Adrian Lopez, Gateway Church, Southlake, Texas
Adrian Lopez doesn’t sit still for long. He oversees the multi-campus ministry at Gateway Church, which includes four areas: operations, production, systems integration, and training groups. All of these teams, in turn, support the main broadcast campus as well as Southlake’s extension campuses, with Lopez managing the four directors of each.
CPM: How did you find your way into live video production ministry?
Lopez: I’d always volunteered in the tech ministries at churches I’ve attended. My background is in telecommunication and IT, but at the same time I was always learning lighting, audio and graphics. When I came to Gateway I started out volunteering as a camera operator. Eventually I was approached by our director of video at the time and was asked to apply for this job.
I remember in the interview telling them ‘I don’t know why you want to hire me. I don’t have any live production experience.’ What I didn’t think about was that I actually did have a lot of experience—it wasjust in a volunteer capacity. And so the Lord actually brought all of my telecommunications experience and my live production experience together in this job.
CPM: How do the live video production teams work at seven campuses?
Lopez: We’ve determined that a healthy number of staff for each campus is about four and a half people. That includes an associate director who oversees tech at the campus and manages three others who are specialized, but also cross-trained to cover other areas for mid-week events. The other half-time position is a scheduling coordinator, who supports two campuses.
CPM:Why has Gateway decided to employ Fujinon glass so extensively across its campuses?
Lopez: We’ve found that Fujinon lenses are very solid, very reliable and produce quality results. We rarely have problems with them, and when we do they’re very quick to respond and address whatever issues we might have. When that does happen they also help us out with loaners, which let us keep operating and not miss a weekend broadcast.
CPM: What does the future look like for Gateway’s live production team?
Lopez: We’re really trying to set ourselves up to be scalable. The amount of equipment and the level of production that we do at our campuses right now aren’t scalable; they’re basically a miniature version of our broadcast campus. As we scale that’s going to look different. We know the right number of production staff for a campus, but how we interact, how we expand, how we scale will probably look a bit different.
