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A church video ministry is often called upon to create snappy promo videos and content for presentations and events. There are many programs available for creating graphics to spice up these projects. On the Mac platform, a project created in Final Cut Pro can be enhanced with graphics created in Motion and LiveType, and Adobe has an assortment of programs for both Mac and Windows, such as After Effects. I have even gone so far as to create graphic elements in Maya, a professional modeling and animation program. But most of us with full-time jobs or even a few hungry pets can’t animate professional-quality graphic elements between dinner and the call of the TiVo. Digital Juice offers an inspiring resource for such graphics with their library of animated backgrounds and elements. Projects from gentle wedding and personal tribute videos to in-your-face youth group promos can be enhanced with their line of DVD-ROMs.
The resources of Digital Juice can be explored on the company’s extensive but well-organized website. Their diverse products are broken into categories, which is immediately helpful since the names themselves aren’t always descriptive (“Power Cuts,” for example, have nothing to do with transitions). But once you’ve made your way to a specific product, all is made clear with an overview of the product, a gallery of all the content on the DVD, and tutorial videos. Some products also feature sample “inspiration” videos that show the graphic elements in action. They help get the creative juices flowing. There are also instructional videos that cover the products, as well as video lighting, sound, and editing. Users can discuss the products and other topics in the forum section.
The products can be broken down into various forms of full-screen backgrounds and partial-screen overlay elements. The backgrounds are distinguished by the extent of movement they feature. Jump Backs, for example, set out to dazzle the viewer with very active, eye-catching visuals, while Power Cuts are more subdued. The choice depends on how they will mix with the foreground elements. So the background for extensive text would lean towards an easy-going Power Cut while a bold main title would composite well with a Jump Back. Swipes are animated transition overlays to jazz up transitions in editing. A surprising addition to these elements is an appropriate sound effect to go along with the transition. A bright ribbon of light moving across the screen seems out of place without an accompanying “whoosh,” and Digital Juice saves the editor the trouble of rummaging through a sound effects library. There is also stock video, sound effects, and some excellent music products. I zeroed in on two products, StackTraxx and Editor’s Toolkit, to explore for Church Production Magazine.
StackTraxx
Even a church needs to adhere to copyright laws, particularly when producing for broadcast. For this purpose, I have maintained a decent collection of royalty-free music. But the collection usually doesn’t have exactly what I envision for a particular project. A common occurrence is when a musical cue is very close to what I need, except for some aspect of the final mix, like an overbearing saxophone. With StackTraxx, Digital Juice addresses this problem by providing the music with the instruments broken into separate tracks that can be remixed to suit the project. This is in addition to the choice of lengths for each selection, from 10 seconds to three minutes. There are also BackTraxx, which are more along the line of standard royalty-free music collections.
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Michael Parks heads up the video ministry at Hilltop Community Church in Richmond, Calif. He has been involved in film and video production for 25 years and is the author of the blog “Close-Up on One” at www.churchproduction.com/michaelparks.
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