Bad lighting and poor camera angles are typical mistakes made by people new to live-streaming.

"Nobody wants to spend 30 minutes staring at the lower half of your face," said web and graphic designer Christian Bedassie. "Viewers want to see your face, facial expressions and emotions."

Mr Bedassie runs digital solutions consulting business Capital Edge Media in Trinidad. Next week he is partnering with The TLC Group to lead a three-hour workshop: Livestream from home, masterclass, basic to pro.

Live-streaming refers to online streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real time.

It is sometimes simply called ’streaming’, but this term can mean any media delivered and played back simultaneously without needing a completely downloaded file. Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but not live streamed.

The purpose of live streaming is to capture the attention of an online audience. It allows a presenter to broadcast live across multiple social media platforms at once.

According to a July article on the TechJury website online live streaming grew 99 per cent between April 2019 and April 2020.

One advantage is that a broadcast can reach millions of people at once, if the interest is there. The 2019 Coachella live stream music event reached a staggering 82.9 million live views.

But like many people, Mr Bedassie struggled the first time he tried live-streaming. The technological aspects were not his thing.

"Graphic design and websites, that's more my thing," he said.

But he played around with live streaming software, watched YouTube tutorials and researched. Five years later, he has mastered the skill, and through his company, helps many people to set up customised live streams with their own back streams to the live stream, logos and names.

“Live-streaming has become much more important since Covid-19,” he said. "And it has become as common as a social media post, so it is important for your livestream to stand out from the crowd.“

As a measure of its increase in popularity, he said the sale of camera lights used for live-streaming, has increased.

“They are selling out,” he said. "People are buying those things because they realise that lighting is everything.“

He said you no longer need a fancy studio or even a camera to livestream; you can do it with a computer from anywhere in the world.

But he said, at the end of the day, live streamers have to market their event, the same as they would any other.

"You can't just think, okay, I am going to have an event and put it out there," he said.

Workshop attendees will learn how to modify their live-streams with music, videos and graphics, and how to stream Zoom and Skype meetings to any social media or website. As well as the basics of live-streaming, the course will teach how to optimise quality and simultaneously go live on multiple social media platforms.

"I have it broken down into a couple of sections,” he said. “I will be talking about how I set it up, the process I go through with sound and lighting.

“At the end of the course I will have a question-and-answer session," he said.

He thought the course would be good for communications executives, public officials, entrepreneurs and business people.

The workshop will be taught through Zoom on November 28 from 9am to 12pm. The cost is $199. Sign up through The TLC Group website: https://thetlcgroup.talentlms.com/catalog/info/id:222