Event video production for ads starts with knowing which shots actually make people buy tickets, not which shots look coolest. The footage you capture tonight at the venue determines whether the ad for the next city on the tour stops someone mid-scroll and gets them to the ticket page, or just looks like every other concert clip they have already seen.

Key Takeaways

  • Most concert footage is filmed for memories, not for ads. Ad footage needs specific shot types, lengths and moments that work inside a 15-second vertical frame on a phone.
  • The single highest-performing element in a live-show ad is audience reaction, not the performer. Film the crowd as much as the stage.
  • You only get one chance per show to capture this material. Walking in without a shot list means walking out with hours of unusable wide shots.

Why Most Concert Footage Does Not Work as an Ad

If you have ever tried to run a Facebook or Instagram ad using footage from a live show, you probably noticed the results were disappointing. The reason is straightforward: the footage was filmed to document the event, not to sell the next one.

Documentary footage tends to be wide, static, dark and long. Ad footage needs to be close, moving, well-lit (or at least contrasty) and extremely short. A good ad clip is 2 to 5 seconds. The full ad is 15 to 30 seconds. Everything you film should be built around those lengths.

The other problem is emotional direction. A highlight reel says "look how great this was." An ad says "you are going to miss this if you don't act." That shift in purpose changes which moments you want to capture.

The Shot List: What to Actually Film

Below is a practical shot list. You do not need a film crew. One person with a recent iPhone or a mirrorless camera on a gimbal can get all of this in a single show. Two people make it easier, one on the crowd and one near the stage.

1. Crowd Reactions (The Most Important Footage)

People singing along. People laughing. Someone grabbing their friend's arm in excitement. A couple dancing. The moment the whole room stands up. These shots do more selling than any stage footage because they let the viewer picture themselves in the room.

Film faces, not the backs of heads. That means you often need to be facing the crowd with the stage behind you, or off to the side. Get close. Chest-up framing. Vertical whenever possible, because that is the format the ad will run in on phones.

Aim for at least 15 to 20 separate crowd clips across the show.

2. The Big Stage Moments

You want three to five peak moments from the performance. The opening walk-on. The biggest hit song starting. A dramatic lighting change. The encore. A moment of genuine interaction between the artist and the audience.

Shoot these tighter than you think you need to. A wide shot of a stage from the back of a 2,000-seat venue looks tiny on a phone. Get as close as access allows. If you can only film from a fixed position, zoom in and accept losing some resolution. A slightly soft close-up is more useful than a perfectly sharp wide shot.

3. The Queue and the Doors

The line outside before the show. People checking their tickets on their phones. The rush through the doors. Merch tables. These shots establish "this is a real event that real people showed up to" and they are completely unique. You cannot recreate them later.

4. The Venue and the City

A 3-second exterior shot of the venue with people walking in. A recognisable landmark or street sign that says which city this is. These are useful for geo-targeted ads (ads shown only to people in a specific city). When someone in Gothenburg sees a clip that is clearly from Malmö and the ad says "Now coming to Gothenburg," the show suddenly feels real and close.

5. Sound Bites from the Audience

After the show, if you can, ask two or three people leaving: "What did you think?" or "Would you recommend it?" Keep it to 5 seconds each. These work as opening hooks in ads the same way customer reviews work for products. A real person saying "That was the best show I've seen this year" is more convincing than any copy you could write.

6. Behind the Scenes (Use Sparingly)

Soundcheck. The artist arriving. A quick backstage moment. These have their place, but they are less effective than you might expect. Use them as variety inside an ad, not as the main attraction. What sells tickets is the feeling of being in the audience, not watching someone prepare.

How This Footage Becomes an Ad

Once you have these clips, the editing side is a separate discipline, but the principle is simple. A good 15-second ticket ad usually follows this pattern:

  • Hook (0-3 seconds): A crowd reaction or the loudest moment of the show. Something that makes a person stop scrolling.
  • Middle (3-10 seconds): Two or three quick cuts showing the energy. Mix stage and crowd. Show the venue full.
  • End (10-15 seconds): The tour poster or a title card with the city, date and "Get tickets" with a link.

You want at least three to five different versions of this ad, each cut differently, because Facebook and Instagram test them against each other and show the one that performs best. The more raw material you have from the shot list above, the more versions you can cut.

Adsome is a Stockholm-based creative studio that makes the film and images and runs the Facebook, Instagram and Google ads for touring productions, working with artists including Galenskaparna, Smokie, Christer Sjögren, Robert Wells and Magnus Carlsson. For tours like Smokie's Legacy Tour in Sweden, that combination of purpose-shot video and targeted ads returned 8.28 SEK in tracked ticket sales for every 1 SEK spent on Facebook and Instagram ads.

Technical Settings That Matter

  • Shoot vertical (9:16) or at minimum horizontal at high enough resolution to crop vertical. Nearly all of your ad placements will be vertical on phones. If you only shoot horizontal, you lose the sides when you crop and end up with a distant, small image.
  • Frame rate: 60 fps if your camera allows it. Concert lighting creates fast movement and strobes. 60 fps handles that better and gives you the option to slow footage down to half speed, which is useful for emotional moments.
  • Exposure: lean slightly bright. Phone screens in daylight compete with your dark venue footage. If the footage is underexposed, it disappears on a feed. Push the exposure a stop higher than it looks correct on your camera screen.
  • Audio: record it, even rough. A few seconds of real crowd noise or the opening bars of a well-known song underneath the ad makes a measurable difference compared to a music track laid over silent footage. You do not need a separate audio recorder. The camera mic is fine for this purpose.

Timing: When to Film Relative to the Tour

Ideally you film at the first or second show on a tour, then use that footage to advertise every remaining date. This means the first couple of dates are promoted with whatever you already have: the poster, press photos, a trailer, maybe older live footage. From the third date onwards, you have fresh, real material from this specific tour.

If you only have one date (a single concert, not a tour), you cannot use this approach. In that case, use rehearsal footage, older live clips, or a short promotional video made in advance. Even the artist talking into a phone camera for 15 seconds can outperform a static poster in an ad.

Common Mistakes

  • Filming only the stage. The crowd is at least half the story. Without it, the ad shows a performance. With it, the ad shows an experience.
  • Only shooting wide. Wide shots of a stage look impressive in person but tiny on a phone. You need close-ups of faces, hands, instruments, reactions.
  • Forgetting vertical. If every clip is horizontal, your editor has to crop aggressively for Stories, Reels and TikTok placements, which is where most of the ad impressions happen.
  • Not filming enough variety. Three clips is not enough to make multiple ad versions. Twenty to thirty short clips is the minimum for a useful edit session.
  • Waiting until the last tour date to film. By then there are no future dates left to advertise. Film early, use the footage to sell the rest of the tour.
  • Trying to make a highlight reel instead of ad material. A highlight reel is 2 to 4 minutes and lives on YouTube. Ad footage is 2 to 5 second clips designed to be cut into 15-second sequences. Different purpose, different technique.

Want your next tour to sell out? Adsome makes the film and images and runs the Facebook, Instagram and Google ads for touring productions.