This story involved two different audio-visual elements combined into one article. The first involved taking a wide number of pictures for a photo story of the Christmas lights display and the second was a Facebook Live from the area.

In the run-up to the festive season, Christmas light display stories are extremely popular for our news sites and anything to do with the festive season tends to resonate well with our readers at that time of year, who all look forward to the big occasion. One particular area of Norfolk that is synonymous with spectacular Christmas light displays is Paget Adams Drive in my hometown of Dereham, which always pulls out all the stops every year.

As someone who grew up and spent their life in the town, I was familiar with the light display even before doing the article. They are a beloved feature of the local community and each year, they raise thousands of pounds for their chosen charity, which is why I was really enthusiastic about doing the story when I first pitched the idea to my editors.

I drove down to the street once it got dark so the lights would be illuminating in all of their glory. I started off by taking photos of each of the light displays for the photo gallery and once that was done, I started doing a Facebook Live (which can be viewed here) from the street which showed off all of the festive lights and I talked in further detail about the significance of Paget Adams’ Drive at Christmas.

There were quite a few challenges along the way, both with going live and with taking photos. I had to consider the concern about invading people’s privacy by taking pictures and filming outside their homes, but I was able to deal with this by door-knocking and asking if they were happy for their light displays to be photographed and filmed. The majority said they were happy so I kept the ones who had given permission in shot.

The other concern I had was getting a good enough signal for the Facebook Live, as it was a residential street that seemed to be hit and miss when it came to that. Fortunately, it held up while I was doing the video and there were no further problems outside of that.

Both the photo gallery and the Facebook Live video had a strong engagement time, with more than 100 people on the latter at one point, which was really good at the time. It shows that these types of stories really entertain our audience and that any photos of local Christmas light displays are always a winner for news sites.