to smooth event execution.

Another critical aspect of the pre-production stage is the event theme and design. You can focus on simplicity using projection screen, decor, and venue layouts if you are producing small events.

On the contrary, a large show will have a rented backdrop that gives you the freedom to get the dream event look you want–with unique hues, materials, and styles.

At this point, coordination and communication with a production company are a must. You have to give your audio, video, and lighting requirements to prepare the AV equipment you need ahead of time.

The production team should create a production schedule one month before the event. It needs to align with the arrival of AV vendor trucks, crew call time, rest and meal breaks, and program start times.

On-Site

The second step in the event production process happens only a few days before the event schedule. Once you’ve made arrangements with rental and staging companies, the production team should arrive on time to begin the setup and rehearsal.

Make sure to develop a checklist that contains all requirements before you begin client and tech run-through. The production company needs to state the required time here and offer your crew the necessary help and assistance.

Finalizing the production schedule and event duration while planning onsite is necessary. Typically, the entire show flow or rundown isn’t built and completed until you get onsite.

Once everyone is in the staging meeting, all crew leads should discuss the show’s flow one by one. At this time, they can review technical details, come up with AV cues, and talk about potential issues and ways to solve them.

After this, the team should assess their roles and perform a run-through in the venue. This is the time to include all the cues for a given show and check if they work well together.

Everything from the beginning to the end can become detailed during this period, with multiple cues being modified or changed completely. After the run-through and cue-to-cue, the production team can set another run-through rehearsal with the client so that everyone can have a clear idea of what to expect.

Show Day

The show crew should be present on show day before the event opens. This allows everyone a chance to talk and then redo the cue-to-cue. Be open to the idea of giving the client an extra rehearsal if needed. Print the latest event flow and distribute them to key players for successful event execution.

Load-Out

Load-out is the last step of the event production process. Once the event ends, the production team can dismantle the stage and equipment and begin the post-event meeting.

It may take a couple of days to pack up all the gear and move them to the vehicle. Ensure that you have the right load-in/out crew to support as you need to manage time effectively and avoid the event from slowing down.

Challenges of Event Production

No Clear Client Vision

One of the biggest challenges you can face in events is handling a client that has a vague vision that serves no purpose. It’s necessary to discuss goals and logistics with clients early on. And for you to make an event successful, you need to come up with some strategies to get the desired outcome with the production team.

If you are part of an event management company, ask your clients about the target audience, budgets, and lessons learned from past events.

You can ask the following questions to set clear expectations:

1. Did you produce events in the past similar to this one?
2. Have you worked with this team in the past?
3. Can you show us your old cue sheets so we can check what we can get and apply?

Hire a Dependable Event Crew

Hiring event staff or crew can be challenging when most of them are already committed to other events. While understaffing poses some challenges, hiring a new crew can also entail the risk to underperform. This is the reason why producers invest in relationships with trusted crew members who are already comfortable with the work and can go the extra mile.

Last-Minute Changes to Your Event Production Schedule

There can be last-minute changes due to technical problems, changes in client requirements, and venue issues. When any of these happens, you must be resilient to challenges for you to gracefully launch the event.

When changes occur, make sure to keep the client and staff aligned. Print or send the event program via email to keep everyone updated. Otherwise, the team could miss important cues, leading to awkwardness and confusion among all participants.