My Approach To Shooting Event Marketing Videos
The Best Event Marketing Videos Capture the Fun and Excitement of an Event. Here’s How I Do It.
The psychology behind event marketing videos is pretty simple. You show scenes of an event with lots of people having a great time. Scenes that make the viewer wish they were there, too.
It’s a strategy that’s so popular, it even has a name—FOMO. Fear of Missing Out.
That was the idea behind the event marketing videos for the Atlanta International Night Market.
We wanted to show people that they shouldn’t miss out on the food, the culture, the diversity, or the FUN of Night Market.
Event Marketing Videos
Fortunately, this strategy was pretty easy to execute at the Atlanta International Night Market.
First, because there was a lot of stuff to do there. And second, there were a LOT of people doing it.
They had 50,000 attendees over the entire weekend. Really, over two days, because Sunday got rained out by midday thunderstorms.
So I spent the weekend walking around a parking lot looking for interesting shots. I found quite a few.
Diverse Cultures
The theme of the International Night Market is DIVERSITY. It’s about celebrating all the different cultures from around the world. No surprise there—Gwinnett County, Georgia has one of the most diverse populations in the country. Over 70 nationalities of people live there.
So my goal in shooting the footage was to capture that diversity. Street performers. Musicians. Caribbean stilt dancers. Chinese acrobats. And of course, every type of food and international cuisine you could think of.
To shoot the event, I used two basic camera setups. First, I mounted my camera on a slider and tripod. This allowed me to shoot food footage with smooth, lateral movement.
Then, I used a gimbal, gliding the camera through the crowds and around the event with steadicam smoothness.
Diverse Camera Techniques
Part of the fun of shooting Night Market was coming up with creative camera techniques.
I experimented with all kinds of creative shots—time lapse, slow motion, drone shots, low frame rates with motion blur.
Once the sun went down, I adjusted ISO and opened up the aperture on the lenses.
Light was coming from multiple sources—the food trucks, event signage, landscape lighting, and the neon lights on the Kid Zone attractions.
The night-time environment resulted in some interesting footage. For example, the fire jugglers’ faces lit by the moving flames, and the musical acts lit by blue and green stage lighting. I shot a lot of the night footage in slow motion, giving it sort of a dreamy quality.
About the Author:
Harry Hayes is the owner and executive producer at Content Puppy Productions, a corporate video production agency based in Charlotte. Before starting Content Puppy, he spent 20+ years as an advertising writer and creative director.
