December 11th, 2009
We’ve made a few small changes to the site in the last few weeks, hoping to improve usability. ;)
First, we’ve moved all our video previews to local hosting. We were previously using a external video host but we had some issues with glitchy and laggy performance so we’ve gone ahead and re-encoded all of our videos and hosted them on our own servers so you should see much better video playback.
Another small change is the addition of a couple social sharing icons. Under each video preview you will find an icon to share the media you’re viewing either on Facebook on Twitter.
The final change we’ve made is the addition of a slideshow player to our home page. It shows off some of the recent church media as well as a preview of some worship media and motion backgrounds that are yet to come.
Enjoy!
July 17th, 2009
If you haven’t heard of Collide Magazine, you are sorely missing out. Fitting of their slogan “Where Media and the Church Converge” they are a huge resource for church and worship media information.
In addition to their great magazine they have a website which is regularly updated, one of the recent posts by Collide’s founder Rob Thomas (no, not the singer) touches on some of the key important principles into Making Videos That Stick.
Make sure to check out the original article — I’ve taken Rob’s 5 main points and applied some of my own thoughts and experiences. Though the original article is specific to making videos that stick, the principles are applicable to most any sort of creative media used to convey a message.
1. Grow in your spiritual walk
Obviously your spiritual walk is extremely important, but especially when you are charged with creating media to deliver a message. What you create will be changing lives and effecting people’s viewpoints on faith and life, do you really trust yourself to be delivering the right message if your own heart isn’t in it?
In addition to the responsibility side, continuing your spiritual growth can help to inspire you and develop your wisdom and understanding, enabling you to further speak the truth through media.
2. Have a connection with your pastor/minister
Several years ago I was on staff at a church where I did not have this connection. It wasn’t there to begin with and unfortunately I failed to try and develop it further. My work suffered greatly because of this and not only did it create a rift between us, but I was never able to really convey through media the thoughts and ideas he had for his message. Not only did my personal satisfaction dwindle, but I was failing the entire church congregation.
Developing a relationship with your pastor is important for helping to increase the cohesiveness of your media and their message, but it is (again) also important for spiritual inspiration you receive from their preaching. Listen for those parts that stand out, maybe they would be a great idea for your next video project?
3. Remember that content is king
There is a growing trend in the modern church of treating style as more important than substance. This has led to many critics of visual media’s use in the church (John Piper recently said “I think the use of video and drama largely is a token of unbelief in the power of preaching.”).
I could not disagree more with John Piper, but his quote serves as a reminder that the coolest video, the most amazing graphics, the greatest after effects render equate to nothing if the message is not clear.
Quality is important, and the church has come a long way in recent years, but we need to make sure the message is clear, that the content is sound.
We often struggle with this at Igniter. It’s not enough to have a well-edited, well-shot, or well-animated video. If the video has a boring story, if it’s too abstract, or if its message is just too “on the nose,” the video won’t make an impact. We’ve made a couple videos that look and sound great but leave the viewer feeling, well, nothing.
— Rob Thomas
4. Communicate beyond words
As pointed out in our last post, there are lots of wrong reasons to use visual media in your church. The right way is to communicate beyond words.
There are things that can only be said visually, and there are ideas that can be more easily conveyed through a scripted scene or animation. Your videos and media should be there to enhance and enlighten what your pastor is speaking of. Try to focus on concepts that can’t be easily said in a few short sentences.
5. Know your audience
This is especially important, some churches are lax and easy-going would love a humorous skit depicting some ironic situation… at another church people might be mortified.
Know how you are going to reach your audience, and reach them where there needs are. Be relevant to the congregation and to the times.
Make sure to visit the original article on CollideMagazine.com to see Rob’s original take on these 5 principles.
