Corporate Streams x Elon Musk: X Takeover 2024 Event Breakdown

We produced a live stream with Elon Musk! And we’re about to tell you all about it!

Corporate Streams teamed up with X Takeover, an annual Tesla fan event organized by Tesla Owners Silicon Valley in San Luis Obispo. This gathering brings together enthusiasts from around the world to celebrate electric vehicles and other Musk innovations. The 2024 event featured star-studded appearances by Jared Isaacman, Franz Von Holzhausen, and Elon Musk, who shared their visions for the future of electric vehicles, sustainable energy, and Tesla's latest advancements.

The event was a massive success, drawing over 1,500 attendees and featuring 20 vendors.

Our Contributions

Corporate Streams played a crucial role in four major aspects of the event: we deployed a B-roll team to capture the excitement over the three-day event, we assembled a dedicated crew to record 17 presentations, we streamed all 3 keynote sessions, and we edited it all together for a seamless delivery!

B-roll Team in Action

Our B-roll team knocked it out of the park! We set up stunning time-lapses of the light show preparations and captured an exhilarating ride-and-drive event featuring over 150 Teslas cruising through scenic mountain routes.

The Light show followed the drive, featuring Teslas arranged in the shape of a drum set. DJ Ravi Drums performed live from a Cybertruck at the center of the field, accompanied by over 180 Teslas and 30 Cybertrucks—a truly spectacular display. We assisted Simon in capturing one of the coolest Tesla Light shows ever. This event marked the first live performance during a Tesla light show! Our client's original post caught Elon Musk's attention and went viral, racking up over 52 million views.

Main Stage

Sessions began on the main stage at 10:30 AM, occurring every half hour. Each session lasted about 20 minutes and featured several guests recognizable in the Tesla sphere. Notable influencers included Kim Java, Dr. Know-it-all, Ellie in Space, and Herbert Ong. Of course, we also had our special guests like Elon Musk and Franz von Holzhausen.

Franz von Holzhausen

Franz called in from his Cybertruck via phone. My job was to get Franz tech-checked and ready to go as quickly and seamlessly as possible. We spent about 60 seconds ensuring his setup was optimal, and I asked him to rotate his camera from vertical to horizontal. When I brought Franz onto the screen, I accidentally had him double-muted—both on the fader and the mute button. This mistake cost about 20 seconds, but I quickly recovered. In the final edit released to the public, this hiccup was seamlessly removed.

Jared Issacman

Jared was originally slated to join virtually, but a delay in his actual space flight allowed him to attend in person. I had the honor of meeting Jared and shaking his hand. During our brief chat, he expressed gratitude for our efforts in producing such a fantastic show. Jared's keynote mesmerized the audience as he recounted his journey from entrepreneur to space explorer. As commander of the ‪@Inspiration4Mission‬, he made history leading the first all-civilian crew to orbit Earth aboard SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft.

Elon Musk

Elon was also able to join us. My main objective was to minimize the time taken from his schedule and get him in and out as efficiently as possible. Here's what the pre-call looked like: we got him into Zoom, checked his system and settings, and had him on stage within about 45 seconds.

I love how quick and efficient this was—it's how we like to do production, especially for people of Elon's status.

Technical Setup

Cameras

We set up three Sony FR7 PTZ cameras we call “robo cams” right by the stage—two on stage right and one on stage left. These three cameras captured the majority of our close-ups, while we had a fourth PTZ camera as a wide shot at the back. Emmi, our PTZ operator was able to control all four of these cameras. We also had two handheld roving cameras to capture handheld footage of various scenes. All of these feeds were brought together in our control room backstage, which is our custom built cart solution.

Audio

Often, we run audio for these events, which means controlling microphones, the PA system, and other video elements to ensure sound levels are set correctly for both the in-house audience and the live stream. In this case, however, a third-party vendor ran sound and did a great job. They also set up lighting and the LED wall, which made our lives easier.

External Guests

Our biggest challenge was around the Zoom call, ensuring everything was dialed in well and that our settings were optimal. We treat Elon and Franz with the same level of respect we give all the C-Suite teams we work with. Our goal is to maximize their time and not waste a moment.

Internet

We used Starlink to connect to the internet, which streamed to YouTube, X, and other platforms. The system worked pretty well, and we had to use a newer codec called HVEC to maximize the bandwidth we were getting. We noticed that consistently streaming at about 1.5 Mbps was the sweet spot—any higher and it started to buffer, but any lower and the quality would have suffered. It was a success—we were able to live stream consistently for the keynotes!

B-roll Team

Our B-roll team used Sony FX6 cameras with 70-200mm lenses for closeups, DJI Pocket 3 cameras for wide gimbal shots, and DJI Mini drones for ariels. The Pocket 3 proved incredibly useful, allowing us to capture numerous shots on the move. Initially, I thought the Pocket 3 would complement the FX6, but surprisingly, it felt like the FX6 was complementing the Pocket 3. I tend to prefer the wide, smooth gimbal shots from the Pocket 3 over the FX6, though I still appreciate a good close-up from the FX6.

Our Booth

We also had a 10' x 15' booth for Corporate Streams. In this booth, we set up another cart that received a wireless video signal from our control room. This hosted our program feed and allowed guests to view and hear what was happening on the main stage. The coolest part? We were powered by a neighboring booth's Cybertruck! It was awesome to see this tech in action and have it support our setup at this level!

DIT (Digital Imaging Technician)

Managing the SD cards for all of the cameras was an interesting task. It wasn't just a matter of offloading one camera to a single hard drive; we used twelve cameras from Corporate Streams and another four more from various vendors. We needed to transfer footage to multiple hard drives for primary and backup copies. Thankfully, I've worked on larger sets and learned the hard way about how to manage data well. We copied, pasted, and checksummed manually to ensure everything was copied correctly. For our next project, IMTS 2024, we used OffShoot, a program that helps expedite this whole process.

Behind the Scenes Crew

Our crew consisted of six people. I functioned as the producer/director, Leslie as the technical director, Emmi as PTZ operator, Ali as producer and camera operator, Magnus as Camera Operator and drone operator, and Delaney as the booth operator to answer people's questions. I love working with my team—they're all great people.

Problem Solving

Like most live productions there will be things that come up that your production team will have to handle. Here were our top five problems that we dealt with.

Fuel

We met at my house at 5:45 AM Friday morning to head out to San Luis Obispo. It's a 4½-hour drive, and we'd prepped the gear over the few days preceding the event. We left on time around 6 AM, but the truck broke down on the way! Apparently, the gas station I filled up at the night before had accidentally put gas in the diesel tank! This obviously threw a wrench in our whole trip! Thankfully, we were near Burbank Airport and were able to get a rental truck, re-hitched the trailer, and get back on the road. We arrived at the venue a few hours later than expected but managed to set up everything we needed on time for Saturday and Sunday's show.

Light Show Delay

Our camera crew was ready to go on time at 8pm, but the light show started about an hour and a half later than expected. Setting up so many cars and orchestrating that many people took more time and effort than anticipated for the light show organizers, especially since over 150 Teslas where coming from the ride and drive event.

Between the fuel issue and production delay, this led to overtime hours for my crew, who were on the clock from 5:45 AM to 10 PM. I was on the clock from 3:30am and worked until the last card successfully transferred at about 2am. These circumstances might seem out of our control, but it's always best to find ways to minimize the chance of failure and be as prepared as possible. Thankfully, our team is dedicated to our client success, and they worked hard and diligently through the overtime hours.

Power

During the show, we had our system on a battery backup from a third party vendor. Unfortunately, the power failed during the show, and our whole system shut down. Our cameras restarted, and we lost recordings for the first half of the third session with Herbert. Thankfully, we were able to reboot everything and get things up and running within about 15 minutes. We'll know for next time to have our own battery backup system separate from the third party solution that was offered to us. The system will need to be tested thoroughly, and we'll have a video about it in the future.

X Streaming

Our live stream didn't display correctly on the Silicon Valley Owners Club page. Because of this, we missed out on many of the live views we would have collected on X. I'm less familiar with streaming onto X because it’s new and many settings changed after the acquisition. To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what went wrong here so a full audit will be done so we can review our process to ensure we're set up well for next time.

Youtube Ending Stream

We also encountered a glitch where YouTube kept us live after we ended the stream. I think this happened because I stopped the stream from Livestream Studio instead of stopping it directly from the YouTube and X platforms. This is another point I've noted to correct for the next event.

Content Delivery

We successfully delivered 16 out of 17 sessions in full and salvaged what we could from the session affected by the power failure. We also produced a hype video that now serves as the Tesla Owners Silicon Valley Channel Trailer. Our videos and live stream have gained significant traction, being featured on dozens of YouTube channels, shorts, and other content platforms, showcasing the event and its key messages.

Analytics

Overall, we created dozens of videos for the Tesla Owners Silicon Valley club's YouTube channel and X accounts. Several of these videos have surpassed 100,000 views, showcasing a significant improvement in both production quality and quantity compared to previous years. Tesla Owners Silicon Valley now has the opportunity to create short-form content from the 17 sessions, which they can gradually release over the next year to promote the 2025 event.

So now you've read a lot about the project, but what did the client think? Let's check it out.

“We had the wonderful privilege of having corporate streams, being and handling all of our media. We had a lot of curveballs thrown at us this past year, especially with the caliber of speakers that we had.

We had Franz von Holzhausen from Tesla, who is the chief designer, Jared Isaacman from Polaris Dawn and inspiration for. And then we even had Elon Musk making an appearance. And what was really crazy was the fact that this was supposed to be an in-person event. Obviously, Elon came virtually. He was never committed in person. With all of that, there's no one better than corporate streams that was able to handle all of these different dynamics and curveballs.

Noah and his team handled everything perfectly. Not only didn't they handle all of the media coverage of the event of the light show, but the editing quality was superb. If you are ever looking to do a small event, big event, live streams or in-person events, Noah and his team will take care of you. Corporate streams is the best media team to take care of you, whether it's helping you host the event or doing the editing they took.

They took care of us from soup to nuts, so make sure you contact them for your next event. I highly recommend them and we are hoping to invite them back to help with all of our media needs in 2025, for the next X Takeover again. Some of the most genuine people you'll meet and they will help make your event a big success.

-John, Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley

“

So there you have it! Another Successful Corporate Streams production. Up next we’ll talk about IMTS, a large 6 day event in Chicago!