If you have done everything correctly, no one will remember anything at all – but if you mess up, everyone wants to hear about it, talk about it and share it online. Making mistakes is what makes live events live. I’m becoming aware that other productions have wised up to this sad truth and started using technical difficulties for publicity reasons. This has never been clearer to me than after watching the opening ceremony for the Sochi Olympics in 2014. When that fifth ring did not open up, anyone who had a clip of the incident went straight to YouTube and Facebook to blast out the technical difficulty. Immediately, anyone who had previously been unaware that there was a winter Olympics taking place in the little Russian city of 420,000 people was now unknowingly watching a historic Olympic moment. I’m not saying that anyone did this on purpose, but I am saying that the mistake gained extra notoriety for the event.
-Chris Lose, from “LD at Large,” PLSN, August 2017, page 68
