On November 12, 2008, Scribemedia.org posted an interview they had with me regarding the video production setup at Mountainview Camp and Conference Center last year in Hope, BC.
ScribeMedia.org focusses primarily on the business, technology and culture of digital media.
We talked about our current video setup, equipment used, production work flow, and challenges to work with.
You can listen to our interview and read the entire post on Scribemedia’s website.
Below is the interview written by Joachim from Scribemedia.
Interview with Scribemedia:
Churches all across the world have been finding uses for video to communicate their message and connect to their community.
Pastor Troy McQueen of Kelowna 7th Day Adventist Church in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, has been producing rich media content around church productions for years.
A natural technophile who began by performing basic AV tasks for the church, Pastor Troy began to take on and become comfortable with more advanced AV production. Coupled with this growing comfort in the production world, he also began to realize how powerful things like audio and video can be to connect the church with its community, especially when delivered online.
“We are in a media society now,” McQueen notes, mentioning that his church wants to continue to connect with people in the way they are taking in the world, such as online. Media facilitates that connection through convenience and posterity. He notes, for example, that prior to posting video to his website, traffic was 10,000 page views per month. After adding video, traffic jumped to 90,000 page views per month. Video seems to be working.
The scope and effectiveness are most impressive about his efforts. After a quick capture and turnaround, the church broadcasts the day’s service later that night on their website. Churchgoers who weren’t able to make the service for mobility or distance reasons can now remain connected to the church online.
“He said he was going to make it his virtual church”
One case in particular shows the potential. McQueen met a man from Australia at a video workshop. The Australian was a Christian, but wasn’t churchgoing. McQueen directed him to the church website where he could watch each week’s sermon. After doing so, there was one more member of the congregation, who tuned in each week from across the Pacific ocean. “He said he was going to make it his virtual church,” McQueen added.
Play of the Month and Year in Review
The church programming has expanded to two additional projects, Play of the Month and Year in Review.
Play of the Month highlights church members activities in the local community and communicates these good deeds to the congregation on the projection screen during the service.
The Year in Review is an annual 15 to 20 minute highlight reel that captures the essence of the year for the church.
Both are very well received. Each has helped educate and raise awareness among the local community about the church and its activities and helped church members show others what the church is all about.
I had a chance to talk to Pastor Troy about a specific event that he produced recently. The event was held at the Mountain View Camp and Conference Center in Hope, British Columbia. It brought together speakers from all over the world and an audience of over 10,000 people.
While a much larger production than his usual church fare, he nonetheless kept the process the same, recording and mixing realtime, then burning a final DVD within hours of the end of the production.
The main challenges he faced were speed and technology. McQueen notes that one of the biggest issues with a live event is that, “you can’t ask the presenter to stop, back up, and do it again.” So he was sure the production would have to move with, and sometimes even ahead, of the show.
He also needed gear that not only worked, but worked well together. McQueen remembers, “One of the biggest challenges is having everything sync together.” The previous year’s shoot was successful, but had problems with the gear compatibility. The focus of this year’s shoot was to eliminate those problems.
On this shoot, most of the guts of the operation consisted of DataVideo mixing and recording equipment. Specifically, he mentions the SE-1000 DataVideo Switcher , the DN-300 DV/HDV Hard Drive Recorder (his favorite purchase of the year for the speed and ease of capture), the Datavideo MP6000 DVD+R/W Recorder DVD burner and the ADTEC PRO 8 drive DVD/CD duplication Tower. McQueen notes this last part sped the final turnaround because, “it will duplicate 7 DVD’s in about 4.5 minutes.”
Ultimately, McQueen attributes the smooth flowing production to one idea. “Because we chose equipment that was compatible together, it all flowed smoothly. We never had any glitches.” And this was critical as they were shooting without tape in the cameras, and did not have the time to do touchup edits at the end. The live mix was the final output. No chances for retakes or edits to cover up mistakes.
The cameras were Sony HVR-1VU. “They provide a beautiful image,” McQueen notes, mentioning he chose these cameras based on his long history of positive experiences with Sony cameras. They had a three camera setup, with ouputs going into the mixer, which then output to both DVD and hard drive recorders. Again, no tape in the camera.
Another piece of gear was the final link. “We needed to get HDMI to SDI converter boxes for each of the video cameras since they are HDMI and the video switcher is SDI – We purchased 3 Blackmagic Design Mini Converter HDMI to SDI boxes.”
Lastly, McQueen states that building a solid passionate team was the most important contributor to success. To start building the team, he posted a notice in their BC Live Newsletter which goes out to all of the 7th Adventist congregation. He emphasized finding trainable people. While applicants with production experience were preferred, people who were willing to learn and assimilate into the workflow were the most valuable candidates. A final team of 9 was formed. The ultimate deciding attribute he looked for in the hiring process was their passion for the topic and sense of importance for the product.
And that, in a way, wraps up Pastor Troy McQueen, passionate about the church and, through his service, incorporating the skills and joy he finds in video and web technologies to showcase the church and its activities.
About Troy McQueen