Start with the venue, not the equipment list
Most live event plans go wrong because the equipment list was written before anyone had stood in the room. Before you decide on anything, ask for a venue plan with dimensions, rigging points, load-in route and the position of the nearest power distribution. If a site visit is possible, go on a day when the hall is set up for something similar, so you can see where the sightlines are blocked and where audiences actually sit. Our approach with Live Event Technical Planning is to begin from what the venue allows and then fit the production around it. A camera position that looks ideal on a drawing may sit behind a lighting truss or a fire exit that cannot be obstructed. Writing those limits down early saves a costly rethink in the final week.
Pay particular attention to access. Ask how equipment reaches the stage, whether a lift is available, what the loading times are and who holds the keys. In mid autumn many venues run tight schedules around seasonal events, so a loading slot may be shorter than you assume. Confirm it in writing and build your run sheet around the time you are genuinely given, not the time you would like.
- Venue plan with dimensions and rigging points
- Load-in route, lift size and permitted loading times
- Fire exits, audience sightlines and restricted areas
- Named contact at the venue who can open doors
Check power and cabling before anything else is ordered
Power is the quiet constraint behind every live broadcast. Establish how many circuits are available, what their ratings are, and whether the supply for audio and video can be kept separate from lighting dimmers to avoid hum and interference. Ask the venue for the distribution board location and whether a qualified electrician will be present during the build. Then map the cable runs. Measure from each camera position to the control area and add a sensible margin for routing around obstacles rather than in straight lines. Long runs may call for fibre instead of copper, and that choice affects the equipment you bring. A plan that lists every run with its length and type is far easier to check than a general statement that cabling is covered.
Think about where cables cross audience or crew routes and how they will be protected. Ramps, covers and clear taping are cheap, but only if they appear on the plan. Add a short list of spares: a few extra lengths of each cable type, adaptors and a spare power distribution unit. When something fails during rehearsal, a labelled spare in a known location turns a crisis into a two-minute fix.
- Circuit ratings and a separate supply for audio and video
- Measured cable lengths with a margin for routing
- Fibre or copper decided per run
- Cable protection where routes cross walkways
Walk the signal path from lens to transmission
A run sheet is only as good as the signal path behind it. Before you decide, draw the full chain: cameras, vision mixing, graphics, audio sources, monitoring, recording and the outgoing feed. Every connection should have a format and a destination written beside it, so no one is guessing during a rehearsal about whether a source is going to the right place. Check the outgoing feed with particular care. Confirm what the receiving network or platform expects, including format, frame rate and audio configuration, and who on their side will test it with you. We often see events where everything inside the venue works perfectly but the contribution feed was never agreed in detail until the afternoon of the broadcast.
Include communications in the same drawing. Talkback between director, camera operators, sound and the stage manager is part of the signal path, not an afterthought. Decide who needs to hear whom, which channels are shared and where a separate line is worth having. A clear diagram also helps new crew members understand the system quickly when people change between rehearsal and the live show.
Read the run sheet as the crew will read it
A good run sheet is written for the person holding it in a dim control room under pressure. Check that every cue has a clear trigger, a named owner and an expected duration. If two things happen at once, make sure the sheet shows who handles each. Avoid shorthand that only the author understands, and keep the layout consistent from page to page. Ask whether the sheet separates what is fixed from what may change. Speakers overrun, music cues move and stage managers adjust. A plan that marks flexible items and gives the director a clear decision point for each one will survive a changing schedule far better than one that treats every line as fixed.
Test the sheet with a read-through before rehearsal. Sit with the technical director, sound lead and camera lead and talk through the show line by line. Gaps usually show up within the first ten minutes: a camera that is needed in two places, a microphone that is not assigned, a graphic with no source. Finding those gaps in a quiet room costs nothing; finding them live costs a great deal.
- Every cue has a trigger, an owner and a duration
- Flexible items clearly marked
- Read-through with all department leads before rehearsal
Decide who is needed and what happens if something fails
Crew numbers deserve a direct conversation before anything is confirmed. List each role the plan requires, from camera operators and sound to vision, graphics and stage management, and check that each person has a defined position and a break pattern. Long events need relief cover, and a plan with exactly the minimum crew has no room for illness or travel problems. Then ask the awkward question: what fails first, and what do we do? For each critical element, such as the main camera feed, the lead microphone, the vision mixer or the outgoing link, note the fallback. Sometimes that is a spare unit, sometimes a simpler way of running the show. The point is that the fallback is decided calmly in advance and known to the people who must carry it out.
Finally, agree the rehearsal time. A technical rehearsal with the full crew, on the real equipment, is the single best protection against surprises. If the schedule cannot offer one, that is worth knowing before you commit, because it changes how cautious the plan should be. Write down the decisions, who made them and when, so the whole team shares the same picture.
- Role list with relief cover for long events
- A written fallback for each critical element
- Full technical rehearsal on the real equipment
Questions to put to yourself before signing off
Before you approve a plan, run through a final set of questions. Has the venue been seen, or at least studied in detail? Is every power circuit and cable run accounted for? Does the signal path have a format written beside each connection, including the outgoing feed? Can the crew read the run sheet without its author in the room?
If any answer is uncertain, treat it as work still to be done rather than a risk to be accepted. A short delay in sign-off is almost always cheaper than a fix during load-in. Our Live Event Technical Planning work ends with a written run sheet and equipment plan precisely so that these questions have documented answers, which your team can check and challenge.
Deciding on a live event plan is easier when you have a short list of things that must be true before you commit: a known venue, accounted power and cabling, a documented signal path, a readable run sheet, a named crew and agreed fallbacks. None of these is difficult alone, but together they separate a calm broadcast from a stressful one. Use this list as a conversation starter with your own team, and bring the gaps to us if you would like them written up.
