If budgets are really tight, you could even use a super-cheap photography tripod; though they won’t pan and tilt very smoothly, it will at least hold your camera steady.
I’m guessing a lot of the readers of this blog don’t have a bunch of professional experience shooting videos, yet you are being asked (or are volunteering) to make them for an audience ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand.
If that’s the case, how can you go about improving your work? First, realize there is very little truly original video out there. For the most part, there are accepted rules, and methods that generate good results.
So watch some professionally produced programs (they’re free on TV!). But don’t watch them for the story line (at least not for this exercise), watch them for the technical production details.
How did they frame the shot? How does the camera move? What angles did they use? How is it lit? Where was the camera placed in the scene? How do the people in the program interact with the camera?
I’ll let you in on a secret: professionals do this all the time. I once cribbed a really cool visual effect from CSI: Miami for use in a video for one of our students. I was watching a show on Discovery channel and saw a lower third title treatment I liked and created a similar look for another video.
When I watch a film with really good cinematography, I will watch it again and study what the cinematographer did. Then I look for opportunities to use some of those techniques.
Here’s the why: The people sitting in our churches every week watch TV too, and they have high expectations.
Imagine a couple coming into a church for the first time in many years only to see a poorly produced video that bounces all over the place, with poor audio, bad color and is poorly projected. Will that keep them from returning?
I don’t know—but it can’t help.
Remember, our job in the Technical Arts is to remove all barriers to an authentic worship experience.
That’s why it matters.
Mike Sessler is the Technical Director at Coast Hills Community Church in Aliso Viejo, CA. He has been involved in live production for over 20 years and is the author of the blog, Church Tech Arts . He also hosts a weekly podcast called Church Tech Weekly on the TechArtsNetwork.