Wednesday, May 20, 2009

5.17 Overdrive

From Ben Neumann...

This past Sunday:
Overall, the Sunday went very smoothly, and there is little to follow up on. There are some video notes you may find helpful.

Each New Members Sunday, Josh invites all of the new members to stand on the steps of the stage. He does this so the congregation can welcome them, and so he can personally speak to them, expressing his gratefulness for them and encouraging them to embrace their calls as a members of the body of Christ.

When he does this, he has his back to the congregation, making for a unique set of camera shots. For the first service we tried switching and panning different shots of the new members. However we found that many of the shots became distracting for a couple of reasons:
  1. Some people were chewing gum.
  2. Some people didn’t look fully engaged.
  3. There were only 30 people in the first service, so the shot sequence quickly became old.
Consequently, we made some changes for the second service. During the second service, we kept camera 2 on Josh the whole time, even though the angle wasn’t ideal. Then we periodically dissolved in and out of shots of different members on the steps who looked engaged. This allowed the congregation to see people affected by Josh’s words but without the distractions. Well done camera crew!

That's it for my thoughts. But maybe you have some??

1 comment:

Dave Wilcox said...

I just want to add my $.02 to Ben's comments about the shots for new members.

First, we do want to make a change to our process in this area. In spite of our best efforts, we simply are not able to guarantee that most of the people in the new members group will look engaged when on the screen. As a result, we want to pull back from the directive to simply put shots up of the new members whenever Josh is not looking at the congregation.

This means a few things:

1. The camera director with the help of the video producer must carefully assess any shot of the new members before putting them on the screen. If you have questions about it's usefulness, don't use it.

2. Camera operators must be looking for good shots, too. It's no longer enough simply to get a shot of people. You must find the shot of the right people.

3. Panning is now outlawed. Don't do it.

4. The best thing is to spend more time on Josh, and then occasionally switch to a new member, then go back to Josh. Don't feel pressed to leave the Josh shot unless you are confident you have a good shot of the new member.

5. Did I mention that panning is outlawed?

Post more questions here, if you have any. Note: I think this will apply to child dedications also, but stay tuned for more on that.