With three locations in the Jacksonville, Florida area, Elevate Life Church pays a lot of attention to supporting and connecting its growing community of worshippers with inspirational messages delivered through the use of audio and visual technology. That desire to help in the era of a pandemic has led the church to install a number of responsible social distancing rules and a new remotely controlled robotic camera system from Telemetrics that’s used to stream services into members’ homes.
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The new system, which was installed at the church’s Oakleaf, Fla. location, includes five Panasonic AU-EVA1 cameras (and Canon lenses) on Telemetrics PT-HP-S5 Robotic Pan/Tilt heads mounted around the church’s main auditorium and another one on a Telemetrics TG4 TeleGlide camera track system at the back of the room (broken up into one 10-foot sections of rail and two 5-foot sections). The entire system is operated by a single person using a Telemetrics RCCP-2A Robotic Camera Control Panel, complete with reframe automatic shot correction software which is used by a single operator to control the cameras.
Live recorded HD images are projected on two large screens at the front of the auditorium. The church also maintains worship facilities in Fleming Island, its main campus, and Southside, Florida.
“The system is very easy to use, which allows us to quickly teach people how to use it.” said Ethan Ormeo, Film Director at Elevate Life Church. “That’s important because all of our operators are volunteers and not necessarily technical people. Everything on the control panel is well laid out and provides easy access to all of the features. We love it.”
While many are staying home to remain from COVID-19, all of the church’s services—one on Saturday and three on Sunday, in addition to a once-a-month Wednesday service—are recorded and streamed live and made available later on demand.
Ormeo said the control panel’s presets and other feature allow him to set up coverage of a service beforehand and then let the system run automatically, taking its cues from his presets.
“Often times we are programming the entire service from start to finish and let it run itself,” he said. “This ability has been very useful for us. If someone moves, I manually override the system and refocus that particular camera with the joystick and we’re good to go.”
The RCCP-2A control panel also includes Telemetrics’ exclusive reFrame shot correction technology, which allows Ormeo to keep the pastor (Tim Staier) in frame no matter where he moves to without touching the controls. The Church’s AV team is still learning how to use it effectively but are hopeful for the potential possibilities.
“We try to do programmed movements, like pointing the camera far left of the stage while keeping him in the center, to be sure he does not go out of frame,” said Ormeo.
The best part is that Ormeo and his team are able to do so much more than they could previously with manual cameras and operators at each position. He said robotics changed their lives significantly for the better.
“It was everything that we didn’t know we needed until we began using the robotic system,” he said. “When we first got it (in June of this year) the functionality just blew us away. We could never get this type of coverage with a person and a manual camera. Even subtle movements during the sermon can be captured. It looks really good.”
He added that Telemetrics engineers handled all on-site training, in a safe socially distanced way.
“Due to the pandemic, the majority of congregants are joining us online,” said Ormeo. “The shots we’re able to produce now are just fantastic and church members watching from home are really pleased. It makes for a better experience for everyone.”
The system was sold by AVnew, LLC, Telemetrics’ local reseller in Altamonte Springs, Florida.
