The Warmest Week 2021 livestream vertical video
VRT Video Snackbar presents INSTAVLAM Live: a vertical multicam production in cooperation with The Warmest Week 2021 ?. The organisation of The Warmest Week (DWW) 2021 came to Video Snackbar with the question: ‘We want to reach a younger community. They are on Instagram and we want to make a live show for them. How do we go about that?’
First and foremost, the concept: hosting a daily IG Live talk show with various guests in a brand new fully vertical set-up. During the live talk shows, new guests visited the studio and viewers were regularly called in to interact. Three Instagram channels were used simultaneously: The Warmest Week 2021, Studio Brussel and MNM.
‘With the team of Video Snackbar, we looked at how we could create an Instagram Live studio that was as organic as possible for our target audience,’ says Laurens Vanlandschoote of DWW.
For both DWW and VRT it was an experimental process to learn from. Innovation researcher Floris Daelemans also thinks so: ‘We built an experimental set-up used during The Warmest Week 2021 to learn as a broadcaster how we should deal with vertical video. We are moving more towards a ‘vertical viewpoint’: people are watching more videos and content via their smartphones and we, as a broadcaster, need to be able to respond to this new trend.’
Gloria Monserez, radio host and presenter of VRT’s 360° children’s platform Ketnet, hosted Instavlam Live and experienced everything up close. ‘It was an IG Live. You would think that it is just filming with smartphones, but it is not that simple. It is a whole set-up with computers, cables, four different cameras, lights and a complete set!’
The challenge for Video Sanckbar was to make a live show that has something more than the live shows on TV: the ambition was higher. Still, they worked with multiple camera viewpoints. In addition, the team chose to work with iPhones. They were making content for smartphones, so they also produced it with smartphones.
Instagram is a platform where you watch videos vertically. The organisation has therefore gone a step further and built a vertical video atmosphere. For VRT, that is quite special because they usually produce horizontal videos.
After DWW 2021, both parties evaluated the project. A few next steps emerged from this: the ambition is to continue iterating in vertical direction using TouchDesigner, making a 'Plug 'n play' kit and of course continuing to follow Instagram and the trends around it.
