Mulling over the words “production budget” can often be an easy way to stress yourself out. Especially when considering live stream video production for your business.
If you’re a cinephile, your mind might immediately wander towards nightmare productions like "Waterworld" or the 2013 version of "The Lone Ranger". Both were movies with budgets that ballooned past unconscionable and into the realm of the cartoonish, thanks to would-be auteurs with artistic ambitions bordering on Michael Crichton plotline-adjacent hubris. Enormous film sets that practically begged to be washed away by the unforgiving sea. Stars with outlandish demands. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and it can seem there are never enough fingers to plug every financial leak in the sinking ship that is your vision.
Alright now, calm down. You’re just making a live stream. And there are plenty of affordable options available to fit quality business video into your budget.
On-Hand Live Stream Necessities
It can feel overwhelming when you first start putting together a budget for any sort of video production. A cursory look around the internet might convince you that buying AV equipment is financially comparable to throwing a nerdy party at Jay Gatsby’s house. Don't worry - it doesn’t have to be like that.
Breathe calmly and think of it this way: you probably already have all of the bare necessities. Your workplace likely possesses a solid internet connection in order to function, so you shouldn’t have to worry about bandwidth. As for physical equipment, chances are good your smartphone can handle video better than 90 percent of electronics could a decade ago.
So there you go. You have the basics handled. Where you want to go from there is up to you.
Stretch the Video Budget
How much money you want to drop on a slick new setup depends on the quality your company hopes to achieve with the video. Want the highest of the high-end, and hope to broadcast in such high definition that most people won’t even be able to watch what you’re streaming in real time? That’s an option.
But you can stretch your AV budget, and expand your potential B2B audience pretty significantly, by grabbing totally functional, consumer-level equipment. There are seriously so many affordable options out there, and an afternoon of studious attention to Amazon or eBay can save you piles of money. If you want to save even bigger, check out Craigslist or letgo - people upgrade their stashes of video tech all the time and try to make up the cost by selling their old stuff through these types of online sites.
Whether you decide to buy new or used, your most important move is to check out user reviews. There are more than seven billion people on the planet, and there’s a good chance at least ten of them have bought what you’re looking at. Their experience can save you time and money if you’re considering buying what looks like a condenser mic but turns out to be a toilet paper tube covered in electrical tape.
Cost-Effective Video Production Team
One of the largest chunks of any production budget tends to be the people behind it. You won’t regret hiring somebody who specializes in digital production, but they don’t tend to come cheap. If you need somebody with experience but can’t shell out the cash, think about looking for a video production intern. If you’re anywhere near a college town, the odds are good you’ll be able to find young filmmakers hungry to fill their reel for future work. Just make sure you feed them. Unpaid artistic work always goes down easier with a hoagie.
And that’s a brief look at all of the ways you can work a live stream into your budget. Any thoughts of your own? Please let us know! And as always, be sure to check around the site for more ideas on getting your live stream started.
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