On the 4th of July 2021, I produced a live broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall, capturing the National Poetry Slam finals, streamed to Facebook’s Live platform. We used the polling function to allow audience members from anywhere in the world to give scores to the performance poets and help decide the 2021 slam poetry champion.
The event was the Royal Albert Hall’s first live audience event in 15 months and was run under strict Covid protocols. The broadcast was an HD multi-camera shoot and the live show reached nearly 33,000 users.
I devised the online show format and ran the broadcast, including deploying ‘voting’ moments for each poet, in addition to delivering online scores to the event compere.
Read about the digital commission at The Space
Watch the final on Facebook (NB. the voting is now out of sync because the video was trimmed after the event – on the night it was perfect!)
Michael Orwell 