Blackmagic Design announces that RockPoint Church Chattanooga has deployed a comprehensive Blackmagic Design workflow to power both its in person and online worship services. Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K Plus G2s, an ATEM 2 M/E Constellation HD live production switcher and more now form the backbone of the church’s streamlined live production workflow.
With an average weekly attendance of more than 700, and approximately 20 percent of those joining virtually, RockPoint Church Chattanooga places a strong emphasis on delivering a high quality, engaging worship experience for its congregation. According to Brad Anderson of HyperLite Media and video director at RockPoint Church Chattanooga, “Exploring churches online before you visit them is a common practice now since many churches provide a livestream, making it even more important to put quality content out there.”
“We moved fully into the Blackmagic camera ecosystem because of the color science, dynamic range, affordability, and ease of use,” he adds. “Building a unified system with Blackmagic Design has made video production far more efficient and manageable. This level of quality and integration at this price point is unmatched.”
The production team runs four Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K Plus G2s and one Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 4.6K G2 digital film camera through SDI wall plates in the sanctuary back to the production booth. The booth houses a rack with an ATEM 2 M/E Constellation HD complete with an ATEM 1 M/E Advanced Panel, HyperDeck Studio Pro broadcast deck, and both an UltraStudio 4K and a DeckLink Duo 2 for capture and playback alongside a desktop computer for livestreaming. The result is a clean, reliable signal path optimized for both in house IMAG and livestreaming.
According to Anderson, upgrading to an all Blackmagic Design camera setup solved longstanding consistency issues. Previously, the church used a combination of older and hybrid format cameras, with only the URSA Mini Pro 4.6K G2 delivering broadcast quality results.
“The dynamic range of the URSA Mini Pro has been especially helpful in our low light worship environments, letting us preserve detail in both shadows and highlights,” Anderson notes. “The menu system is also a huge plus. It’s clean and logical, which means if I need to make adjustments on Sunday morning, I can do it quickly and without stress.”
Seeing what was possible with the URSA Mini Pro 4.6K G2 underscored the need to raise the production quality across the entire setup, and the addition of the Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K Plus G2s helped to achieve the results the production team was looking for. “The fantastic quality of the touch screen monitors on the Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K Plus G2s, paired with dials to quickly change contrast, brightness and focus peaking strength, makes everything so simple for operators,” added Anderson. “Plus, the variety of ports on the camera make integrating them into our system seamless. I’ll be adding a second run of SDI cables to take advantage of tally, talkback and camera control in the near future.”
Anderson also equipped two of the Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K Plus G2s, positioned in the wings of the sanctuary, with Blackmagic Focus Demands to help camera operators effortlessly pull focus without fatigue.
“Many churches don’t have clear guidance on where to start with video production and lean toward PTZ cameras due to staffing, but those systems often don’t scale well,” says Anderson. “For less than the cost of a high quality PTZ camera, you can invest in something like a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K, which you can use for both live and narrative work, and grow into a full broadcast workflow, all while maintaining consistency and control.”
Beyond Sunday services, RockPoint Church Chattanooga uses the Blackmagic Design cameras for prerecorded testimonial videos, internal content, and plans to expand media production efforts in the future.
