Brief:
The Star is a Sheffield based newspaper owned by Johnston Press. Digital Editor, Graham Walker understands that the future of news media is online, and especially online video. He therefore contacted Stream7 who were asked to produce The Star’s first ever live webcast under the new ‘Star Live’ brand. Sheffield band Reverend and The Makers were chosen to perform an intimate gig to VIP guests and simultaneously live online to the world via The Star's’ website. The Star Live will be an ongoing brand for the newspaper allowing the reporting of music events, sport and local news as they happen.
Solution:
The venue chosen for the event was The Sheffield Winter Gardens, a tropical glasshouse located in the city centre, as a venue not designed for live events this provided its own logistical challenges.
The planning started a month before the event, with Stream7 project manager Darren Wain coordinating a site visit along with the client and venue owners. It was soon discovered that there was not a suitable internet connection in the venue, luckily the St Paul's hotel located next to the venue, were able to provide a wired internet connection for the event.
On event day, Stream7 provided a 2 camera crew along with our Technical Director who mixed the camera shots along with graphics to produce the broadcast. The broadcast was viewable via a link on the newspaper’s website
Outcome:
The band performed a selection of their hits along with a sample of their new album. Viewers of the webstream were also able to have a sneak preview of the music video for the new single which was played out live using our webcasting system. Stream7 also added graphics for branding to the webcast with a ‘Star Live’ logo and ‘lower third’ song titles.
The 40 minute webcast had over 4000 views worldwide and provided the highest amount of website visitors to The Stars website in the last 2 years. Twitter and Facebook were alive with comments before, during and after the event further enhancing the online experience.
The event was a great success and proved the huge potential of webcasting for The Star as a commercial project as advertising can be sold for future webcasts including pre and post event video advertising and on page branding / banner ads.
