As Christmas approaches, a wonderfully inspired story of a Capture Summit 2021 Church Filmcraft Festival finalist, Citylight Church, begs to be told. Citylight, a loose affiliation of three churches, and a small church at that, produced a beautiful Christmas video to celebrate the season. Overcoming time constraints, along with budget and technical challenges, not to mention the pandemic, the nearly all-volunteer production team and performers worked together for an end result that’s nothing short of a breathtaking and highly moving testimony.
As with any production, there was so much that went on behind the scenes. So CPM enlisted the help of Citylight Church Videographer Becky Wierschen and Chris Cole, the director of photography (DP) on the shoot, to get the real-world story and to learn firsthand how this outstanding production came to life.
The production takes shape
In a talk with Wierschen and Cole, it became crystal clear that so many things had to go just right, through solid planning, to make this large production produced by a small church happen. The first question: how did they begin?
Wierschen states, ”When I heard the vision for our Christmas Eve service, I felt a little overwhelmed at first with everything we needed to get done for our service. So we brought in Chris Cole to direct and DP the music video aspect while I took care of the rest of our Christmas Eve service, which worked out quite well.”
“We cut the video in Davinci Resolve. To me it’s faster, and in my opinion has a better overall color-correction workflow.” Chris Cole, Project’s Director of Photography, Citylight Church, Philadelphia, PA.
Cole jumped right in to help fill out the bigger vision. “My church desired to create a dynamic and beautiful music setlist and video accompaniment due to the pandemic pressuring them to limit in-person gatherings. One of our pastors, Mark Giacobbe, was the mastermind behind our Christmas Eve music videos. It was the goal of the leadership to create something special for people to watch at home.” The big-picture direction came from a relatively simple concept, Cole says, as follows: In the location where the Citylights team shot, “we had a requirement that our singers and performers needed to be six feet apart, and that our subject matter of the sermon would be on the ‘cosmos’’ of God’s creation.” He continues, “Luckily, our point-person, Mark (our producer), was very accommodating to my directing style, and after a few phone calls we were on the same page for the big picture. Once he felt I understood and would care for his vision, he felt comfortable with me making the creative calls.”
"O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” - The Liturgists Cover
The art of volunteer-wrangling
For those unfamiliar with the term, Hollywood loves using the job description of “wrangler” in film credits. Basically, if you are the wrangler it is your job to get everyone or everything going in the same direction. The task is quite daunting, yet very important in keeping the production on track, time-wise, and on budget. While wrangling can be a tough task on any production of any size and scope, the job of the Citylights production crew is especially commendable because almost everyone associated with the project volunteered their time and talents for Christ. And from the three-church coalition came three bands had never worked together before. As Wierschen states, “Our DP Chris Cole was a total volunteer. Bless him! He brought a PA with him that didn’t even go to our church. Our audio was done by church volunteers who do the audio on Sunday mornings … we love our volunteers.”
Cole adds insight into the performers and crew: “The entire production team were volunteers, with the exception of our video editor. The whole budget went to lighting rentals and our editor. I brought a PA friend named Austin to assist with the lighting setup, delegated some of the production design to a volunteer, and b-cam operation to Becky (Wierschen), who also was responsible for all of our slider shots. Working with a group of volunteers in any non-profit space is interesting, because each person has great ideas and a desire to build something special, but when those ideas begin to clash, it can be difficult to find decisiveness to actually accomplish the goal, especially when on a time-crunch and [with a] low budget. But everyone came together to shoot 10 videos over a couple of days in 7-8 hours at night.”
“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” quickly became a Church Production staff favorite when it was submitted for Capture Summit's Church Filmcraft Festival & Awards.
Visit capturesummit.com to see all of the 2021 Church Filmcraft Festival award-winning submissions.
Production details in a pandemic
One of the biggest challenges—and a directive facing the group—was how to safely shoot a whole bunch of videos in the midst of COVID. While no easy task, Cole relied on several years of DP experience and the collective group’s experience that made it all happen from both a creative and technical perspective.“As we were required to maintain distance between quite a few musicians, as well as fit them all into a relatively congested stage, it was my goal to isolate the performers as much as possible from the background,” Cole says. “I did this by mounting two kino flo 4 banks (long tubes with sharp flags) to deliver the twofold effect of ‘spotting,’ or lighting the performers without spilling light onto the background, but also maintaining a soft key lighting to avoid raccoon eyes or too much contrast on the skin tones.
”He continues, “I also used an Aputure 300D from the back of the performers’ heads to provide a halo hair light and to help provide depth and separation against the dark background.
”While the church the crew shot at had a beautiful stained glass window in the background, Cole says that it too presented a challenge. “As we were shooting at night, the colors didn’t register on camera,” he describes. “To remedy the situation from outside the building, I lit the stained glass with two 2K ARRI Fresnel lights to provide a soft cosmic-like glow to provide background depth.
”In addition, Cole shares, “Following some pushback due to wax drip concerns, I pressed that we light many small candles to provide additional background depth, as well as beautiful oval bokeh from the 35mm and 50mm anamorphic lenses mounted on Blackmagic Design Cinema Cameras I chose to shoot on. I felt that the soft ethereal glow of the stained glass, as well as the starry bokeh from flickering candles, would deliver an essence of cosmic beauty for the frame.”
“I also used an Aputure 300D from the back of the performers’ headsto provide a halo hair light and to help provide depth and separation against the dark background.”Chris Cole, Project’s Director of Photography, Citylight Church, Philadelphia, PA.
He adds, “We cut the video in Davinci Resolve. To me it’s faster, and in my opinion has a better overall color-correction workflow.”
The resulting joyous final video from Citylight, which was a Church Filmcraft Festival finalist at Capture Summit 2021 held at Hope Community Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, is a testimony of what is possible when creative and passionate storytellers come together to share their vision and their story.
When asked how she found out about Capture’s Church Filmcraft Festival, a welcome “home” for the team’s video, Wierschen shares, “Our pastor, Mark, passed on the info for me to possibly attend the Capture 2021 Content Creation [and Filmmaking Summit]. At first, I saw the Filmfest as an afterthought, but then thought our Christmas videos were beautiful enough to show.”Wierschen adds, “I attended the conference virtually. Wish I could have been there live to meet everyone else.” And she also had some fun words for others in the creative community when asked what others should do when contemplating entering the Capture Filmcraft Festival in the future. She gave this perfect, simple answer: “Do it. You might win something cool for your church!”
Throwing your hat into the ring
Lastly, an expression from the rodeo and the football world of this story’s contributor, is apropos. That expression is “You have to throw your hat in the ring.” Loosely translated, it means that in order to succeed you have to get in there, go hard, and do your thing. When asked by CPM staff of this story’s personal impact, writer Mark Foley concludes, “For me, it was a blast to hear from both Becky and Chris about pulling out all the stops and pulling all of the various elements together to do this project. The entire group certainly threw their hats in the ring. Merry Christmas!”
