I wanted to demonstrate how a live stream with a solo entrepreneur working in a small space could still benefit any business, in this case Jewellery making and design.

I met Fi the week prior at the Elmslie House Worcestershire Guild Christmas Fair Livestream (see previous blog post) and she was willing to let me join her at her studio one evening and explain what goes on in her creative workshops as a promotional exercise to promote them as a gift. An ideal present any time of year.

Her space as you can see from the photo is approx 5m square and the table she is working on in 2m long. My production space was a table 1m in width and it enabled me to layout everything I needed to do without affecting the rest of the studio at all.

Although the rest looks complicated, it is just a mass of wires going to the 5 micro 4K cameras and 4 lights. Just 2 power sockets were needed and these went to multiway blocks. Finally we used wireless mics and I had a boom mic as back up (more of that shortly). The majority of bags contained the clamps, stands and arms required to hold everything in place.

The three rules of streaming are ‘test’, ‘test’ and ‘test’. So I visited Fi a few days prior and checked we had a good signal through her internet and my backup 4G bonding system. Everything was perfect, so after the final chat through how it was all going to unfold, I left looking forward to my next visit.

We reserved 3 hours for the build and rehearsal. This was all going well, however in the last hour the internet just failed continually. Despite resetting it numerous times, there was just nothing we could use and the 4G backup system suffered outage too. Something I can only put down to rural life and someone with a digger who were not looking what they were doing.

This was a shame as I had hoped we were going to get questions and comments coming in from viewers during the show. However all was not lost. We recorded the content as one long video for me to stream from my studio the following day.

The second technical issue was the wireless mics failing for some reason, resulting in clicks on the soundtrack. Thankfully my backup boom mic was ready to put into action. With streaming one always ‘plans for the worst and hopes for the best’. Years of experience has taught me that.

Even though it wasn’t ‘live’ when we planned Fi still has a video on YouTube for her to link to and use on her website to promote her workshops. It has already had a lot of interest in the creative community. She also has access to any of the content to be used in other promotion social media posts.

However Fi seemed to enjoy the experience all the same "I thoroughly enjoyed my first live feed which was produced by Bob from Three Counties Live, although I’m not a natural in front of the camera, Bob talked me through the process and really made me feel at ease and his set up and equipment was all very professional - way more complicated than I could have imagined. We had a few issues with the internet link as my studio is in a bit of a black spot but Bob dealt with this and quickly envisioned an alternative route. There have been a good number of viewings, I have had very positive feedback and hope that undertaking this endeavour will help to grow my jewellery and workshop business.Thank you so much for all of your hard work, Bob!"

The stream can be found here.