If the E! @ Wicked Premiere Livestream brings you the glossy, manicured glamour of the red carpet experience, the E! @ Wicked Premiere CreatorCam takes you behind the velvet rope and straight into all the action at the premiere of Universal’s Wicked. Designed to be an immersive, social-first experience, E!’s Wicked CreatorCam follows our host, Erin Lim Rhodes, as she roams the red carpet playing games with stars, snags on-the-fly interviews, and immerses our audience in all the red carpet activations normally exclusive to in-person attendees. It’s an all-access pass to the carpet, and the perfect complement to our glossy press line coverage – unfiltered, uncut, and uniquely uninterrupted.
Part of the challenge of running a media production house in the 21st century is reimagining traditional content for the digital age. Attention spans have changed, audiences are slowly shifting their appetites in new directions, and success means evolving to meet this diversified audience where they’re at. E!’s CreatorCam is designed to bring traditional red carpet coverage into the digital age. As attention spans change and audience appetites slowly shift in new directions, we worked to evolve the red carpet experience to better offer a unique vantage point into the event.
To do this, we crafted a nimble, single-camera setup that could follow our host anywhere on the carpet. Audio proved to be a challenge with so much external crowd noise, so we focused on a simple, directional microphone (outfitted with a lovely branded mic cube) and some excellent mic choreography from our host Erin Lim Rhodes to capture sound.
With access to the full carpet, we also had to plan talking points for every activation, as well as a slew of games and questions in order to prepare for every star, every scenario. Everything from engaging with the attending Wicked superfans, to showing off the sleek Lexus brand activations, to getting an A+ on our hair “toss toss” from Ariana Grande herself – we were ready to capture and stream out to our audience.
In essence an experiment in revolutionizing red carpet coverage, the E! @ Wicked CreatorCam was a resounding success. By embracing a social-first mindset, we were able to engage a vast network of social accounts on Instagram and TikTok, simulcasting the show to over 400,000 viewers on 14 platforms domestically, and 50 platforms worldwide. Amplified by a 360 digital and social VOD strategy, we were able to hit a combined reach of 53 million social impressions, proving there’s an audience eager to show up for premium, immersive red carpet coverage.
