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Remembrance Day 2020. A public ceremony that the public couldn't stand at, because in 2020 nobody could. The service still had to happen, and it still had to be witnessed. That's the plainest case for a livestream there is: the audience can't be in the room, so you take the room to them.
We covered the service live from the forecourt: the address at the lectern, the readings, and the LED screen carrying the ceremony branding behind the speakers. Outdoor live has no safety net. Wind on the microphones, traffic behind the lectern, sun moving across the speakers, and one continuous take with no chance to reset. The stream had to hold for people watching a service they'd normally have attended in person.
A recorded piece can be fixed. A stream can't. Everything that matters happens before you go live: power, redundancy, audio off the lectern rather than off a camera, and a plan for what you cut to when something goes wrong. Our crew came out of live broadcast news, which is where that instinct comes from.
