Do's and Don'ts of Media Presentation Format

[moosicman]

If there is a better location for this, mods please move!

I'm at a new church with a very contemporary format. When I got here I noticed that there were many mistakes and lags with the media staying up with the worship leader. They used very minimal backgrounds and nothing at all creative or interesting within the presentations. Almost a traditional approach to displaying media (they had the powerful tool of PP4 but just kinda used it like it was one of those glorified overhead projectors with the clear sheets from yesteryear). BUT for lyric format their idea was one or two line lyric-per-page a la Hillsong with 30-40 slides per tune (more difficult for the tech. to keep up and increased the odds of mistakes - oh, and the tech. didn't rehearse with the band and sometimes didn't know the songs...yeah, I know, but I've fixed that too and now they are at least familiar with the set and order). As Worship Pastor and head of production, I've moved towards more interactive, exciting ideas with backgrounds, fonts and stuff. Another thing I did was to stack more lyrics on a slide and decrease the number of slides to eliminate unprofessional mistakes (kind of) until they get more secure with following and changes, etc. So now we have 10 or 12 slides with the song sections (v, ch, br.) on there only once rather than the song laid out start to finish repeating everything (in my philosophy, it seems odd to put the chorus on there 4 times rather than just put it on there once and return to it). But this has caused a little bit of heartburn and the "why are we doing it this way" mentality. So my question is what are your takes and philosophies for presentation format and creation. Do you go by some rules of thumb or subscribe to a particular standard that others do elsewhere or do y'all just do what fits where you are.

I'll be the first to say that I'd rather have fewer lyric lines per page for style and stuff but if the goal is to get people comfortably engaged in singing and the line being sung pops up midway through it, I'm gonna sacrifice style first.

What say ye?

[petereit]

We lyric by musical phrase, with typically two lines per slide. But then we key lyrics over live video, so it makes more sense to do it that way. General rule is to hit the next slide two musical beats in advance.

Since we also use a confidence screen projected on the back wall, our ProPresenter operators know the songs as well as the band and singers. We train them to think of ProPresenter as a lead instrument in the band, and they practice accordingly. They know each song's chord progressions, and they know the hand signals the singers and band use for verse/chorus/coda/etc.

[katanna]

We aim for 4 lines per slide (but it can be anywhere from one to seven) and we typically have 10-20 slides per song.

I would not recommend having only one chorus slide, this can be very confusing to volunteers, especially if they don't know the song. As best as you can have the song so that all a volunteer has to do is press space bar to get through the song, anything more than that and they can get confused very quickly.

Have you taken a look at ProPresenter 5's new Arrangement feature? Super cool not only for organization's sake but also if your band does different arrangements every week.

CMN Player - ProPresenter 5 Groups and Arrangements -...

Matthew

[[Admin] osborn4]

A guideline for text in presentations is that if stick with about 7 words per line and no more than 7 lines on a slide, folks don't get lost in the text as much. And I try to stick with that for scripture slides.

However, for songs I rarely go over 4 lines per slide. I want people to be able to close thier eyes in worship and be able to open then and find the right place right away.

for our 4:3 screen, the 7 words is a good guideline. If we were 16:9, I'm sure I'd go over it more often to keep the line breaks with the musical phrasing.

Readibility is king. But it doesn't have to be boring to be readable.

The operator definetly practives with the band. the next slide of lyrics should pop up 2-3 sylables before the end of the last line of the previous slide (depending on the speed of the song and the # of beats between lines). Folks have already read to the end of the line. Get the next screen fully up before the first lyric on that slide is sung.

[moosicman]

Well the timing issue has to do with the tech. not knowing the song because they haven't previously been attending the rehearsals (which they do now). So that issue is resolved somewhat. I usually have the font as large as possible (anywhere from 100 - 150) trimmed in .3 black so they usually stand out distinctly from the motions and backgrounds. And we display according to phrasing as well and this is typically only about 4-5 lines per slide. The issue I suppose is when you shrink that down to smaller font, you can get it on 2 lines but if you have a somewhat busy background, they would get lost, hence why I've elected to go with larger font/more lines. This is just different that others on my staff have been doing and they are just bucking the change.

But I suppose probably the biggest hurdle I face is with the layout. We give our musicians charts that do not include repeating sections unless there is a lyric/chord change necessary in them. They just get to the end of a verse and it says (to chorus) or whatever, which is standard. If we included every section over and over the tune could get up to three pages long. Now....they do this without thought or question, they sing on pitch, they play an instrument, they're in front of a large group of people, and the lights are frequently low. Ergo, such a map is not difficult to follow! So if the tech. (1) knows the song, (2) has rehearsed with the band, (3) has presentation software that shows them every slide at a glance and each section is clearly labeled and colored and all they have to do is left-click...this just should not be that hard!?!?

Now having said that, I know that many places are doing good to get a warm body in the seat and it NEEDS to be laid out from start to finish and all they have to do is press a button. But we are blessed that we can assemble a tech. team and that they can be trained to a deeper depth than just a grunt pressing a button. Our vision for them is to be as artistic and creative with their area as the musicians are - and as equally engaged in the process changing backgrounds on the fly and such. LOL So am I off my nut?? Do you others see it differently?

It is also notable that presentation software gives you the tech. view and everything there right before your eyes. It is maybe an oversimplification but if all you had to do was press a button, you wouldn't need a tech. view, just a congregational view.

[[Admin] osborn4]

Originally Posted by katanna

Have you taken a look at ProPresenter 5's new Arrangement feature? Super cool not only for organization's sake but also if your band does different arrangements every week.

That looks great!

I've been using a similar feature in SongShow Plus and I can't image doing without it.

[Esoteric]

I love ProPresenter 5. Just many, many amazing features.

[wogster]

Originally Posted by moosicman

If there is a better location for this, mods please move!

I'm at a new church with a very contemporary format. When I got here I noticed that there were many mistakes and lags with the media staying up with the worship leader. They used very minimal backgrounds and nothing at all creative or interesting within the presentations. Almost a traditional approach to displaying media (they had the powerful tool of PP4 but just kinda used it like it was one of those glorified overhead projectors with the clear sheets from yesteryear). BUT for lyric format their idea was one or two line lyric-per-page a la Hillsong with 30-40 slides per tune (more difficult for the tech. to keep up and increased the odds of mistakes - oh, and the tech. didn't rehearse with the band and sometimes didn't know the songs...yeah, I know, but I've fixed that too and now they are at least familiar with the set and order). As Worship Pastor and head of production, I've moved towards more interactive, exciting ideas with backgrounds, fonts and stuff. Another thing I did was to stack more lyrics on a slide and decrease the number of slides to eliminate unprofessional mistakes (kind of) until they get more secure with following and changes, etc. So now we have 10 or 12 slides with the song sections (v, ch, br.) on there only once rather than the song laid out start to finish repeating everything (in my philosophy, it seems odd to put the chorus on there 4 times rather than just put it on there once and return to it). But this has caused a little bit of heartburn and the "why are we doing it this way" mentality. So my question is what are your takes and philosophies for presentation format and creation. Do you go by some rules of thumb or subscribe to a particular standard that others do elsewhere or do y'all just do what fits where you are.

I'll be the first to say that I'd rather have fewer lyric lines per page for style and stuff but if the goal is to get people comfortably engaged in singing and the line being sung pops up midway through it, I'm gonna sacrifice style first.

What say ye?

There is a balance, that balance is between making it a good experience for the congregation, and making it a good experience for the operators. Most often, the operator is a volunteer, so if you make it a horrible experience, they will simply move their volunteering to another place.

Going back and forth, simply means that the operator's job is more difficult. If you have lots of slides per song, and your going back and forth, then you should probably consider worship software, rather then something big and ugly like PowerPoint.

[Dan Rector]

You said one of the initial problems was being out of sync. Practice with the band certainly will help that part and will help the timing, but why make the tech's job any harder? Sure they "can" jump around and can be trained to do so when needed, buy if a song is practiced and delivered that same way - why even take the chance that they forget to jump back or back up? Just list repeat the slide as many times as needed (even if the text doesn't change). Its not really any extra work to add slides.

The only time I could see an exception to this is if the worship leader likes to ad-lib and do some additional choruses, or whatever, then the tech needs to be ready to respond, but again practice with a given worship leader will help familiarize them with the style and to be aware of those times when the leader might go off the map.

Creativity is great, but that's not really what you want to strive for during the tech portion of a service. If someone has to get creative technically during a service - then generally something went wrong or was not planned for.

I've been doing tech and leading our team of volunteers for over ten years - I love being creative - finding just the right image or video to fit a song or capture a thought, or using tools to create to logos for series, etc. But I don't really want to do it on Sunday morning. I want everything to be as planned as possible, so that if something unplanned does happen, I can respond to it more quickly and not be worried about remembering to jump back three slides to pick up the repeated chorus.

The tech team are not musicians (sure they could be) don't expect the same things - they are not reading the music as your musicians are - they aren't on stage to pick up cues don't expect them to behave the same. Expect them, Empower them to do their job, listen to their feedback, and look at the outcome of the finished product and not just the details. We all notice those things, the congregation isn't so much aware.

As for standards - I think you need to develop what works best for you given your screen size, location, and expectations. We've just ended up with what works best for us over the years. We have a standard font and size for songs, I like this for readability. I personally find it distracting when the font changes from song to song (size or style). We do use more creativity with the sermon slides - using fonts that match the series logo, etc.

As a worship leader - I think one of the best things you could do is to find one of the techs that has the most passion about what they are doing and work with them to develop what you want - then empower him/her to go do it and build up a team with the same vision and passion.

[wotz]

We tend to use a common background for all songs for a given series, usually 3 -4 weeks, to give us a consistant 'feel' during the service. Our motto is 'no distractions' and have found that, for us and our congregation, different backgrounds for each song, and motion backgrounds create distractions. The background usually ties in with some other graphics for the series.

We use the sequences in song show, and modify the standard one for each song as required for that week. Our current song leaders stick to the same sequence they do in the practice (we have a the odd one who uses random sequences). I found that when we started to use sequencing it took all the stress away from the operator of trying to remember how each song goes.

Most lyrics have 5 or 6 lines per screen, up to 8 max. This usually lets us have a whole verse or chorus per slide.

Today we had the pastor change the final song on us, but we predicted it at the practice, and were ready. That is not always the case.