PULTEVENT
Prom night games: 7 screen moments for prom and after-prom
It is 1:15 in the morning and the after-prom is in its second hour in the school gym. Two parent chaperones are guarding the prize table (a mini fridge, a gift card, a dorm-room TV), one senior in a rented tux is asleep on a wrestling mat, and the screen above the bleachers is what is keeping the other two hundred awake.
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Prom committees and teacher sponsors ask me the same thing every spring: what do we put on the screen besides the slideshow? This page is my answer. Seven moments, some for the dance itself and some for the long night after, all run from one laptop.
The console runs in a laptop browser, the gym projector or a big TV shows the screen, and students take part from their own phones by scanning a QR code. There is no app to install and nothing to sign up for. The phones do need internet, and gyms are famous for bad signal, so read the section on that before the night.
Seven screen moments for prom and after-prom
1 Prom king and queen vote
Live voting from phones with your list of nominees, two to six per title. One phone counts once per round; a student who locks the screen and comes back through the link cannot vote twice. The result stays hidden until you close the vote.
How to run it. Turn on anonymous mode before voting opens, so nobody's vote reaches anyone, including you. Screenshot the result for the committee.
No paper ballots to count in a back office, and no argument about who stuffed the box.
2 Title screen for the class
The class name, the date and a background from the class photo on the big screen whenever nothing else is running.
How to run it. Put it up before the doors open. The first photos of the night will be taken in front of it.
A gym with a proper title on the wall looks like an event, not a PE class with a disco ball.
3 Senior baby photos
Guess the Photo shows one picture on the full screen, the room guesses who, then you open the name. Collect a baby photo from every senior through the yearbook team.
How to run it. Start with the teachers who agreed to send theirs. It breaks the ice and buys you goodwill.
Two hundred people shouting a name at once is a sound you only get in a gym.
4 Dance battle
Teams take turns on the floor, the room votes from their phones, and the screen keeps the points. You can also upload short dance clips; they play on the big screen and the teams copy the moves.
How to run it. Recruit the dance team and the football team for round one. After that, the floor fills itself.
It turns the people standing along the walls into judges, which is almost as good as dancing.
5 Karaoke battle
Teams sing, the room votes by QR, the screen keeps score. Upload the backing tracks straight into the section before the night.
How to run it. Check the lyrics of every track with the teacher sponsor first. Then check them again.
Around 2 a.m. this is the only thing that will get a crowd to its feet.
6 After-prom raffle
Every student who joins through the QR code gets a three-digit ticket. The drum spins and a winner comes up on the screen. If a phone goes to sleep, its spot is held for ten minutes.
How to run it. Tell students their full name is how they will be found in the draw. Announce the time of the big draw early and often.
The whole point of after-prom is keeping students somewhere safe until morning. A prize at 4 a.m. is an excellent reason to stay.
7 Class credits
The last thing on the screen. Photos change on one side, names roll on the other. Headings in capitals, such as THE CLASS OF 2027, PROM COMMITTEE or CHAPERONES, with the names under each.
How to run it. Include every senior. Somebody will check.
Seniors film it on their phones. For a lot of them it is the last time they will all be in one room.
Royalty vote with no ballot box
Students vote for prom king and queen from their phones. One phone counts once per round, and the winners appear only when you close the vote.
Baby photos of the senior class
One baby photo fills the screen, the gym guesses who, and you reveal the name. Everyone has been waiting four years for this.
A dance battle the room judges
Teams dance in turns and the room votes from their phones. The screen counts the points.
A raffle that keeps them until 4 a.m.
Every student who joins by QR gets a ticket automatically. Draw the small prizes through the night and the mini fridge at the end.
Prom and after-prom are different jobs
At the prom itself, the screen is a set of short moments between dance sets: the title card, the baby photos, the royalty vote, the credits. Nobody wants a game show in the middle of a formal dance.
After-prom is the opposite. It runs from midnight to five, the goal is keeping students in one place until morning, and the screen carries the whole night: battles, raffles, more battles. Plan it like a program, with a draw every half hour.
The screen during the slow songs
During slow dances, the screen should go quiet. I leave the title card up, or a loop of photos from the evening if the committee has a photographer feeding them in. Anything with a score on it pulls attention off the floor at exactly the wrong moment.
The loud formats, the battles and the draws, go between dance sets, when the DJ takes a break anyway. Talk to the DJ before the night and agree the gaps. Two people fighting over the sound system at 11 p.m. is a scene nobody needs.
Making the royalty vote fair
Every committee has a story about a stuffed ballot box. With phone voting, each phone counts once per round, and the count happens on the server, not on the laptop. Keep the result hidden until the announcement, and have the teacher sponsor close the vote.
If a class insists on a paper vote too, run both. The numbers usually agree.
Signal in a gym
Concrete walls and two hundred phones in one room can be hard on mobile signal. Students play on their own data or the school guest Wi-Fi, and there is no offline mode. Walk the gym with your phone a week before, and ask IT whether the guest network can take the load.
No app and no accounts means the only thing a student needs is a working connection and a camera.
A night that runs until five
A typical after-prom I would plan: doors at midnight with the title screen up and the first small draw at 12:30. Karaoke battle at one, dance battle at two, a baby photo rerun for the people who missed it at the prom, and a draw every half hour in between. The big prize goes at 4:30, and the credits roll right after.
Leave gaps. Students need time to eat, sit on the bleachers and talk, and a screen that never stops starts to feel like homework. The title card is a perfectly good thing to leave up for twenty minutes.
Who runs the laptop
A student from the committee at the laptop and the teacher sponsor with the phone remote is a good pair. The student knows the class, the sponsor controls the vote. The interface is getting an English version, and student screens follow each phone's language.
About the author
PULTEVENT was built by Ruslan Barashkin, an event host since 2014 with more than 500 events behind him. The TOP 100 Awards named him best host in Moscow in 2024 and in Saint Petersburg in 2023. He wrote the console for his own nights first: pultevent.ru/en.
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How to run prom night on the screen
- 1
A month out, collect senior baby photos and nominations through the yearbook team and the committee.
- 2
Type the nominees into the vote, load the baby photos and backing tracks, and write the credits.
- 3
On the night, connect the laptop to the gym screen and put up the class title screen.
- 4
Show the QR code at the door so students join, and receive raffle tickets, as they arrive.
- 5
Run the baby photos and the royalty vote at the prom; battles and draws at the after-prom.
- 6
Close with the big raffle draw and the class credits on the last song.
FAQ
Can a student vote more than once?
Do students need an app?
Does it work without internet?
Can the vote be anonymous?
How are raffle winners picked?
Who should run it on the night?
Can teachers join the battles?
What does it cost?
See also
Run brighter events — with PULTEVENT
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