Top Ten Tips for Livestreaming Your Protest

As thousands of people take to the streets in the U.S. to protest President-Elect Donald Trump, social media enables them to capture their every move by livestreaming their demonstration. Only time will tell whether their anger is justified. Meanwhile, filming crews across the country have less time than it takes to yell, “Action!” to prepare the videos of these tumultuous demonstrations. To help those of you who are planning on livestreaming your protest and getting your message out, we provide you with the following quick tips:

Before Livestreaming Your Protest

Assign Tasks to Crew Members

You may feel like you don’t have much time, but your crew members need fast sketches of what their job will be at the demonstration. It can be as simple as writing a few words of the exact time, location, and the task they ought to do.

Develop an Emergency Plan

Not every protest starts and ends peacefully. Your colleagues may be at risk of violence breaking out; a stampede, police intervention, and possibly a crew member being injured. Determine the potential risks and develop an emergency plan.

Prepare the Equipment

Bring empty memory cards and take fully-charged filming devices with you. Be sure to take a camera strap and put your cellphone where it can’t fall out while running.

Livestreaming your protest

During the Protest

Make Use of the Livestreaming Apps

The fastest way to to throw your video out to the public is by using livestreaming apps. It is in your best interest to broadcast the protest live on social media. Consider turning on Facebook Live, Periscope or any other livestreaming app out there.

Look Out for Others

Protests mean huge crowds of people. Try staying in smaller groups with your colleagues or at least have a partner nearby as you look through the lens. But even though you may have a filming partner for the broadcast, you can lose sight of them in the blink of an eye. So, stay focused on your camera with one eye, and on your partner with the other.

Hold the Camera Steady

People usually don’t like shaky cameras shots, it’s hard to watch for a period of time. Try to hold the camera steady and avoid unnecessary zooming. It is best to hold shots for a minimum of 10 seconds.

Try Capturing Details

When livestreaming your protest, make sure you’re in a safe place and then attempt recording details of potential incidents. Try capturing the whole incident and all the people involved. While you film the details, you can narrate about the actions prior to the incident so the viewers get a better grasp of what is exactly happening. LIVE News Channel captured details perfectly with their cameras in the middle of the riot, as seen below:

Conduct Interviews

Interviews can provide relevant, first-hand information from the demonstrators. Ensure those who will participate in your short interview know who you are filming it for and where the video will be shown. Fox news is one of the television channels which, apart from filming and livestreaming current anti-Trump protests, conducts interviews with the participants and eyewitnesses.

After the Protest

Preserve the Footage

After you’ve finished livestreaming your protest, your live footage can get deleted from social media. So be sure to preserve live footage on multiple devices, memory cards or on cloud storage. You never know when it will come in handy and you may have created footage of a moment that will go down in history.

Think Twice before Posting It

Think of how the video can influence the viewers and whether it is too controversial or too violent for some audiences. Take into account the rights of the participants and the laws regarding public footage in your country. Also consider, whenever you are livestreeaming your protest, remember to use spoiler messages to alert the audience of violent or disturbing content.

Do you think our tips can be of help to protest videographers? Or maybe you have your own demonstration video clips to share? We at Valoso can to turn your clips into amazing videos that will increase your online visibility and help you with your livestreaming videos in progress! Are you ready to contact us to get a free quote for live streaming your event? It’s free!

Livestreaming