Brand New Setup Help Please

[jhoskinson]

I posted this in another forum and thought it might be better served here:

Hello to all! I am a newbie and have been handed a project that I know very little about! Video ministry.

Here are our church specs:

60' X 60' Sanctuary with pyrmid ceiling (old Lutheran Church)
Dark - Poor lighting that we cannot change (renting building)
Peavey sound system - new within a year or so - Peavey FX 16 mixer

Our Pastor wants us to start a video ministry, mainly recording the sermon portion of the service, then moving to the P&W eventually! We are not fancy, Just P&W then preaching, using an overhead projector with transparencies (yes they still make them!) we are ok with that just not sure on where to go with the camera and accessories. Here is what I think, but like I said, I know very little about..

Camera, Tripod, PC for editing and uploading to website, editing software, various cables

We have a fair budget of about $5 - $10,000 but want to be efficient!

1. Camera - 1 is fine in the back, but what kind in low light?
2. Tripod - what is a good kind to get?
3. PC - Laptop or desktop, does it matter?
4. Editing - what software is good for newbies?
5. Cables - XLR to camera from mixer for mic? Firewire to PC?
6. HD - Do we shoot in HD? Is that a given?

Thank you for any and all help, I have done some research, but cannot come to any full conclusions.

jhoskinson

[tdangelo]

jhoskinson,

What are the near, mid and far term goals for the video ministry? It seems to me that your mid and far term goals may impact these decisions, no? I would suggest strongly that these goals need to be verbalized and put in writing BEFORE you start looking at equipment choices.

As far as things like lighting goes, you MUST have an appropriate light level to make pictures. Period. End of story. Not negotiable. I was once on a video shoot where all the lighting looks were done before the “talent” arrived, who happen to be the then CEO of NYNEX/Verizon. The CEO was infamous for not liking lights. So, the Tech Manager and Lighting Designer created a few looks at minimum acceptable levels for the CEO to choose from and bumped everything up 10% as they knew the CEO would ask for the lights to be lowered. Once the CEO arrived they ran through the lighting looks and as anticipated the CEO asked for the lights to be lowered. As planned the Tech Manager asked the board op to lower the lights 10%. Unfortunately the 10% change did not satisfy the CEO and he asked that the lights be lowered more. The Tech Manager got on the PL and asked the board op, “please take it down another 10%.” Unfortunately the second 10% change did not satisfy the CEO and he asked that the lights be lowered more! The Tech Manager got on the PL and asked the board op, “please take it down another 10%.” As we were now 20% under minimum the Tech Manager asked on PL for the video shader to chime in if we were ok or not. There was a long pause, then on the headsets we all heard the video shader say, “well, how do you feel about doing radio?” Then laughter burst out from everyone listening in to the exchange.

Not only do you need acceptable light levels but you then have to create a look that is atheistically appropriate and acceptable.

[jhoskinson]

Thanks for the reply. I have been doing a ton of reading and everybody says the same thing - LIGHT IS IMPORTANT! I can understand this but don't know how to convey this to my pastor. I have thought about taking a home video camera on a tripod and shooting a service and just show him. Just dont know how to get enough light in a bldg we are renting...

[tdangelo]

It always helps to have such a conversation from a position of expertise. If you are not respected as the expert you can hardly expect that your recommendations will be followed. So, you either need be the expert, become the expert, or bring an expert with you to speak to leadership.


I always find it helpful to show leadership examples of other productions. Stills or video are best. Let them tell you what they like, or don’t like about each example. Then from a position of expertise you can explain why the good material looks good and why the bad material looks bad. Be prepared to make constructive recommendations and work within a multi-phase approach prioritizing what needs to occur immediately and what can potentially wait.


Once such a presentation is done if leadership still wants to go in a direction which you believe to be less than God’s will, you will need to make the decision as to what extent you can participate moving forward.

[bpalermini]

My thoughts:

The lights do not need to be permanently attached to the building. There are many ways to mount a coupe of lights that would help your video efforts out. Clamps, stands, or just minimal holes will do it.

If you can you should move the camera closer to the pulpit. Shooting 50-60 feet and getting a nice tight shot is difficult without expensive equipment.

How much does your preacher move? That will determine a lot about how good a tripod you need. The more movement, the more expensive tripod you need to keep things smooth. If he's planted at the pulpit a $150-200 (Davis & Stanford type) video tripod will likely be enough. If he moves a lot it will cost $500 (Manfroto) or more to get one that moves easily and smoothly.

If you are going to do minimal editing any Mac and iMovie will be all you need. Simple and stable, hard to beat.

Get a camera that saves to SD cards or to large internal storage. Be sure the files it makes are compatible and easily editable in iMovie. The usual suspects for cameras would be Panasonic, Canon and Sony. You don't want to ever use digital zoom so you need to be sure you can zoom in enough with the lens on the camera.

I think HD is what you will want to use and yes, you will want to feed the camera with audio from your mixer which means you will want the camera to be able to accept a line-level signal which is a lot hotter than a mic level signal. If you move the camera forward, far away from the mixer you could use wireless to get the audio to the camera. You could also record the audio separately and bring them together in iMovie but that's more work for you to do every week.

Seems to me you could get started nicely with a $1500 camera, a $500 tripod, a $1200 to $1800 Mac laptop, less than $500 for some lights, less than $350 in misc accessories (memory, batteries, cables) and perhaps $550 for a Sennheiser wireless mic set to get the audio to the camera.

[jhoskinson]

Thanks again for the response. I am meeting this morning with the pastor and board members to see what the actual direction is. I will post again to fill yall in on what we decide. Thanks for all the help...

jhoskinson