Five Questions to Ask a Live Production Vendor Before You Sign

If you’re researching production companies for an upcoming live event, you’ve moved past seeking inspiration—you’re now looking for confidence. You’ve probably already seen a few demo reels and heard a few pitches about “broadcast-quality” this and “seamless” that. What you actually need before you sign anything is a straight answer to a harder question: what happens when something goes wrong, at the worst possible moment, on your show?

Every vendor will tell you they’re reliable. But are they able to walk you through exactly how that reliability is built? Here are five questions that cut through the pitch and tell you what you’re really buying.

1. What are your specific redundancy and failover paths?

“We have redundancy” is not an answer. It’s a marketing sentence waiting for a follow-up question.

Push for specifics:

• Is redundancy at the system level with a secondary backup switcher ready for instant failover, or is there a backup power plan involving uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and generators?
• Does your strategy include diverse backup transmission paths, such as secondary bonded cellular or satellite links, to ensure the stream remains live if the primary connection drops?
• How does failover actually happen? Is it automatic, or is it a manual cut over?
• How long does a failover take, and does the audience see it happen?

A vendor who can sketch this out on a whiteboard, unprompted, has clearly built it because they’ve needed it, not because it sounds good in a proposal.

2. Are you utilizing bonded connectivity, or are you relying on the venue’s potentially unreliable Wi-Fi?

This is the question that separates production companies from production companies with a plan B. Venue internet is shared, unmanaged, and outside your vendor’s control. This means that when it degrades during your keynote, nobody on your production team can do anything about it.

Ask directly:

• Is the primary connection bonded cellular, fiber, or a dedicated circuit? What’s the actual backup path if that fails?
• Has the vendor done a site survey of this specific venue?
• What’s the contingency if the internet drops entirely for ten minutes?

Relying on a venue’s assurance that their Wi-Fi is good means there may not be a backup plan. This approach depends on hope rather than a secure setup.

3. What’s the backup for your encoders and recorders?

Streaming and recording infrastructure fails the same way anything electronic fails. Issues occur occasionally, and usually without warning. The real question isn’t whether a vendor’s gear will hiccup, but whether a single point of failure can take your entire stream or your only recording down with it.

Be sure to ask:

• Is there a second encoder actively running in parallel?
• Are recordings captured in more than one place?
• Who’s monitoring encoder health during the show?

4. What’s the comms plan, and who’s actually on it?

Comms is the nervous system of a live show. But, what does that look like in practice?

Get specific:

• Is the crew on a dedicated intercom system?
• Who’s on comms from the vendor’s side, who from yours needs to be looped in, and how?
• If comms itself fails, is there a fallback method the crew already knows?

5. What does a real rehearsal actually cover?

Almost every vendor will offer a rehearsal. A rehearsal that walks through cues and camera blocking is useful. A rehearsal that also tests failover, confirms communications channels, and verifies the backup connectivity path is a different thing entirely. It evolves from a simple walk-through into a true test of how the team handles potential failures, not just the smooth parts.

Ask what’s on the rehearsal checklist. If the answer is mostly about content and timing, you’ve learned something important about what hasn’t been tested yet.

The most important question of all: who’s on the phone at 6:00am if a feed drops?

This is the one that tells you everything. Not “we have a support line,” but: a name, a role, a number that gets answered before your event director even finishes dialing. Is it the same person who built your redundancy plan? Is there an established escalation path if needed?

A vendor who answers this question with a real name and a real process has clearly been through this before, and built their operation to efficiently handle the unexpected.

None of this is about finding a vendor with the fanciest gear list. Flypacks, integrated control rooms, and redundant switchers only matter insofar as it answers the five questions above. The equipment is the proof, not the pitch. If a vendor can walk you through their redundancy, their connectivity, their backup infrastructure, their comms, their rehearsal process, and their 6am answer without hesitation; you’ve found someone who’s built for the show that doesn’t go according to plan.

A Note From AMS Pictures

We’ve been doing live event coverage, along with brand films, corporate documentaries, product launches, and social campaigns, for more than 40 years. Our flypacks and integrated control rooms are built with redundancy at every layer. We’ve successfully established bonded connectivity, backup encoders and recorders, and a comprehensive comms plan. This exact infrastructure has been tested time and time again on projects ranging from small to large-scale productions, ensuring your event is fully supported by reliable safeguards.

If you’re building your vendor shortlist and are interested in what our redundancy looks like, come talk to us! We’ll answer every question on this list, and maybe a few you haven’t thought of yet.