Since COVID-19, live streaming and broadcast ministry have become a centerpiece of how churches fulfill their mission. And churches are beginning to discover that there’s no putting the genie back into the bottle.
Even as churches are reopening their doors for socially distanced live gatherings, virtual worship experiences will continue as a primary conduit for many. They will also likely grow increasingly central to how seekers experience Christian community for the first time.
“Our skill sets have had to grow and change. It’s been beautiful to watch, but not necessarily easy.” - Justin Manny, Production Pastor, The Summit Church, Durham, NC.
Against this backdrop, tech teams have had to innovate and re-learn new and better ways of doing broadcast ministry. The standards that were once good enough now have to be elevated for churches’ messages to continue competing in the arena of ideas. So, what does that look like for video and broadcast ministries?
Elevating the look
As tech ministries explore the practical next steps needed to create a look and feel for their weekly broadcasts, one of the most important considerations will be finding a way to address inconsistencies between the traditional IMAG aesthetic and the digital cinematic approach embraced by most video and film teams today. Traditionally speaking, IMAG systems have been designed around the well-established ENG sensibilities, employing cameras with smaller sensors and signal processing to create sharp, saturated visuals with lots of pop and color. These cameras and systems are custom-designed for capturing quality visuals in real-time, with an emphasis on ease-of-use and situational responsiveness. On the flip side of the coin, most church film teams currently employ digital cinema cameras and rigs, with the ability to capture imagery with high dynamic range and far more visual separation between the subject and background. These kinds of cameras employ larger sensors and place an emphasis on flexibility in the looks they produce. Visual reconciliation As broadcast teams work to create better and more effective content, they’ll have to address how best to reconcile the two standards into something that looks and feels more singular. One church currently working its way through this process in the Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina. “When you preach the Gospel unashamedly, God’s going to do big things with it,” says Justin Manny, production pastor at Summit Church. “We work to keep in the front of our minds the idea that the purpose of IMAG is to help people far from God connect with the pastor, as well as the insights and emotions of the message. We want the person in the seat farthest from the stage to still be able to make that connection.”
He further explains, “For our broadcast ministry, we’ve been intentional about our primary goal of helping people get a glimpse into what we do at Summit Church. This year we’ve decided that we want to be intentional about the experience people are having in their living room, about really building that kind of intimacy. And we’ve had to go back to the drawing board to accomplish that.”
For the video and broadcast teams at Summit Church part of that process meant evaluating how to improve the workflow and cooperation between them. “In the past we’d collaborate on what would work in the service, but we weren’t really doing things together,” recalls Manny. “When the pandemic happened, we suddenly found ourselves working far more closely, really linking arms and figuring out what kinds of content we needed to produce.”
He continues, “In September, as we restarted our live services and pre-recording the sermon on Thursday night like before, we started re-thinking how we could do what had worked in the spring and summer, while making sure everything stayed as seamless as possible.”
Solutions in action
Creating more of that shared visual approach also required experimentation to find what would work best for Summit’s unique context. “We’ve relocated cameras positions, as well as putting cameras on dollies, creating new shots that we can add into our post-production process for broadcast,” states Manny. “We tried incorporating some of the digital cinema cameras into our IMAG system, but the two sets of sensors really process the imagery differently, which ultimately created too many issues.”
One of the biggest requests Summit’s video team had was to adjust and unify the color temperature for the message lighting wash. As Manny says, “It was a big process, but it certainly helped create more of that consistency we were looking for. Once we fixed the foreground color temperature it definitely helped improve our wide and establishing shots.”
Another change that paid off, one the team implemented in 2020, was to step up their volunteer empowerment. “We’ve had to make space for our broadcast volunteers to really take more ownership and speak into where we’re heading,” Manny states. “That’s really allowed us to find the types of shots and movements that [will] work best for us. It’s also changed what the roles and jobs are in capturing and creating both the IMAG and broadcast experiences. Our skill sets have had to grow and change. It’s been beautiful to watch, but not necessarily easy.”
Moving ahead
Through the entire process of change and evolution, Manny and his team are now realizing that what initially seemed like a brief season of adaptation has actually become a fork in the road. “We’ve gone away from what most churches would call a traditional live stream,” says Manny. “We now lean towards ‘Church Online,’ which is created entirely in post-production, picking the best shots possible for the broadcast. Our campuses now receive what we put on the IMAG screens at the main campus, and that’s what’s currently working best for them.”
He reiterates, “Ultimately, the goal at Summit Church is for the Gospel to remain the main thing. We’re intentional about creating a great experience that exists outside the bounds of a specific space in time, an experience that generates conversations throughout the week. We have a new opportunity now to ask how we use the tools and talents we have been given to explore what we can be and what we can do in the future.”
