Technical Arts

Video Directing 101: Telling a Story

~ Mike Schwiebert ~ 1 Comment

VideoDirecting101

The goal of video directing is to tell a story. We do that by capturing an event, not creating an event (although that idea has a place). Part of telling a good story is telling the whole story. Therefore, it stands to reason that if you are going to be an effective story teller, you must learn to position your cameras to properly capture the event.

It does not matter how fluid your pacing is or how effectively your team communicates, if you don’t have your cameras positioned properly you will miss key elements of the program and fail to communicate the whole story with your audience. This is very important and must be carefully considered. In this post we’ll look at the foundation–telling a story–in order to properly consider good camera placement.

The focus of this post will be on directing a church service, but I believe the principles can be applied to any live event.

Keep thinking! Continue reading.

Video Directing 101: Intercom Communication

~ Mike Schwiebert ~ 4 Comments

VideoDirecting101

As with any leadership position, one of the most important aspects of video directing is communication. A director’s first audience is his support personnel and camera ops, and then the world. Simply stated, without clear, consistent and easily understood communication, the video director will not be able to direct.

Here are some ideas for effective communication over intercom (or headsets). Once again, these ideas are geared towards the Church market, but are applicable in other situations as well.

Keep thinking! Continue reading.

An Easter Evaluation

~ Mike Schwiebert ~ 1 Comment

Oak Tree on snowy Fields at Sunset

Sometimes my wife, Rose, and I have intense discussions about how awesome of a husband I am. Well, actually, that’s usually my side of the argument. Her side can sound a little different. I am learning that I don’t get to decide how good I am doing, she does. Her side usually includes challenging my schedule and words like “never at home” seem to often get repeated. Submitting to that evaluation can be tough. It makes me feel exposed and vulnerable.

In the beginning of The Book of Revelation, Jesus is evaluating His bride. If I stood before Jesus and He recognized my hard work, tenacity, support and fortitude; I’d feel pretty good. I put a high premium on hard work and finishing tasks. The Church at Ephesus had all these positives, but Jesus commanded them to repent. Why?
Although they were busy, they stopped loving.

Keep thinking! Continue reading.

No. No. NO! A Ministry Recruitment Video

~ Mike Schwiebert ~ Leave a comment

For those of us who work on church video teams, we are sometimes tasked with creating recruitment videos. These are not necessarily fun videos to create. Usually, any suggestion from the requesting department involves the dreaded testimonies-in-front-of-black-curtain ploy. Nothing saps the life out of me quicker. No creativity. No thought. No story! Just 1 hour of footage to pare down to 90 seconds. Good luck. Make it great.
Just the thought makes me want to climb down a deep hole and hide.

Lucky for me, I work with some great children’s pastors. For their video, we discussed needs in the department (always a good place to start) and brainstormed some ideas. Things were looking up.

Then I ran across the awesome short film Voice Over by Martin Rosette.

VOICE OVER (English subtitles) from Kamel Films on Vimeo.

We loved the idea of changing direction within the voice over and making the promo overly dramatic.
I wrote a script. They approved it, and we were off. Here it is.

Children’s Ministry Promo 2013 from MikeSchwiebert on Vimeo.

We decided to shoot the promo on Sunday, after Church, when Cali and her family were already here (her dad, Pastor Jeff, is one of those children’s pastors I was bragging on earlier).
Tim Vaughn of 7aMedia in Charlotte, NC came out and grabbed some b-roll during service and then shot and edited the promo

A couple takeaways for good script layout for your voice over talent:

  • Give direction to the voice over talent that includes speed, style, and tone. Use words like: hard sell, soft sell, conversational, energetic, warm, etc.
  • Always designate the timing of the read. Most scripts are not open-ended, but even so, I like to give the talent an idea of what I have in mind.
  • Spell out numbers for easier pronunciation. For example, if you write 2013, does the talent say two thousand thirteen or twenty thirteen?
  • Provide a pronunciation guide for names. Just because we grew up with Bible stories, does not mean the talent will know how to pronounce Onesimus. Get it right the first time–provide a guide.
  • 12 pt Courier is an industry standard for screenplays. It is used partly because it creates an easy rule of thumb for figuring out minutes per page. I personally like Courier Prime a font created by John August.
  • When in doubt, over communicate. I have never had a voice over talent get upset because I gave too much direction.

I thought it might be helpful to download the script in Word format if you would like: Children’s MinistryPromo2013.

Since I was not going to be shooting or editing this one, I added more detail than I normally would to the shot sheet.
I use the free program Celtx for my script creation. After creating a script, it’s very easy to adjust to additional layouts. Very nice.
Here it is: ChildrenMinistry_A-V Script.

Hopefully this provides inspiration for a creative recruitment promo.
I’m really pleased with how this one came out.