Music Videos

I have produced several music videos for our praise and worship team (I Can Only Imagine) (Breathe)(Potters Hand) just to name a few. These videos along with live music have brought on a hunger in the church to produce more like these! It's the visual along with music and of course the anointing of God! Try this in your church.
Posted by Troy Lambert on Aug 11, 2002.

[azdray]

I am working on the same thing. How are you doing it (equipment used) and is it possible to produce one or more per month?

azdray

[sempei13]

Az,

First off welcome to the community. I don't know if the author of this thread will answer (the date's almost a year ago), but I will.

We've done a good number at Quest and find that good video takes either time or money. We don't have any of the second, so we take the first. To paraphrase Tone, "You can pick any two from the list, but not all three: high quality, quick, inexpensive." So to answer your question, I could do two a day with the right staff and equipment (money). Or I can do one every couple of months with very little money.

As to equipment, we use a first generation iMac DV with Final Cut Pro 3.0 and a Sony digital camcorder and get great results. A light kit and a 3ccd cam would help, but time and imagination help a lot.

Paul

These video projects take time, a lot of time. Reason is I paid for all of my video clips and on average each video cost me roughly $300 to $600 so I cant go out & purchase all of these at once. This is very cheap when you consider the outcome!
To answer your question? I used video clips from (Getty images)(Art Beats)(Corbis) along with some footage that I caught on an XL1s. I edited with (believe it or not adobe premiere/ Matrox RT 2000) but have since upgraded to (Adobe 6.5/Matrox RTX100 Extreme & love it!). I'm also a Musician and play for our Praise & Worship Team and so having these two skills have helped me to piece together some really good videos. I output these video's to DVD one with the soundtrack & one with back tracks in all of the given keys, this allows for the band or soloist to perform along with the video.

Back to the original question, because I'm also interested in doing this.

1)How are you making these in terms of shots?
2)And also what do you mean by music videos?
3)Are you talking like an MTV style video featuring the band and then another ongoing story, etc?
4)How do you use these videos? Worship Service, band promotion, etc?

Thanks for your input!

[sempei13]

Our leadership calls music videos--concept videos. They're meant to communicate the concept behind the series. I've proposed serial shorts, but they've all ended up being music videos (except Behind the Deity).

Paul

Since our concept videos are meant to convey the message of the series (typically a major series is during fall or spring and will last 5-6 weeks), tied in with the mood, content and arrangement of the music. We have not done them with musicians included in the video (We get permission to use the original recording instead of having our band play it... The idea has been proposed, but we haven't done it as of yet.)

That being said, we first work on the story line - get the idea really nailed down. We then go out and shoot it. These video's typically have 20 - 30 shots per minute of running video (which is probably a little SLOW compared to an MTV/VH1 video) but we usually get in what we need.

WE try to be as creative in the shot selection as we know how.... this has definitely gotten better as we do more of them. We shoot on tripod, hand held, from cars, trucks, bridges, ground level (water level in some cases) from under ramps while skateboarders jump over the camera, I have shot from an airplane before, but it is for a building campaign, not a music video.... anyway, we do what we can. We don't have a dolly or a jib - though we've used a wagon as a dolly before, and I've contemplated crazy ideas to simulate a jib before...

I guess I could have been more clear. These videos are music/ concept videos. I typically like to take the lyrics to the song and work off of that as being the basis of my video selection. Example: I CAN ONLY IMAGINE: (people in deep thought).
WILL I DANCE IN YOUR PRESENCE!( I used a ballerina twirling in slow motion change the luminance and created some blur. I tried to keep this video very abstract to help create the concept.

For the 4th I took video that I purchased that was patriotic themed and created a video to the music of The Battle Hymn of the Republic! Which on it's own is very powerful. The sound track was purchased by our church and was designed for our choir as a special. It had vocal track and back track. I used the back track and edited the video to match the concept burned it to DVD and they sang off of the video track itself. At the end I put in a surprise video clip of F-15 Fighter jets flying in formation along with the fly by sound which just rumbled the whole place and the people erupted into cheering, clapping not for the video but for emotion that they had just experienced! It really moved the people, some were joyous, some were crying and that is the whole purpose for video in ministry!

[azdray]

Troy, the description of your Independence Day presentation took me to an emotional high. Thanks for the inspiration.

Alonza

[sempei13]

I'd be careful with following the lyrics too closely. It can be much too literal and come out hokey. My first powerpoint video was like that. It was fun, but didn't convey the message of the song as a whole. I like the idea of writing a story about the general idea of the song, rather than trying to represent each line.

For example, if I were doing "I could only imagine", it might be good to show a person being contemplative at the end we see a reveal that show this person was dreaming about dancing for Jesus b/c he's in a wheel chair. That could be very poignant--it says that we'll receive resurrection bodies, like Christ, but use them for worship of the Lord, not for our own gain.

In addition to adding a dimension to the song, it also teaches some theology. I love multi-faceted literature.

Paul

Great point! Yes it is impossible to follow each lyric and convey the message you are trying to get at, and sometimes going on another thought can get better results. The thing that I always remember is let the video breathe, be selective in your video content and allow it to move with the song and watch God do the rest! Amen.