Creating Emotionally Engaging Events: The Power of Storytelling in Live Production

I think the real magic of a great live event is when we’re able to connect with the live audience in a way that they would not be able to experience at home. The best events are the ones that can captivate and inspire an audience – and the secret to that is great storytelling.

The most recent opportunity I had to work on a project like this was in the summer of 2024. Over 14,000 skilled trade students and industry partners gathered for SkillsUSA’s annual National Leadership & Skills Conference in Atlanta, GA, and the team at White Tie was trusted to plan a show opener to set the stage for their conference.

At the heart of these challenges are always several layers. To set the energy and excitement for a one-of-a-kind week. To convey the vision and mission of the organization to each attendee. To engage the attention of thousands of young people. This is where great, emotionally-grounded storytelling comes in.

With a 360-degree, immersive live experience, we can carefully use the larger-than-life LED screens, lighting rigs, and powerful audio stacks to deliver a spectacular physical and emotional impact.

For this project, we enlisted the help of author and poet Amena Brown. Over the course of several strategy sessions we crafted with Amena and our client's team a narrative around the critical nature of the skilled trades and the essential work SkillsUSA was doing to help train the next generation workforce.

As event producers, we were able to write an integrated script that featured Amena delivering her performance live on-stage while connecting it with synchronized audio-visual cues in the room.

This allowed us to time her speech along with a custom-edited orchestral music track to help establish the emotional energy. During specific moments, we featured imagery on the LED wall to support her message. As the energy built, we gradually revealed more and more scenic and lighting elements to support the momentum of the piece and to surround our audience with a spectacle that was larger than life.

All of this required precise timing and careful rehearsal. To synchronize the A/V elements during the live show, we connected our media server and lighting equipment using a timecode signal. But to help plan and illustrate the cues and timing with the entire crew, we also needed a detailed run of show.

Script Elephant was perfect for this production because it allowed our director, script writers, video editors and lighting designers the ability to review and collaborate on a complex sequence together. Its structure allowed us to describe the big picture, but also to pinpoint each important detail.

Because Script Elephant can precisely line up individual spoken word sections with audio-visual cues, we were able to outline down to the second how long each section should last, allowing us to build and share an accurate timing reference with our client, from pre-production to final event.

Using SE's integrated live tracking, our director was also able to track each section live during the show. This allowed our dozens of team members on-site to follow along on their own devices with each cue, hands-free.

At its core, great events are all about great storytelling. Perfecting the timing on tightly choreographed moments like these is the best way to present impactful messages to a global audience.