Pros of pre-recorded events

Room for retakes

Imagine having a live launch event for your product. Now picture it when one of your presenters accidentally fumbled due to technical difficulties on the teleprompter. At this point, the only thing you can do is to move on and stop the excruciating pain in your audience. 

Now, compare that to a pre-recorded event. What can you do when your presenters screw up? Well, just re-shoot the whole scene again! Keep going on and on until you get the shot you want. As opposed to a live event, you can take as much time as you want to guide your presenter and it wouldn’t affect your final product whatsoever. This is an enormous advantage to have! 

However, that doesn’t mean that you can skimp on your pre-production. The cost of production still remains significant. Your equipment, your visual aids, your scheduling, and above all, your scripts have to be properly revised before the shooting. 

High-quality production 

During a live event, the room to edit the footage you have is close to none. However, for a pre-recorded event, you will have plenty of time to select the best footage you have. Not just that, enabling yourself to reap the benefits of a pre-production event allows you to time and transition the event smoothly. 

On top of that, pre-recording an event will ensure that only the best is shown to your audience. The reason for this is that the ones that are not the best will not be included in the final product. When your audience doesn’t see the technical glitches or the malfunctions that happen, it sends a message that you only aim for the highest of quality. 

Cons of pre-recorded events

Audience engagement

While pre-recorded events can tremendously boost the production value of your event, it doesn’t come without a price. And one of the prices you have to pay is audience engagement. 

When you’re presenting live, you have instantaneous feedback about what your audience likes or doesn’t like. These are things like claps, cheers, facial expressions, and the energy around the event. To a professional presenter, this feedback is a very crucial part of their speech because it is used as a guide on how to approach the next section of the speech. 

On the flip side, when a presenter does not have this feedback, that means that whether or not the audience understands the presenter, the speech will still go on. Despite the fact that audiences can hit the pause button, it is still a major issue that will affect the entire experience. 

Outdated content

Depending on the type of event you’re running, some can be recyclable while the others are not. Take a webinar, for example, if you can properly plan your schedule without shoving too much content at your audience, recycling that one pre-recorded webinar can save you a lot of time. But if you stretch that period into a few months, your information will be out of date, making you look like you’re not aware of the latest updates. 

Not just that, a humungous challenge also includes the post-production of your pre-recorded event. It is undeniable that the world we live in today moves extremely fast, especially the latest news updates. So coupling this fact with how many times you can recycle your content, it could be twice as much work and cost that needs to go in in comparison to a live event. 

Should your next virtual event be pre-recorded or live? 

The blatant truth is, there is no absolute winner. Both live and pre-records have their purposes. This debate can go on for eternity because of the pros and cons of each option. 

A live event mainly allows you to engage and interact with your participants, which is a major long-term advantage. On the other hand, a pre-recorded event grants you the ability to absolutely perfect your event before showing it to your audience. So ultimately, it really depends on what type of event you’re hosting and what you want to achieve out of it. 

Annaba Resources will help guide you through every step of your event planning. Our professional project managers will oversee the entire logistical management with you. 

Contact us now to set up a casual meeting at your convenience and let us help you with your upcoming project!