Church Video Ideas

Yesterday I announced the beginning of the Church 2.0 Local Forum. I’m excited about the first 2 of these in May (one in LA and one in Chicago). For now, I’d like to give you more info on the first one in LA. This is for all Church leaders in the Southern California area. If you’re involved in ministry and would like to meet, network and share with others in ministry - this FREE event is for you.

DETAILS: We will gather on Friday, May 2nd from 11:30am to 3:30pm in Grant Hall at Hollywood UMC. I’d appreciate you signing up so we know how much lunch to provide. To RSVP go HERE.

Sponsors that have taken care of the facility rental, free give-aways/swag and free food for all are: eight20eight, iStockphoto, RevoStock and SermonSpice. I’m extremely grateful for their support.

Here’s a special note from sponsor iStockphoto: Enter the coupon code FAITH and you will receive a 20% first purchase discount on any order over 55 credits and you can also choose 20 FREE images out of a group of 50. Go HERE to check it out.

WHAT’S SO COOL ABOUT MEETING AT HOLLYWOOD UMC?

Due to the unique beauty of the buildings and the history emmanating from their individual spaces, the church facilities are often used as a film and television location and have been featured in several major motion pictures.

FILMS SHOT AT HUMC include…
• Jarhead
• Domino
• Anger Management
• Big Mama’s House
• Beautiful
• A Civil Action
• That Thing You Do!
• Super Mario Bros.
• Sister Act
• Back to the Future
• Star 80
• Imitation of Life

TV SHOWS SHOT AT HUMC include…
• CSI
• Days of Our Lives
• General Hospital
• Murder, She Wrote
• The Golden Girls
• Jake and the Fatman
• The A-Team
• Hardcastle and McCormick
• Riptide
• Hotel
• Dr. Phil - Special
• Bette Midler - Special
• The Temptations - Special

SPECIAL FOOTNOTES FOR FILM FANS -
In Back to the Future, the church gymnasium was the location for the high school prom/dance scene where Michael J. Fox reunites his parents and takes the stage to perform a wicked guitar version of “Johnny Be Good.”

In Sister Act, virtually the entire church served as an on-location set for the story of Whoopi Goldberg posing as a nun. The scenes where the nuns ate at a long table and where Whoopi was scrubbing floors were filmed in Grant Hall. The scene where the nuns were gossiping in the kitchen over ice cream was in the Main Kitchen. The choir room in the movie was shot in the church’s actual choir room at the time.

In Tom Hanks’ That Thing You Do!, the gym stage was the setting for a college talent show where the movie’s fictitious pop-rock group, “The Wonders,” first sang their hit song “That Thing You Do!” in public. In the scene, the group’s drummer surprises them by speeding up the tempo of the song, with very positive results.

In my “Church 2.0” class at NAB, I did a live text poll where people in the class texted in their vote and it updated in real time on the screen (via PowerPoint). Many asked how I did it. I did it using a website called Poll Everywhere.

I’d like to encourage you all, my blog readers, to participate, too. Please go HERE and select your answer to the poll. I tried posting the poll on my blog, but the text was too small to read. If you go to the link above you’ll be able to read all the options well and vote online. Tomorrow I’ll post the results.

EXTRA:
Here are some places to check out free videos (that’s right: FREE) - actually they’re all types of media resources.

• Free Countdown from SermonSpice
• Free loop or motion background from WorshipHouse
• Free iPod film from Modern Parables
• Free stock footage from RevoStock
• Free download from SermonVideos.com
• Free Mother’s Day Countdown from WorshipFilms
• Free Mother’s Day Backgrounds from Midnight Oil
• Free media resources from WORDsearch Media
• Free video from eleven72
• Free download from Floodgate Productions
• Free media resources from Organic Videos
• Free media resources from Sermonade
• Free media resources from Muddy River Media
• Free graphics from WorshipGraphics
• Free SD or HD clip from 12 Inch Design

The Swerve blog announced a summer message series entitled “One Prayer“, which is very intriguing. It’s many churches coming together and participating. Check out the explanation video from Pastor Craig. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Is this something you’d do at your church?

EXTRA:

I am thrilled to announce that SermonSpice has opened a Spanish media store. I have been begging producers for years to produce content in Spanish or at least with Spanish sub-titles. I applaud….cheer… and herald SermonSpice for their vision and commitment to equip this HUGE part of our Church. Well done!

My mini-vacation last week was great. I didn’t think about or do anything church-related. I just rested, relaxed and had fun. I now feel refueled and ready to serve again. I’m grateful to my church and my boss for allowing me to take all the time I needed to recharge. I was all fresh and ready to return yesterday, but got pink eye and ended up missing. I’ve got eye drops now and should not be contagious anymore.

Now, I’m back in action in many ways. I’m on a new diet and fitness program (that came to me last week - I had a lot of time to think). I’m back in the gym working out and cutting back what I eat. I’m more active and eating less crap - which should make for a good/healthy combo.

I’m also back writing and prepping for some upcoming conferences. One magazine that I’ve never really mentioned, but I write regularly for is LifeWay’s “Let’s Worship” magazine. I encourage you to check it out HERE. Besides writing articles and working on my book, I’m doing some audio projects, too.

This week I’ll be making 3 recordings.

1. Tonight, I’m recording an audio class entitled “Communicating to Those That Listen with Their Eyes” for WorshipMinistryU, which is a great new online seminar tool for those in worship ministry. I’m honored to be among their terrific faculty. I’ll let you know when my class is ready and available.
2. Later this week I will record an interview for the Church Media Podcast. One of the things we’ll discuss is a Media/Tech meet up at NAB on the night of the 15th. They’ll be a group of tech directors, media producers and software company reps that will all gather to hang out and eat. If you’re going to be there, you don’t want to miss this.
3. Also, later this week, we’ll be back in the studio to revive the Creative Synergy Podcast. I know it’s been forever - but we’ll be back in action soon.

EXTRA:
If you haven’t voted for the worship presentation software that your church uses, go HERE. I’d like to get a recent poll before my “Worship Presentation Software” class in April at NAB.

BONUS:
Birthdays - Yesterday, my youngest turned 4. Today is my brother’s birthday.

If all goes well, I should be on my way to Nashville for NRB today. I was planning on having lunch in Nashville, but as I type this (Thursday night) there are hundreds of flights delayed out of DFW. I’m just hoping I make it in time for my class on Saturday! Pray for me. If you’re there - holla!

EXTRA:
I really Easter v.2 from Igniter Media Group. Not only are the stills and loops very usable, but they’re creative, edgy, artsy, and just plain cool. The video “Because He Lives” is a home-run. And to top it all off - they have an HD version of everything, which is crucial for my church now. Well done, Igniter!

UPDATE:
The snow canceled my flight this morning. They originally re-booked my flight for tomorrow night, meaning I would miss my class tomorrow afternoon. I called and got on a flight that leaves tonight. I’m going to go ahead over to the airport and see if I can catch an earlier flight. I’m still coming Nashville!

I must say I enjoyed my first visit to the city of Tulsa, OK, though I didn’t get to see much of the city. I went from the airport to the EasyWorship offices, was in a meeting all day - left there and had a great dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with Jeff Taylor (owner and creator of EasyWorship), then headed back to the airport and flew home.

What’s the word? The word (unofficially - this is just Greg talking) is that EasyWorship is working on a new and improved cross-platform software. That’s right - can you say “EasyWorship for Mac”? Jeff has assembled a very gifted and talented team and they have been hard at work on a forthcoming version of EW that incorporates many new features based on comments and suggestions from their customers. The design is sharp and intuitive, the features are exciting and will better equip your church.

I’m especially excited about one feature, but am not at liberty to talk about it. I was blindfolded when I was led into their office and kept in a dark room all day. My cell phone (which has a camera) was taken from me and I was sworn to secrecy. Okay - I exaggerate, but I really can’t talk about what I saw.

I’m back to work at the church today, have a few meetings and our weekly rehearsal tonight. More later.

PERSONAL:
Just to update you all: I’m still extremely sore from riding that horse the other day. I used muscles that haven’t been used in years. It hurts to move!

Many have asked what we’re doing as far as media in our new worship center. As I mentioned before, we are using EasyWorship as our presentation software. We are also slowly changing over our entire campus (all venues) to EasyWorship, which has a universal site license (other products such as MediaShout and ProPresenter charge extra to use their software on multiple computers). We have 7 venues that will be using EasyWorship, so the universal site license was a win for us.

My friends at EasyWorship were great during the crazy weeks and days leading up to our first worship service. Either we (Bent Tree) are the first church to use EasyWorship in an HD setting or we are one of the first - either way: we won’t be the last. I’ve heard rumors of confusion about whether or not EasyWorship can do HD. Let me set the record straight: it does and we’re doing it.

The trouble that we were having leading up to the first service was due to having the wrong video card. I went locally and purchased a new video card (NVidia GeForce 8800 GTS) and we were up and running in a matter of minutes. If you have any other questions about the initial setup of EasyWorship and the codecs I purchased/downloaded, just email me.

Here’s what’s up as far as the HD backgrounds we used. We’ve had 3 Sundays in our new worship center. The first Sunday we used all Igniter Backs Vol. 3 backgrounds (loops and stills). The next week we used more Igniter Backs and some brand new backgrounds from FortyOneTwenty. This past Sunday we used new HD backgrounds from SermonVideos.com.

I’d like to point out that I still encourage our volunteers that pick the backgrounds each week to use at least one still background for a song. As I’ve said before, motion backgrounds are most powerful in contrast to still backgrounds. You can read more on my philosophy of this in my “Less Is More” article.

EXTRA:
Still looking for FREE worship backgrounds? Check out HERE.

BONUS:
Yesterday we found our opening video to kick off our Easter service. It’s available at BlueFish.tv, it’s pretty sweet and it’s $1.99! Check it out HERE.

Great comments, emails and feedback on yesterday’s blog post. Unless someone contacts me that hasn’t so far, I think we’re the first church to use EasyWorship with a full HD system. One common theme I noticed from your comments is that many of you are searching for HD resources. I’ve been putting together a collection over the past year. Here’s where you can find HD media resources:

• BlueFish.tv - Essentials Vol. 1-3 has HD stills, countdowns and loops
• BluePonyDigital - This mainstream company has a worship line of HD products
• Digital Juice - We use their HD backgrounds, as well as use their products to create custom lower third titles for our staff
• Igniter Backs - Check Igniter Backs Vol. 3 for HD stills, countdowns and loops
• SermonVideos.com - SV offers HD motion backgrounds
• WorshipFilms - Most WorshipFilm’s products are available in HD and SD

I’m sure many of you have done this and many of you will do this in the future - that’s making the switch from 4:3 to 16:9 (widescreen). Once I’ve been through the entire switch, I’d be happy to share any thoughts, lessons learned, feedback, etc. with those that are switching in the future.

For now, I’d love to here from any of you that have already made the switch. We’re in the process of uploading all new backgrounds, lower-thirds and creating the lower-third titles that we do for staff members (Pete Briscoe - Senior Pastor, etc.). If you have any words of wisdom, please email me at: greg@churchvideoideas.com.

Obviously, widescreen or 16:9 is not necessarily HD, but HD is 16:9. We are starting out with a total HD system, so if your church is full HD, I’d really like to hear from you. I’ve got lots of questions. *** Especially if you are using HD backgrounds in EasyWorship - HOLLA AT ME! I came home yesterday so frustrated and drained that I just stared at a piece of paper for about an hour and a half. I think I’m losing it!

We’re switching from another presentation software to EasyWorship campus-wide and I’m in the process (which I’ve done before and helped other churches with) of setting up EasyWorship for the first time and downloading all the codecs, etc. I’m sure it will eventually work, but we were having issues as of yesterday.

With the video card that came with the computer and the special (Blackmagic Decklink HD Extreme) video card that we had to get to stay HD, we have 3 video outs. The guys from Clark ProMedia did the initial/hardware setup and I’m trying to setup EasyWorship itself. Again, if you are HD and using EasyWorship, PLEASE give me a shout.

* My friend, Dave Clark, of National Community Church, just wrote an article entitled “Church Media: A 2008 Forecast“. I think it’s worth checking out. As he said, “High-definition video also will appear on the screens of many more churches this year. The prices of high-definition cameras and equipment have become affordable, even for average-sized churches.”

BONUS:

This just in from blog sponsor Worship Leader Magazine: The Upgrade Your Stage state-of-the-art giveaway is your chance to win an assortment of resources with a retail value of over $15,000 (for the grand prize) for your service of worship. We want to equip one church, so they can use their financial resources in other ways. There are also 1st and 2nd place winners who will also receive significant prizes.

Anyone can enter, as long as your church fits the guidelines, but the church chosen will most likely have the most need along with the best story. Though there is no set cap of church size, the finalists will likely be churches of 500 or less.

EXTRA:

I started a Shelfari group for Church 2.0 leaders - this is where you can list your favorite books that you recommend other Church leaders read. Check it out HERE.

EXTRA, EXTRA:

Anyone getting a MacBook Air?

Here are a few Christmas media resources that my friends sent me to check out and are new for this year. I encourage you to check them out as well:

• “Breath of Heaven” by eleven72 - $20
• “The Devil’s Take on Christmas” by eleven72 - $20
• “A Christmas Wish” by Flashlight Films - $12
• “Christmas 101” by Flashlight Films - $12
• “A Christmas Response” by Floodgate Productions - $20
• “Christmas v.2” collection by Igniter Media Group - $35
• “Xtreme Christmas Backgrounds 3” collection by Radiate Films - $25
• “Christmas Pak 3” by SermonVideos.com - $40
• “Complete Christmas” collection by WorshipFilms - $49 (also available in HD - $69)
• “Kid’s Christmas” collection by WorshipFilms - $35

EXTRA:

I made a collection of still backgrounds last year for Christmas/Winter. You can purchase them HERE.