Image courtesy of Chuck Fishbein
At the start of 2020 most churches considered live streaming to be a useful but secondary aspect of ministry. With the advent of COVID-19 restrictions, however, streaming and VOD quickly became the safest way for church leaders to maintain connection with the larger congregation. Moving into the coming weeks and months, live streaming will continue to serve as a primary avenue for corporate worship, teaching, community, and vision casting. While church will continue to carefully navigate the most responsible ways to begin reopening in the coming year, streaming will likely remain a vital part of how churches carry out their mission. In light of this uniquely shifted paradigm, it will be crucial for church broadcast ministries to examine ways to maximize the quality and effectiveness of their streaming media. Choosing the right environment and creating a great lighting plan for your stream will have enormous impacts on how your viewers perceive the value of the message you’re trying to communicate.
Case study: Adapt to thrive
In response to the limitations necessitated by the current global pandemic, Apple decided in April to forego its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) live show in favor of a “Virtual Keynote Presentation.” The WWDC show is a major yearly presentation of milestones for the company’s hardware and software businesses, which meant that the stakes for the event were higher than ever. Good enough for 2019 wasn’t going to cut it in 2020. So, rather than simply delivering their presentation to an empty auditorium, Apple decided to reimagine their keynote from the ground up.
Choosing the right environment and creating a great lighting plan for your stream will have enormous impacts on how your viewers perceive the value of the message you’re trying to communicate.
This year the virtual presentation featured a unique mix of concept videos and hosted segments, set within multiple real and virtual environments. Each of these unique settings—whether a lobby, a studio, a fitness center, a living room, or even a server workroom—was selected to fit the context of the new hardware or software being featured within that segment. Each section of the presentation was also hosted by a different presenter and featured lighting schemes that best complemented that specific environment.
How can your church adjust?
For most churches and ministries, the move from live worship to live streaming happened in a matter of only a few days, with far less planning and dedicated resources than a company like Apple had at its disposal. Nonetheless, there are lessons that churches can and should learn from these kinds of events.It’s clear that streaming will continue to be a central part of effective ministry for the foreseeable future, so it’s good to set aside some time to study how larger organization and companies, like Apple, are approaching the unique opportunities of the virtual medium.
Ask yourself if your previous worship environment is the best setting for the audience watching your live stream today.
When it comes to all creative endeavors, there’s more than one right way to get to where you want to go, and that includes the discipline of broadcast ministry. As tech teams design their streams for teaching and worship, it’s a good idea to start with some fundamental questions. The first important question worth asking is whether your previous worship environment is the best setting for the audience watching your live stream today. For instance, while an auditorium designed for large gatherings can communicate scope and spectacle, it can also feel stilted and somewhat artificial to viewers when the people onstage are communicating to an empty room.
On the other hand, some churches have moved their music and teaching to smaller studio settings, which have the advantage of creating more immediacy and authenticity for live stream viewers. On the flip side, while a studio setting can create a customized experience, it does require more energy and effort than simply recreating a traditional live experience. Other settings that churches have begun utilizing for the weekend live stream include the church lobby, coffeeshops, and even kitchen tables and back porches for more relaxed teaching segments. While it might seem counterintuitive, these kinds of casual environments can create a stream that feels more conversational and inviting than a traditional lecture setup.
Lighting for your environment
Once your team has selected the environment that best suits your content and viewership, one of the most important next steps includes creating a lighting scheme that brings out the best of that setting. For larger environments like auditoriums or large studios, a theatrical lighting scheme can help create a dramatic, larger-than-life viewing experience. On the other hand, cinematic lighting that enhances the connection of a scene while seeming invisible to the viewer may be more appropriate. Cinematic lighting is also ideal for environments featuring natural lighting, like lobbies, coffeeshops, or living rooms, where dramatic lighting would be distracting.
Image courtesy of Chuck Fishbein
Lighting for contrast
Writing about great lighting is about as effective as singing about how good food tastes. It leaves something to be desired. With that in mind, broadcast teams exploring the best ways to light their broadcasts will want to explore some of the best techniques for creating looks that catch and hold a viewer’s attention. The first area to explore is how best to create contrast between the subject (the person communicating) and the background.
The majority of ministry live streams being produced today could be improved considerably by incorporating this single technique. Contrast can be created by decreasing the light hitting the background, or by increasing light hitting the subject and gaining the camera down to expose for the subject. For churches using large-sensor digital cinema cameras, some contrast can also be achieved by shooting with a shallow depth of field, rendering the background out of focus. A second technique to consider is to explore how to incorporate lights that can illuminate the edge of the subject, visually setting them further apart from the background. Sometimes called a side light or a hair light, these sources can go a long way towards creating a look that’s more dynamic and professional. A third way to create contrast between the subject and the background is to use complementary colors. For instance, since most skin tones trend toward orange, a blue or teal background will help the subject pop on camera.
Advanced cinema lighting
Broadcast teams aspiring to a cinematic look will want to explore the traditional 3-point lighting setup, which utilizes a primary “key” light, a secondary “fill” light, and an edge light as described above. For a more dramatic look, the fill light can be jettisoned, with the key light and the edge light set up 180 degrees apart relative to the subject.
For churches using large-sensor digital cinema cameras, some contrast can also be achieved by shooting with a shallow depth of field, rendering the background out of focus.
Once the general approach is locked in for cinematic lighting techniques, such as bouncing light, flagging (or cutting) light, diffusion can be explored to help the lighting feel even more seamless and invisible.
Another advanced technique that would take a lighting scheme to the next level would be to explore the process of “book lighting” or double diffusing the light to create an exceptionally soft, flattering light that will be extremely complimentary to the look of the subject. A final consideration when creating an environmental and lighting plan for your live stream is to incorporate the use of digital cinema cameras into your broadcast flow. Not only will the larger sensors help create separation through a shallow depth of field, their superior light sensitivity will often allow for more flexibility when lighting with softer, more diffuse sources.
Image courtesy of Chuck Fishbein
In conclusion
While it can be tempting to simply hold our breath and wait for things to “go back to normal,” it’s very likely that what worked last year won’t cut it moving into the 21st century on-demand world, even after we’ve developed ways to effectively deal with COVID-19. More likely, tech and broadcast leaders wanting to keep their ministries on the front edge of effectiveness will need to lean into the process of maximizing the effectiveness of their live stream and VOD content. And there will never be a better time to start that process than today.
