Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, Ala., was founded in 2001 and has since grown to host more than 30,000 members at its 11 campuses across the state. The church aims to help people connect with God in their own way, offering regular services on-site, and streaming and on-demand services for members across the country. The church also works closely with more than a dozen correctional facilities to offer worship services for those who are incarcerated.
"Because we’re streaming all of our services live online to several thousand viewers, there’s a tremendous emphasis on having a high quality experience originating from our main campus."
—JUSTIN FIRESHEETS, Production Manager, Church of the Highlands, Birmingham, AL.
Recently, Church of the Highlands completed an extensive, high-tech upgrade under the guidance of Atlanta-based systems integrator Clark, which has a longstanding relationship with the church. Clark helped the Church define its needs and after carefully reviewing their options, they gradually selected a comprehensive complement of Sony’s broadcast and AV equipment, including cameras, projectors and switchers to meet the needs of the local and nationwide audience. According to Justin Firesheets, production manager at Church of the Highlands who oversees all of the live production elements and equipment for the Church’s campuses, Sony offered the right combination of quality products and project expertise.
“We really wanted to make sure we were partnered with a company that we felt confident in our relationship with, and confident in both their products and their level of support,” Firesheets says. “Sony’s products are easy to use, which benefits the volunteers running and setting up our equipment, and the quality looks great to those participating in a service.”
This installation, which came together in stages, serves as a technology upgrade for the church. Progressively, they purchased several of Sony’s HDC-2400 HD camera systems, multiple MCS-8M compact production switchers and a variety of Sony’s laser projectors, the 4,000 VPL-FHZ55 and the 7,000-lumen VPL-FHZ700L.
“Over time the technology that we were using, including our cameras, was really starting to show its age,” notes Firesheets. “The quality was no longer there and it wasn’t handling the full range of the color spectrum very well. The colors didn’t pop and they weren’t as crisp as they were when the technology was newer. Compared to newer technology, it became apparent that there was a gap in performance.”
Streaming needs
Firesheets adds, “Because we’re streaming all of our services live online to several thousand viewers, there’s a tremendous emphasis on having a high quality experience originating from our main campus. We decided to invest in an upgrade because it would make everything downstream look that much better, because we were starting off with a better quality product. We chose Sony because they offered a package with a variety of different features that we really liked.”
Firesheets notes that the facility has always been HD, but this project marked the church’s second camera upgrade. The new cameras have already proven their performance in low light and overall imaging quality and he believes they now have a system that can grow with them.
“As the church has grown and we added another auditorium, we purchased new cameras for the main room, and we moved our older cameras to the second auditorium,” he reports. “But this is the first camera package that we’ve had that would ultimately allow us to broadcast or capture in 1080p. For now, we’re staying at 720p because that’s what our current system is set up for, but it obviously helps from an archive standpoint because if you’ve got to re-edit for something down the road, having a better quality file to start with is going to give you a better end product.”
Vendor-partner experience
Expanding on this notion, Firesheets adds, “For us, as a result of our in-person and online audience, there’s a tremendous emphasis on having the best possible quality of experience whether that’s audio or video, and the quality of Sony’s products is impressive. When we know that we can give those people a better experience, it behooves us to take whatever steps we can to make improvements, wherever they are practical. When you start off with a high quality ingest at the broadcast location, then everything downstream is automatically going to get better.”
Firesheets maintains that Sony’s switchers are essential for a church with multiple campuses. “From a switcher standpoint, we have seven portable campuses throughout the state of Alabama that set up and tear down at their [facilities] every week,” he says. “We had always used several different audio and video sources, so when we became familiar with Sony’s MCS-8M, which allows us to manage all of the audio and video in one switcher; it’s made for a much more efficient way of managing our equipment. The switchers have assignable aux outputs for the audio, so we can easily route different sources and monitor in headphones. This amounts to less pieces of gear, and it also makes transitions go a little bit smoother because when audio is following video, you don’t have to turn knobs or change anything.”
Volunteer-friendliness
Firesheets details the need for a product that is easy to understand and to use, since many churches rely upon the assistance of a staff of volunteers, who are trained to use the systems and are given troubleshooting guides and documentation for a number of issues that can arise throughout the course of a service.
Of the MCS-8M switchers, Firesheets reports, “You just have to hit one button or push one fader and the audio and the video are changing at the same time, which has been a benefit for us because we use volunteers at all of our campuses. Keeping things simple and efficient is very important for us, especially because these are people that don’t live in a production world on a consistent basis. We wanted a simple system that we could easily replicate from one location to another and do it in a way in which our volunteers could understand. That’s one of the benefits of Sony’s smaller switchers; they are very simple and very easy to use and that’s why they have been a big win for us. There aren’t many buttons and it’s not overly complicated to set up or use, so our volunteers are able to jump right in and learn how to use the equipment.”
Projection connection
Church of the Highlands reportedly has a history and familiarity with using Sony’s projectors. Firesheets notes, “On the projector front, technology has continued to evolve. Right now you can get products that are better quality for a cheaper price than you could a few years ago. With the emergence of laser technology, some of the entry prices are a little bit higher, but it allows us to consider the long-term benefits of changing to technology that’s more efficient. Once you take into account not having to change lamps out and the limited maintenance laser requires, you know you’re saving man hours and you’re cutting down on how much time you’ve got to spend maintaining the product, which is really nice.”
Missions success
Another unique way that the Church of the Highlands connects with the faithful is through correctional facilities. The church works closely with 13 different prisons across the state, welcoming prisoners to view services, which are recorded at the main campus and played back through Sony’s projectors. Church of the Highlands considers this group of parishioners an extremely important part of the community, and directs several messages to those in the state prison system. The church knows the value of having its services available to correctional facilities, and often buys AV equipment for the facilities and donates it to the prison to use as a source of hope and inspiration, allowing inmates to have an important and constant connection to a larger community. Those in the prison system are also invited to submit their information for prayer requests.
Overall, the members report noticing a change now that Church of the Highlands is using new, state-of-the-art technology. Several people in the congregation have commented on how everything looks and that’s been people here at our main campus, at our broadcast location and at other locations,” Firesheets concludes. “So our congregants have noticed it. In addition, people on other teams within the church have said that something looks better, something looks different and asked if we have been doing something differently or got new cameras. Everything looks great, everything is bright and vibrant, and most [importantly], we’re accomplishing our ultimate goal--getting our message out to more people, more clearly than ever.”
