The end of the calendar year is often an incredibly busy time for church technical artists, and thanks to a bevy of year-end and holiday events it can be difficult to put energy into necessary budget or project planning for the upcoming year.
As a good reminder, when it comes to expenditures, it is critical to consider future growth and vision, beyond just whatever is required to maintain our current operations.
Due to how the industry has changed in recent months and how emerging technology trends are now affordable for churches of every size, whether I’m exploring options for audio, video, lighting, or something else, there are new ways I can appropriate my budget dollars to better provide a high-quality experience for attendees both in the room and watching on a screen.
Lighting
Start with lighting, for instance, because historically it may have been one of the easiest things to set up in a small, isolated auditorium. But it’s no longer good enough just to throw up a few lekos for front wash and call it a day. Now I have to consider how I’m lighting for video.
Is the stage wash consistent so that my speaker doesn’t walk in and out of shadows or hot spots? Do I need to create some “boundaries” for my wandering pastor so he knows to stay in areas that are ideally suited for how the shot will look on camera?
Does the color temperature of all of my lighting match, so that I get consistent colors on camera when I white balance? Do I need to replace conventional fixtures with LEDs so the colors are the same, or do I instead need to improve how I gel my fixtures by adding CTB or CTO (color temperature blue or color temperature orange)? If our room has windows, how is the daylight affecting the camera shots? What about house lighting?
Companies like ETC and Chauvet have done a great job in recent years in investing in LED front wash fixtures to help solve some of these exact issues. And while the cost may be higher up front when compared to conventional lamp-based fixtures, once cost of ownership is factored in (with replacement lamps, gel, power consumption, man hours for maintenance, etc.), there’s a much narrower delta over time, and an immediate improvement in quality.
Likewise, Robe, Elation and ADJ (among others) have greatly expanded their lines of cost-effective LED lighting so that ministries don’t feel priced out of that market, but also have reliable companies to work with, instead of feeling their only option is to buy generic fixtures online.
And on the house lighting front, what was once a daunting capital project has now become more cost-effective and user friendly, with brands like Chroma-Q, and The Light Source continuing to improve their LED house lighting fixtures, many of which now offer color mixing features, as well as a smooth dimming curve without flickering or a sharp drop-off while fading to black.
The future of having high-quality (yet affordable) lighting for live video has never looked so “bright,” as you could say.
While lighting for video is clearly critical (since output quality will never exceed input quality), how that video is ingested and captured is also of utmost importance.
Cinema cameras
As recently as five years ago, as a handful of churches were starting to experiment with 24fps “cinematic” styles of shooting their live worship, the process was still clunky at times, due to the fact that much of the technology was originally catered to content creation, not live video teams. But now, that paradigm has transformed almost completely.
Not only does Blackmagic continue to expand its line of cinema cameras, but Canon, Sony, Panasonic, RED, and now even Fujifilm have deepened their product offerings in this vein and are doing so in a cost-effective manner. Combining those cameras with a broader range of lens adaptation options means that nearly any ministry can have access to hardware that will help create a high-quality live experience on the weekend.
In the church world, shooting in 24 frames has historically been associated with more creative or artistic settings, like testimonials or worship videos, reinforcing the idea that the cinematic style was better suited for pre- and post-production environments.
Since those cinema (or DSLR) cameras now often come with more broadcast-level features, such as lens adaptors to allow broadcast lenses to be used (with full servo control) and integrated intercom and tally, it’s much easier to add them to a live environment workflow, bringing the “creative” post-production look to a live broadcast.
As many churches have realized, there is an additional benefit of embracing a cinematic style on Sundays: I can use the same hardware for my midweek content creation and then plop it back on the tripod for our next service. Why have a camera and lens package that is used on the weekend but sits untouched the other days of the week, or vice versa?
Now I gain extra benefit from one purchase by being able to utilize it in two different styles, saving the church money by making it a multi-purpose expense. And even if our ministry isn’t fully ready to embrace the cinematic style during worship services, recent camera offerings from Blackmagic and Canon make it feasible to use one camera to output different frame rates and resolutions because of how they manage the camera’s onboard operating system.
This makes it much easier to use a single camera to shoot 1080p/60fps on the weekend, for example, but then use it to capture 4K/24fps during the week, as opposed to having a camera that would only have one output setting and force me into a box in either workflow scenario.
But when I’m making my camera selections, I can’t only be thinking “bigger picture” regarding picture quality or midweek workflow. I must also be thinking multi-generationally.
What I’m shooting now is going to outlive me by years and years. So I must also consider what my ministry might need down the road.
Our infrastructure now might only be at 480p standard definition or 720p high definition. But if I can start capturing footage and b-roll at a higher resolution (even if I need to down-convert upon export or when I ingest into the video system), that just gives our team more flexibility in future years to still have high quality as technology continues to improve.
Not every scenario needs 1080p or 4K video. But if the cost is relatively close, should I consider hardware that has those features? Possibly, because there’s no telling how I may need to use that capability down the road. In 50 years, people might still be watching our church’s archived content on YouTube or another platform, so if we can consider future-proofing the content to help us scale for growth, it’s worth doing so.
Fortunately, many of the video cameras on the market now come with native 4K settings (to say nothing of 1080p), and most video infrastructure (such as switchers and routers) will natively handle at least some sort of 1080p/3G video as its floor.
And if I really want to set up my future self for success by thinking long-term about content capture, I must also be thinking long-term about content storage, because higher resolution files are going to take up much more space.
Storage and content management
Fortunately, more storage and content management options are on the market than ever before, providing a broad range of cost and feature options.
While cloud-based systems are much cheaper, there are still inherent issues with accessing/downloading that content for real-time use (for an editing project, let’s say) or even to transfer it to a different platform down the road.
Onsite solutions such as RAIDed hard drives provide local control and easy access, but depending on connectivity requirements by editors may lead to some higher costs due to speed and throughput thresholds.
Or, perhaps a hybrid approach (like a localized managed service storage system like DigitalGlue’s creative.space solution, where I lease the hardware and pay a service/support/management fee on a monthly basis) is the best way to go so I can flexibly scale and grow as our needs increase.
In any event, having a long-term strategy for how to scale content storage and file management is critical so that future ministry leaders can still take advantage of the content we’re creating today.
Even if many of these specific concepts are beyond a particular church’s current abilities, there are still other ways to make a larger impact in the video discipline.
A simple addition like a new computer that can add song lyrics or sermon graphics to an online feed can make a huge difference in the level of engagement that a streaming audience can achieve.
PTZ cameras
Also, few things can feel more disengaging as a viewer than only seeing a single, wide, locked-down shot of a room during a service. However, thanks to continued feature improvements by companies like PTZOptics, Canon, Sony, Panasonic, BirdDog and BZBGear, new cameras are on the market with auto-tracking capability so that shots can be zoomed tighter yet still automatically follow a speaker or vocalist as they move across the stage.
This small change, which is perfect for churches that face limitations with their room size or shape (nowhere to put a manned camera) or technical team (lack of personnel to run cameras), can do wonders to boost how an online viewer can perceive the ministry.
Since that online expression is really the front door by which many people now kick the tires on our churches, we owe it to those people to try and give them the best product possible.
And once they get in the door, I want them to continue to understand that they’re part of something bigger than they themselves even imagined.
Audio
To this point, a sound reinforcement system has really been focused on ensuring that instruments, vocalists, and speakers are properly amplified so that they can be clearly heard all throughout the auditorium. And in many circles, the sound levels during worship are intended to be loud enough that congregants can comfortably sing without being self-conscious about their own vocal talent or that of those around them.
But what if that paradigm has started to shift? What if a sound system isn’t just intended to mask the noise around me, but could now be used to actually amplify what’s around me? What if it can be more beneficial to creating a dynamic worship environment for me to feel enveloped by the sound, not just opposite it?
It is here that the idea of an immersive worship experience has begun to take hold.
Integration companies can now consider this type of design when installing a new sound system, ranging from specialized acoustic treatment to immersive speaker systems that include L-Acoustics boxes and the L-ISA processors or even to the Venue Flex experience which includes distributed microphones and smaller speakers that fully encircle the walls of the room and, using a mix-minus process actually re-distribute ambient noise back into to the room to create an envelope of sound.
Even for vocalists on stage, options for immersive experiences now are available. Instead of in-ear mixes being a flat or monaural experience, platforms like the Klang personal monitoring system, which now comes as an option with Digico audio consoles, allow singers to create stereo, layered, spatial mixes of vocals and instruments, giving themselves their own personally immersive mix that can mimic how musicians are arrayed on the stage.
Parting game-changer
In nearly every area of church tech, options exist to remind all of us to think bigger. I may be in one place here and now, but what I’m doing has the ability to extend beyond just the four walls of my room and even transcend my current generation. And my experience in a room isn’t happening in a vacuum; there are countless others that can share and feed off of that same energy.
Worship services have the ability to be vibrant, transcendent moments, and with some intentional and strategic investment in the right infrastructure, I can ensure that I’m doing my part to create something bigger than I could ever imagine.
