Common Mistakes in Live Event Technical Planning, and How to Avoid Them

Planning from the venue brochure instead of the room

The first mistake is also the most common: building a technical plan from a venue's brochure or floor plan and never standing in the room. Brochures give capacities and ceiling heights, but they rarely mention the pillar that blocks a camera position, the loading route that runs through the public foyer, or the power distribution that sits at the far end of the hall from the stage.

A site visit, even a short one, changes the plan more than any amount of email. I look at where cables can run without crossing a walkway, where the nearest usable power is, how the room sounds when it is empty, and what daylight does to the screens at different times of day.

If a visit is truly impossible, ask the venue for photographs taken from the stage looking out and from the back looking in, plus a measured plan. It is a poor substitute, but it is far better than guessing.

• Walk the cable route from stage to gallery or control position
• Locate power sources and note their capacity
• Check daylight on screens and stage faces
• Ask where deliveries and load-in actually happen

Briefing the crew too late, or too loosely

A crew that first sees the running order on the morning of the event will spend the first hour asking questions that should have been answered a week before. Late briefings cause the quiet kind of failure: a camera operator who does not know a speaker moves between lectern and screen, or a sound operator unaware that a panel has gained a fifth microphone.

A good briefing is short and written down. It names who is responsible for what, gives the running order with timings, lists the cue points where something changes, and says who has the authority to make a call when the plan stops matching reality.

I like to send the document several days ahead and then hold a ten-minute walk-through on site before doors open. People remember a plan they have seen twice, and the second time they spot the gaps for you.

• Name one person who makes decisions during the event
• Mark every cue where camera, audio or screens change
• Share the plan in writing before the day

Treating audio as something to sort out at the end

Picture tends to get the attention early, because it is what people point at. Audio then gets whatever budget and rehearsal time are left. At a conference this is backwards: an audience forgives a plain stage, but it does not forgive speech it cannot follow, and a broadcast with poor sound loses viewers within minutes.

Decide early how many microphones are needed, which are handheld, worn or fixed, and who will be handed them. Plan for the awkward moments: questions from the floor, a speaker who walks away from the lectern, a video clip with its own sound that is far louder than the people introducing it.

Test radio microphones in the room, not in the hire shop, and keep spare batteries within reach of whoever is looking after them. Most audio faults on the day are small and avoidable.

• Count every voice that will need a microphone
• Rehearse the question-and-answer routine
• Set levels for video clips before the audience arrives

Leaving no room for a rehearsal

Setup time is routinely squeezed because the room was in use the day before, or because the schedule assumed everything would arrive and work first time. The rehearsal is then the first thing to go, and it is the one step that exposes problems while there is still time to fix them.

Even twenty minutes of a rehearsal with real content is worth more than an hour of checking equipment in isolation. A cue that looked sensible on paper may turn out to leave a camera operator with no time to reframe, or to put a lighting change at the very moment a speaker steps forward.

When time is short, rehearse the opening and the most complicated segment rather than everything. If the first five minutes run cleanly, the crew settles and the rest of the event goes better for it.

Having no fallback for the one thing that matters most

Every event has a single point where failure would be visible to everyone: the stream feed, the main presentation source, the lead microphone. The mistake is not that these things fail, since equipment sometimes does, but that nobody has decided in advance what happens when they do.

For each critical item, ask two plain questions. What is the spare, and how long does it take to bring into use? Who makes that change, and do they know it is theirs to make? A backup in a flight case at the other end of the building is not much of a backup.

Write the answers on the same page as the running order. In a live broadcast there is no time to debate; the crew should be able to glance at the page and act. Rehearsing one failure, just once, makes the real one feel familiar.

• Identify the single most visible point of failure
• Keep the spare within reach of the person who will use it
• Agree who calls the switch to the fallback

Forgetting the people outside the technical team

Technical plans often assume that everyone else behaves as scripted. Speakers arrive late, ask to change slides at the last minute, bring their own laptop with an unfamiliar connector, or decide to walk the room with a handheld microphone. None of this is unreasonable, and all of it lands on the crew.

Build contact with presenters into the plan. A named person who greets speakers, checks their files and explains where to stand and where the microphone is will head off most surprises. Ask for presentations in advance and test them on the actual system.

Organisers also benefit from a plain explanation of what the crew needs from them and when. Most are glad to help once they know what is useful, and the event is calmer for everyone.

Almost every item here comes down to the same habit: deciding things early, writing them down and checking them in the real room. Live events will always throw up something unexpected, but a crew that knows the plan, has seen the venue and has rehearsed the awkward moments deals with surprises quietly. If you are planning a conference or broadcast and want a second pair of eyes on the technical side, a conversation before the details are fixed is the cheapest time to have it.