General thoughts and notes in no particular order:

Keep a close eye on the media big picture regarding: worship song support, series promotion trailers, transition videos, featured videos and blended media (music with video, pre-records and click track). Advance media will necessitate someone developing animation skills or finding someone who has them.

Look at these: youversion.com (a resource that relates things like U-Tube videos to the scriptures – yammer.com (like Twitter for groups) – churchmetrics.com (new site that tracks demographic stats) – churchtechtalk.com (free stuff)

All we do must be “DNA” driven – individually and as a church. Who we are drives what we do.

Notes from “Media Best Practices” – Jeff Peterson – Production and Media Director at Granger

Their credo – “To do the best we can with what we have in the time we have” – this way you can always look back at what you’ve done and know you’ve done your best (cool – kinda sounds like “to whom much is given much is required”)

1 – Start with something simple that you can finish and make good
2 – Build a team of passionate people (passionate for what the task is) and give them the skills they need. Place them in settings where the can succeed.
3 – Shorter is better – sometimes you have to edit out your favorite part to make the total piece great.
4 – Never use unflattering, self-serving or practical joke type stuff
5 – Bad video is better than bad audio – grainy video can look “on purpose” for example, but distorted speech, ugh!
6 – Be prepared for you shoot – have a checklist prior to a shoot
7 – Pre produce – story boarding is good (you don’t even have to be able to draw well) this helps with both the shoot and the edit processes.
8 – Deliver the goods – get it done on time – lead time helps with this
9 – Always have one director – It’s okay for a given director to have his or her own style or fingerprint on a video piece.

Some additional cool quotes and concepts from the conference:

The difference between where you are and where God wants you is the pain you are unwilling to endure.

Be willing to endure the process in order to see God work and watch something happen through you.

Don’t under challenge volunteers

Don’t despise the day of small beginnings

Process is everything. Don’t run from it!

Leverage technology, image and story to bring people to Christ so that there is an immediate result.

“Brand” can be defined as “the after taste left by an emotional experience”.

This technique is called playing to the primary and secondary emotions.

If you watch the opening battle scene in the movie Gladiator you see examples of both. The battle scene starts out with the music doing what you would expect it to do: being aggressive and very much “in tune” with what you are seeing on the screen. Somewhere in the scene the music transitions into a very lush, large and noble sounding accompaniment to what you are viewing.

The first music you hear is playing to the primary emotion : that is, it enhances the battle taking place in a way that you would expect while watching people brutally trying to kill each other.

The second music you hear is playing to the secondary emotion : it is highlighting more of the passion and motive driving the Romans to fight their Germanic counterparts. The music evokes feelings of nobility and the motive of fighting for an entire culture that is worth defending to the death if need be.

When used effectively these two techniques can be very powerful tools in the hands of the composer.

Reality: With today’s technology you would be surprised at how cost effective custom music can be. Much of today’s music is created “in the box” and/or by one composer using a combination of virtual compositional tools in the computer coupled with live instruments and voices in a real studio environment. This is what happens in the studio of Audio Influence. Naturally, the cost increases as you add hired studio musicians and whether you buy all the rights to a piece of music or simply license a piece for use in a given geographic region. But even given the costs of studio musician’s and licensing fees, custom music still is far less expensive than it used to be. Email Dave at dave@audioinfluence.com for more information.

Myth: “Custom music takes too long”

Reality: Actually, with clear input from the client during a creative information gathering session meeting or via the telephone, the music can be turned around pretty quickly. Call or email Dave for more information.