For a limited time, you can get an extra $40 off tickets of Capture Summit '23—use promo code: GET40 at capturesummit.com. We look forward to seeing you and your team there!
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Marcel Patillo had been the Creative Videographer at Nashville’s Church of the City for barely half a year when he had the opportunity to attend the Capture Summit in 2022.
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Marcel Patillo, Creative Videographer, Church of the City, Nashville, Tennessee
He was immediately struck by how critical of an experience it needed to be for himself each year moving forward, not just for his development as an artist, but as his growth as a relational member of a larger Body.
Fast forward a year, and Patillo is now taking a visible role in this year’s event, to be held Aug. 7-9 in Dallas, to provide for others what had been made available to him last year.
“Churches tend to be under-resourced and often don't know where to start, what they need, and how to use their budget in the best way when it comes to creative initiatives.,” he says. “Conferences like Capture are a great resource for learning different creative workflows at different churches. Even just being able to connect with different people from different churches at different levels, can make it a lot easier to find solutions at whatever level you are at right now,” he continued.
Live Podcast at Capture Summit '23
At this year’s Summit, Patillo will not only be teaching breakout classes on audio editing, video editing and color correction, but he will also be hosting live episodes of the Church Production podcast on-site each day from the show floor, amongst the throng of sponsors and attendees.
This is possible, in part, to sponsorship support from Tula, whose mics will be used on the podcast, and who is one of nearly several dozen that will comprise the largest trade show floor the Summit has provided attendees to date. The Technology Showcase will also feature demos of a variety of products like cameras, lighting fixtures, streaming and storage options, audio equipment and more during the Summit.
The podcast is one of several new features that will make its appearance at this year’s event, the fifth since it was rebranded after its initial launch as the Content Creation & Filmmaking Summit. Originally a vehicle focused nearly exclusively on, well, content creation and filmmaking, the Summit’s target audience and educational offerings have now expanded to also reach technical artists, executive leaders and communication pastors/directors, alongside content creators.
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“Capture is about bringing together content creators, filmmakers, church techs, creatives, and senior leaders to collaborate and learn the latest techniques and technologies to help share God’s message in this rapidly changing world,” says Rebecca Stahlbusch, the general manager for Church Production and conference director for the Capture Summit.
“Filmmaking, video production and social media are mission-critical elements to communicate the Gospel,” she continues. “Capture takes a deep-dive into everything from filmmaking, video editing, lighting, streaming, audio, [and] IMAG, to leveraging social media, building an inspired team and fueling the creative process.”
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Rebecca Stahlbusch, General Manager for Church Production and Conference Director for the Capture Summit.
While it will still stay true to its roots in filmmaking, continuing to host its film festival and awards show to recognize the best efforts of the last year in church content creation, the Summit continues to expand and embrace perspectives on additional areas of the church creative and technical worlds across its two-plus days of content.
Once doors open on Monday, attendees will have multiple options to attend longer, more in-depth “intensive”-style classes that will take a deeper dive into specific industry topics, leading up to an opening keynote session that will occur later that evening.
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A hallmark of the Capture Summit experience, the annual Church Filmcraft Festival & Awards, kicks off on Day Two of the Summit at 4:00 PM in Cottonwood Creek's main worship center. Fujifilm and Worship House Media, the sponsors of this year's Festival, will be onstage to present prizes and awards to the 2023 Award Winning entries.
Take a look at this year's Church Filmcraft Festival submissions: https://capturesummit.com/filmcraft-2/
Tuesday and Wednesday feature two additional keynote sessions along with dozens of traditional hourlong “breakout” sessions that will include both presented content and audience discussions.
Not only are there plenty of classes for content capturing and post-production (like Patillo’s), but several classes also hit on live Production (like “Best Practices for IMAG”), leadership (“How to Communicate Technical Stuff to Your Non-technical Pastor”), social media and marketing (“The Power of Story on Social” and “How to Interpret Web Analytics’), and even emerging technologies (“Using AI in Filmmaking” and “Metaverse in the Future Church”) .
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Will Chapman, Online Minister, Cottonwood Creek Church, the host of this year's Capture Summit.
Will Chapman is the Online Minister at Cottonwood Creek Church, the host of this year’s Summit, and has served in a variety of roles in his 19 years on staff at the church. In that time, he’s also seen the church world make numerous pivots in order to stay apace with new technologies, and he knows firsthand the importance of church artists and technicians having a healthy understanding of these growing fields.
“Church creatives need to learn about this emerging technology so that when they begin to see more and more products being marketed to them and specified to them through dealers and integrators with this technology, they can make wise stewardship-based decisions on what gear they should buy,” he explains.
Indeed, industry knowledge is helpful not only to evaluate purchasing decisions, but primarily to ensure that technicians and artists are able to be able to implement ministry vision in the most efficient and impactful way possible.
“What you do within your role at church is mission-critical in today’s world,” reminds Capture’s Stahlbusch. “Capture is designed to arm attendees with the skills, tools, inspiration, and community connections they need to share God’s message.”
“Media is dominant in today’s culture and churches fight for people’s time and attention,” she continues. “These resources help the church community break through the noise with a goal to reach the unchurched with the gospel and reengage the church body who may get distracted and pulled away.”
The COVID pandemic season further reinforced to churches the importance of effectively being able to communicate their message to attendees across multiple media platforms, whether through social media channels, websites or online streaming. And a modern, growing church must embrace development on these fronts in order to keep in step with the needs and desires of those it is trying to reach.
Chapman reiterates this, saying, “Church creatives must constantly sharpen their skills and learn about best practices and new technologies. You never know when you might be able to learn something that could revolutionize your ministry, save time, and help you reach people more effectively.”
Along those lines, one study commissioned by Church Production shows that prior to the pandemic, only 32% of churches had a livestreaming presence. That number has now soared to 82%, according to the study, underscoring the critical nature of that aspect of a church’s approach.
Unfortunately, there are churches that still struggle to effectively connect their vision with the most effective tools to execute that vision, whether due to a lack of funding, limited facilities, or a dearth of team members who can step into the necessary technical, creative, and leadership roles to make it happen.
To this end, in another new initiative for this year’s Summit, JVC, one of the key partners of the event, has joined with Church Production Media to develop the Aspire Initiative.
According to market research from the PTZ Initiative study, in many cases, a high-quality PTZ camera could be the most effective way (for cost, space and staffing) for a ministry to add cameras and thus begin an online expression. However, there is still a stigma attached to many of those cameras as being of lesser function or quality, and JVC has determined to take steps to help churches remove those barriers and embrace PTZ cameras as a viable solution to provide video in a live environment.
Alongside Church Production, JVC has solicited nominations of churches who would be candidates to receive donations to develop or enhance a video broadcasting system due to having never had those capabilities, or perhaps previously had a system that was damaged due to a disaster or was stolen.
The selected church will have a system donated and installed by the JVC team, and the recipient will be announced at the Summit.
The fact that a program like this will even be available emphasizes a point that Capture has been making since the beginning: this event isn’t just about improving skill sets, but it’s about reminding everyone that they’re part of a larger community of ministries and partners who desire to help each other succeed and grow.
When the church industry is growing in knowledge and ability from each other, it makes everyone better. A rising tide raises all ships, as it’s said, but that happens best from two-way interactions.
“Capture is not just about education and gear; it focuses on community. Capture is bringing church techs and creatives together to connect,” explains Stahlbusch, and this year’s Summit will have a new and exciting way of making this happen.
In regions across the country, groups of church media members have been gathering to build and strengthen community in their areas. For the first time ever, the Capture Summit will build upon this, inviting attendees from those groups, as well as others from across the country, to be part of a networking and relational time at the conference.
Atlanta Church Creatives, the Church Creatives Network, the North Texas Church Production Facebook group, and the Metro Media and Communications Association and others are partnering together to share a dedicated space on the show floor for attendees from across the country to mingle and network during the event.
“The Capture Summit has an amazing time of training and encouragement in our ministry and craft that happens during the day, but that’s just the beginning,” says Chapman, who, as part of the host team, will also be helping provide tours of Cottonwood’s production and creative facilities. “The biggest piece of advice I give people who come to church creative/technical ministry conferences like this is to soak in all the training and education but don’t forget to forge relationships with others that will benefit you even more in the long run.”
Patillo is a perfect example of how this cycle has been implemented. He attended Capture last year as a wide-eyed newbie in the church creative world. He dove headlong into building relationships with others he met at the conference, and that opened the door for an opportunity to host the “Road Tested” videos produced by Church Production to provide equipment evaluations for the Church Production digital community.
That then springboarded him into the opportunity to lead the podcast at this year’s event, where he’ll get to help share much of what he has learned with the community he cares so deeply about.
“Capture is a great way to leap forward in the creative [elements] at your church by learning where others have been, what they did to elevate their church and what they are currently doing now to keep the train on the tracks,” he points out. But the biggest “takeaway is the relationships,” he continues, “connecting with people that can give you advice you may not even know you needed.”
Join us at Aug. 7-9 at Capture Summit '23 in Dallas!
You'll learn from dozens of expert presenters, along with hundreds of your fellow creatives for a deep-dive into everything from filmmaking, video editing, lighting, streaming, audio, IMAG, to leveraging social media, building an inspired team, and fueling the creative process—it's all happening at Capture Summit '23 - the 7th Annual Content Creation & Filmmaking Summit hosted at Cottonwood Creek Church in Allen, Texas.
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