In addition to seeing TJ & the CCC team's work at the Conference Film Festival, you can view their work & ask questions at the Video Showcase breakout.
We know that you will have many questions for TJ & the team at the breakout session, we just thought we would get ahead start.
What is your creative process?
Our creative process integrates adults, students and kids into one Big Idea
each week. In May we plan all of our Big Idea series' for the entire year,
going from the Fall until the end of the next Summer. We get input from
church leaders within our New Thing church networks, local church staff, and
church attenders from our nine campuses. With that annual schedule complete,
we then get together as creatives every Tuesday from 9am-3pm and collaborate
with leaders of adults, students and kids to plan out each week's Big Idea.
Our schedule for these is that we plan nine weeks in advance. This gives us
time to come up with ideas and then actually implement them in terms of
making videos and graphics, coordinating efforts among multiple campuses and
languages, and generally not killing ourselves. We then have one media team
that works together to complete these projects for all ages.
Where is one place you would send creatives for inspiration?
Besides the Willow Arts Conference :), I have been diggin'
alreadybeenchewed. It's always good to pursue people and groups that
are better than you and Barton Damer is super-talented and really brings
excellence. Not to sound like a commercial but WorshipHouseMedia has a
good selection of some quality stuff. Especially lately. When I go there I
have had the feeling that there is some really cool stuff being
produced...and it's by Christians! And it's a good sign when the same people
who are making stuff for these kinds of sites also have a strong presence in
mainstream sites like iStockphoto...which incidentally is another great
resource. And you can't forget YouTube.
Many creatives in the church, including us, often feel like "there are no
new ideas", especially because we are creating services every week. It has
the potential of getting stale rather quickly. There are a couple of things
that have helped us with this. First, the way we plan our services involves
a collaboration with creatives from a lot of other churches. We get on a
conference call and/or video chat online to brainstorm each week's Big Idea.
This allows us all to benefit from one another's knowledge and experiences. A
second thing that has helped us is inviting people to our weekly meetings
who aren't always there. For example, there is a guy in our church who works
in advertising; we have invited him on occasion to join us either in
graphics planning meetings or Big Idea planning meetings. It's like a shot
in the arm, both to have someone new in the room with fresh ideas and to
gain perspective from someone who doesn't work at the church!
What is a common mistake you notice in videos produced for church services?
Here is a specific example of a larger issue. If you are familiar with Final
Cut Pro, my biggest pet peeve is Lucida Grande white text on a black
background. Nothing says, "I am in such a rush to get this thing done," more
than this as these are the default text settings. Probably one of the most
common mistakes we make is that we don't give ourselves the time needed to
make great videos. I always love it (or not) when someone (pastor-type) has
no idea how long it actually takes to plan, write, shoot, edit, add effects
and generally produce a video. From my experience, most people think it
takes about an hour to do it all. Planning ahead and scheduling out enough
time for the actual shoot can help immensely. Even though we are planning
out our services far in advance, this is still something we are always
struggling with. But please, don't use Lucida Grande!
What is one tip you would give a producer on a tight budget?
Actually, I have been reminded lately of something that fits this
question...filters! It is amazing what some really cool filters can do with
your source footage. If you don't have the money to get the best gear, use
what you have and then do some magic with filters in post-production. Some
places we get ours from are Nattress, CHV-plugins., and
Kafwang .
Click here to view some of Community Christian's videos.