So I know I’ve been lax in writing when I get the email from Amazon telling me that unless I get some regular posts up here, they are going to pull my blog on Amazon Kindle. Okay, guys! I get the point.

Way back in March, I was going over the techie stuff for the Knott Avenue Christian Church webcast and the production equipment we use.

I’ve learned a lot since November about video production and webcasting, but I’ve also learned a lot about working and leading a team.

The Reluctant Leader

Just the other day, I did another Myers-Briggs test. I hadn’t done one in a while and I was curious to see if anything had changed. The last time I took the test–several years ago–I was an INFP: Introverted, Intuition, Feeling, Perception. Well, now I’ve apparently changed to a ISFJ: Introverted, Sensing, Feeling, Judging.

It’s really interesting because as I read the description of what an ISFJ is, it’s scary close to how I see myself now. I’m really thinking that the INFP was never really correct in the first place now that I can see myself as an ISFJ.

So what’s my point? How does this relate to the Media Team at KACC?

As an ISFJ, I:

• want to believe the best of people
• value harmony and cooperation
• bring out the best in others
• learn best by doing
• will faithfully and tirelessly carry through the task to completion

In keeping with this theme, I’m perfectly secure in letting the guys on the team who are much more knowledgeable than I run their business. For example, the main camera guy on the team is Dustin. Sharp kid. Studying film at a local college here in the area. He is also frequently on site at film shoots during the week. Am I going to attempt to stifle this guy? No way! I get out of his way and let him do his thing. I’m learning a lot from him.

Also on the team is Dave, the sound guy. Dave has a wealth of experience from the film industry having worked for several of the big name production studios. He also has a software background. He’s critical to the success of the team.

I don’t really know their personality types but I suspect that they are similar to mine. Both of them have a humble, servant spirit and will frequently say something like “hey, you’re in charge” to me when it comes to them seeking my authorization to change something up. Thing is, since November, we have made some really great changes to the way we’ve done things because either Dave or Dustin will suggest it.

For example, we would still be using only one of the Canon XHA1 cameras if it had been up to me. Why? Well, in keeping with my ISFJ tendencies, my motto usually is “if it ain’t broke, don’t mess with it.” Little did I realize how easy it was for us to incorporate the second XHA1 into our production. The equipment was there, we just needed to hook it up!

Still, deep down, I’m still not fully comfortable with being a leader/manager, but I’m getting there. I will say that the guys I work with make it really easy and exciting. I love being part of a creative team.

The Dark Side

Let’s keep it, real shall we? There is a dark side to being an ISFJ:

• the ISFJ has a difficult time saying “no” when asked to do something
• they intensely dislike conflict
• they tend to place other people’s needs over their own
• they have strong feelings of inadequacy
• they can become over-worked and taken for granted
• they can become discouraged and depressed

The good news is that I’m not feeling these things at church. The bad news is that I’m living this in a huge way at my tent-making trade. I suppose this is probably why I was so surprised at the results of the test because it was all spot-on.

Dave and I have a running joke whenever an issue crops up at church. I just tell him that I’m “going to Disneyland.” It’s that thing. You know, when you go to Disneyland as a guest, everything is magical and fun. But when you go to work there, you see the dark side or the under-belly and the magic is gone.

The church–and here I’m speaking of the church at large, not necessarily my church–is full of flawed and broken human beings. I think sometimes people can get discouraged when others because they look at church life through rose-colored glasses. Pastors and parishioners are the same: they are human beings all with frailties and we are all sinners. We have to remember that.

So when we might get down about things at church, I simply remind the guys to “go back to Disneyland.” I don’t think this is a bad thing. It’s all in what you focus on. We have to remind ourselves of why we’re there: it’s for the Lord! And through Him, we can do all things (Philippians 4:13).

What’s your Myers-Briggs personality? How close do you think it matches your true self?

May He Increase!

[This is part of the The Making of a Video Geek Series. Have you seen the other posts yet?]

Welcome to the third installment in this series. So far we talked about the over-night changes and then we looked at that first Sunday service when we managed to stay afloat and swim after being pushed into the deep end.

Of course, as I alluded to in the first post, the filming, webcasting and recording of the service was the easy part for me up to that point. The one part I never did up to that moment was post-production: the editing and then uploading to the KACC Vimeo site.

iMovie

The guy doing the post-production before was using Final Cut to handle everything. Problem is, it was his personal licensed copy which he took with him.

When we record the services, we do a direct import into iMovie. Up to that point, after the recorded version processes, it would get exported into Final Cut. Well, I was told that without Final Cut, I’d have to use iMovie to do everything.

Left: Webcast PC; Right: 27" post-production iMac

In the image above, it’s the iMac on the right that handles all the recording and post-production work. You can actually see the import window up in the middle of the screen.

I’ve worked with iMovie before, but really only in making slide show presentations for family events. Pretty simple stuff but I really enjoyed the creative things you could do. And that was done with iMovie ’05, I believe, that I had installed on my PowerBook G4. The iMovie we are using on the iMac is a little newer: iMovie ’08.

In theory, the post-production for a KACC service is pretty straightforward:

1. We don’t include the music/worship portion because of copyright issues.
2. We need an intro.
3. We need a title slide
4. We need the main body of the message.
5. We need a closing/”contact us” slide.
6. And then the final close out bumper.

We really need a new opening title sequence. Thank God that we have some voice-over talent within the church so between he and one of our other media guys, we managed to create a really nice opening sequence that we use for the webcast as well. So that was pretty easy: just import that sequence as a new import and then load it first into the new Project. Done.

What’s next? Title slide. iMovie makes this super easy. Click and drag it to where you want it. Edit the text. Done!

Then came the hardest part and I had some learning experiences here: importing the main body of the message. Getting the portions I wanted into the new project was easy enough. But I didn’t realize for the first few weeks is cropping and fitting the image. I was cutting off some of the Scripture PowerPoint sections because of image sizes.

Hardware Setup

The video starts with a Canon XHA1.

Canon XHA1

It’s a professional level camera which can shoot in full HD, i.e., 16:9. But in between the camera and the iMac is a budget-model, switching box by NuMark. It’s really a DJ box but for our purposes it works just fine to mix the video signals and get the audio routed. The problem is that it’s not HD so we have to get the video down to 4:3 standard definition image. It’s not ideal, but until God blesses us with the finances to upgrade, it’s what is working for us now.

So back to iMovie . . . what I learned is that in order for the image not to cut off in my final version, I had to use the crop function to get a square image. That allowed the PowerPoint slides to fully display.

Honestly, that first Sunday I was surprised at how quickly I was able to create the final product. I think I was done in about 20-30 minutes. The render and export, of course, took the longest amount of time: about 2-3 hours.

What Does This All Look Like?

So here is an image of my home-away-from my home office.

The Mothership!

The humble, KACC Media arsenal includes (working our way up from the bottom of the picture):

1. NuMark AVM02 Audio/Video Mixer: the brains that handle all the switching of the camera feeds and the PowerPoint slides. The output feeds the iMac and the webcast PC.
2. Alesis Audio Mixer: the only thing this box does for me is allows me to hear the audio via headphones while I edit the video in the iMac.
3. Western Digital External HDs: we have two. One is a 1TB that serves as the iMac’s Time Machine backup. The other is a 500GB that we use to move older files off the iMac’s hard drive.
4. 27″ iMac: I think we got this iMac in early 2010 or so. It has a 1TB hard drive, 4GB RAM and I think a Core i3 processor. Not the speediest anymore but it gets the job done adequately.
5. Webcast PC: This box is homemade from our sound guy. He cracks me up every time he tells me how cheaply he was able to build the box. It runs Windows 7 and it does a terrific job with outputting the webcast via UStream.

The media team was started on a shoestring. In fact, when the team was first formed, there wasn’t even the nice booth we had built out. The guys who started it used to set up and tear-down all this equipment every night and had it all on the balcony on a table!

There is a lot of room for growth, and if God wills it so, maybe we’ll get there and upgrade to a Tricaster like the big boys. For now, we will keep plugging along and using the tools God has given us to get His Word out to the entire world! That is what excites me.

Next time I’d actually like to share some of the non-tech things I’ve learned about myself and working with others!

[This is part of the The Making of a Video Geek Series. Have you seen the other posts yet?]

May He Increase!

Last time I talked about how, with one phone call, I was told I was leading a media ministry at Knott Avenue Christian Church.

Up until that point, my experience with video consisted of:

• point-and-shoot photography with my Canon Rebel or my iPhone
• shooting video with my iPhone or my little, old Canon handheld video camera
• using the Canon XHA1 for the broadcast at church (on full auto, mind you)
• creating slideshows in iMovie, never really editing video

Again, I wasn’t concerned with the live UStream webcast or even the recording of the church’s service into the iMac via iMovie, I had that down. That was easy. No, I was panicking over how to edit the recorded video and get the final product rendered and uploaded to our Vimeo channel. My buddy who was doing it before was using Final Cut Pro to do all the post-production work. The problem is that the copy he was using was his license. He removed it from the iMac when he left so that left me to do all the work using an older version of iMovie.

So What Happened On That First Sunday?

I arrived at church early that Sunday morning to make sure I had plenty of time to have all my bases covered.

Oh, I should take a step back first, lest you think I was doing this all alone that Sunday. The guy that used to cover me on the weekends I was off offered to come and help me by running the camera whist I was in the video booth doing the switching and the broadcasting. That was a huge relief and I give all thanks and glory to God to raising up such wonderful servants like him who have helped me during this journey.

We got everything setup and in place and service started and ran without a hitch, praise God.

But as I sat there alone in the video booth and singing along with the worship band, I had this feeling of being utterly alone to carry the burden of the video ministry. Right at that moment–while worship was still going on–our Senior Pastor, Shane Womack, came up to the video booth to see how I was doing. I had just started to choke up as he walked in because I knew at that moment that God Himself sent him up there to encourage me.

Then another one of our pastors came up, Mike Carman, who leads our Cross-Cultural Ministry and is effectively, my boss. He, too, encouraged me and I couldn’t help but feel that God was indeed by my side and leading me down these uncharted waters.

And so, when service was over, we took everything down as we normally do and put it all away. Then I sat down in front of the iMac, took a deep breath, and started trying to figure out how to create the final, edited version of that Sunday’s service.

That, my friends, I will share with you next time!

What about you? Have you ever faced having to learn something new in order to produce something of vital importance to so very many people?

[This is part of the The Making of a Video Geek Series. Have you seen the other posts yet?]

May He Increase!

At the end of 2009, I caught an announcement in my church’s bulletin for a “Geek Squad” meeting. I had been out of work at this point for about 3-4 months and was feeling pretty low about my prospects at the time.

I didn’t know it then, and I certainly couldn’t have seen it, but God had been using 2009 to lay a foundation. May He Increase was actually launched in January 2009. I had blogged a little a few years previously, but it wasn’t until January 2009 that I made the decision to take it a little more seriously. I never could have known that the decision I made to start blogging here and to start using social media would be preparing me for the plan and road God has led me down since that time.

Changes

When I started on the Knott Avenue Christian Church’s (KACC) Media Team, I initially signed up to manage the church’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. I supported those for a while and then I was asked to help out with the live webcast. In the beginning, my support for the webcast was supposed to be strictly as backup, maybe once a month. Before I knew it, I was actually behind the camera or in the video booth every weekend.

Then, late last year, the leadership of the Media Team changed overnight. It was a difficult time for me for a variety of reasons, and not just with regard to the team itself. My tent-making trade was becoming increasingly more difficult and busy. So with a single phone call, I found myself virtually alone to run the video ministry. I didn’t know what God was up to, and I’d be dishonest if I didn’t say that I was really worried and filled with anxiety.

The biggest challenge I faced was not how I was going to run the camera and switching equipment in the booth at the same time. The biggest unknown factor for me was how I was going to edit the recorded video and get it loaded to Vimeo. I understood how to do everything else, except for the post-production. In my mind, this was the most critical piece and I was virtually clueless how to do it. It was either Tuesday or Wednesday at this point and I needed to figure it all out by Sunday morning.

Ever find yourself in a “put-up-or-shut-up” situation from one moment to the next?

Next time . . . the rest of the story!

[This is part of the The Making of a Video Geek Series. Have you seen the other posts yet?]

May He Increase!

1. In this first post, I talk a little about what was going on in my life when I first responded to the call to join the KACC “Geek Squad.“
2. A little after two years, I found myself at a huge cross-roads: I was suddenly thrust into the leadership role and just had to jump in with both feet!
3. In the third installment, we talk a little more tech and look at the nuts-and-bolts of the KACC Media Team.
4. The fourth installment is less on the technical aspects and more on the human factor of leading a team.

You can start the whole series here.