Our first Grand Canyon Synod Tech Lab contributor is Pastor David Drach-Meinel, with Christ the Servant in Henderson. For many years Pastors David and Diane have embraced new technologies, and since March transitioned to full online worship using a recording studio set up in their home. “This is not something we do while we wait to go back,” Pastor Drach-Meinel says. “This is what we’re doing because this is ministry now.” 

The Grand Canyon Synod Tech Lab is a weekly online Zoom conversation designed to spark possibilities as our church rapidly changes. Use the link bit.ly/gcstechlab to access the Zoom meeting every Wednesday at 10 am.

Scroll down to view the video, tips and tricks, and a full resource list.

Paraphrasing Pastor Drach-Meinel, here’s some key points.

• Pastors have been excellent communicators until March, when our communications style has changed radically. It’s very different to speak to a screen rather than in-person. It’s hard to speak without reading people’s facial cues.

• Framing yourself onscreen is a basic and crucial skill that will do wonders for your presence.

• Don’t center your face on the screen. Put your head towards the top of the screen. Get that camera up to eye level. Nobody wants to see your ceiling fan.

• Light yourself properly. Invest in the time to properly use your existing lamps and lights, and if they don’t work, invest in some low cost desk lamps (we love this one). Use a few light sources rather than one.

• If you wear glasses, front lighting will produce a glare.

• If you are poorly lit and your sound is bad, you’re making people work to see and hear you. After a few weeks of trying to see and hear you for a 45-minute worship service, they will eventually give up.

• Consider making a custom worship service for the screen, with post-production values, rather than simply filming a worship service.

• After trying out multiple custom high-end video cameras, Pastor Drach-Meinel now simply uses a laptop camera. Your existing laptop and phone may have the best video.

• For the best sound, consider using a separate microphone, and possibly mixing audio and video in post-production. Cheap microphones or your phone/laptop microphone may pick up extra noise.

Resources used

Programs and equipment

These are all the programs and equipment I use on a regular basis. Only a few are necessary for church video production.

• Adobe Premiere Pro: $$$ or Premiere Elements $ (Video Editing)

• Adobe Photoshop: $$$ or Photoshop Elements $ (Photo and Graphics)

• Apple iMovie: Free

• Digital Juice: $$ (Online subscription for animations, graphics and more – excellent!) www.digitaljuice.com

• Sonicfire Pro: $ but necessary music disk add ons make it $$$ (Royalty free music generating of any length)

• Cakewalk by Bandlab: FREE (Digital Audio Workstation DAW previously cost $750. Best deal ever)

• Izotope Audio Plugins: $ - $$$ (for enhancing digital audio recordings)

• Izotope Spire App: Free (Multi-Track recording for iPhone)

• Finale: $-$$$ Music notation software for producing music sheets.

• Band-in-a-Box: $-$$$ Music generating with HQ audio loops

• Staffpad for Windows 10: $ (Hand writing music notation instant recognition)

• PowerPoint: (You really should already know this!)

• Word: (You really should know this using proper formatting techniques)

• Adobe Acrobat Pro: $$ (Produce pdf and pdf collections/books)

• YouTube: of course

• FaceBook: of course

Home Equipment

• Microsoft Surface Pro Notebook i5:  $$$$$

• Very Old HP i7 Desktop with 2 7200 rpm hard drives

• Lots of Multi-Terabyte portable hard drives

• Focusrite Audio Interface: $-$$$

• Zoom L-12: $$ Digital Mixer/Audio Interface/Multitrack Recorder/Live Mixer

• Zoom H4n Pro: $ Handheld Audio Interface/Multitrack Recorder

• Carvin Large Diaphragm Mic: $-$$$$$

• AKG C1000S Mic: $$

• AKG K371 Headphones: $$

• Izotope Spire remote group audio recording unit: $$ Digital recording in a distancing age

• GVM LED RGB Color Panel Lights: $-$$$

• Various Guitars, Bass, Mandolin, Ukulele, Amps, Effects

Sanctuary Equipment

• Computer

• Video Switcher

• Roland M-400 Digital Mixer Console (12 Years Old)

• 3 Panasonic DLP-10000U Projectors (10,000 Lumens, 12 Years Old)

• Rodgers Organ which doubles as our Sound System (12 Years Old)

• Roland TD30KV Digital Drums (12 Years Old)

• Many microphones, wired and wireless

• Mackie Personal Monitors

• Guitar, Bass, Drum, Keyboard Amps

• Yamaha Motif 7 Synth

• 2 Yamaha C7 Grand Pianos (20 & 12 Years Old)