InfluxDays Virtual Event

InfluxData wanted to create a virtual user conference, streamed to their users across two days. The brief called for executive keynotes, demos, presentations, customer sessions, and fireside chats. A combined total of 12 hours of content.

InfluxData brought in Gorilla Creative, a corporate video production company in the San Francisco Bay Area, to produce all of it. We'd been working closely with them already to produce their Meet the Developer series before this.

The Challenge

Let's start with the obvious. Twelve hours is a lot of video. At that volume every decision has huge multiplier, so choices that would be small on a single video become the ones that decide whether the project is possible at all.

The audience needed to shape the approach, too. InfluxDays is watched by developers and practitioners who come for the content and don't tend to like anything that feels overly produced, so the production needed to be clean and consistent and then stay out of the way.

Our Approach

We designed a visual style that could be applied to each type of video we needed to produce. After breaking it all down, it worked out to thirty three segments in total: twenty five filmed in studio over four consecutive days of production and eight that would be recorded remotely by speakers who couldn't travel.

We filmed on a seamless studio wall with no set. Stools for the fireside chats, a standing podium for the demos, but nothing else. The empty space became the canvas. We put the presenters' slides or their live demo in a graphic window in the space beside them, and the simplicity of the studio created that space.

We designed one motion graphics toolkit up front, covering titles, lower thirds, and the layout that puts a presenter and their content on screen together, then used it across every video. We extended the same system to the eight remote recordings, so speakers who never came to the studio still felt visually cohesive to the event.

We recorded each presentation's graphics and demo content live, in camera, as the presenter clicked through it. Nothing had to be recorded afterward. That kept post production time (and cost) efficient.

During production, we filmed one complete run-through per presentation, picking up in real time if someone stumbled and carrying on from there. The goal was natural, comfortable delivery like you would experience at a live event, rather than a flawless take, because at this volume, flawless takes of 12 hours of content becomes cost prohibitive, and this type of content doesn't need it.

We also grouped the schedule by format. All four fireside chats on one day, all four keynotes on another, the demos and presentations across the last two. That brought set and lighting changes down to one a day instead of one a block.

The Outcome

InfluxDays drew record-breaking attendance and participation.

Every one of the thirty three segments was delivered as a standalone file alongside the virtual live stream, so the content could be watched on-demand after the event.