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God in HD

Aug 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Cynthia Wisehart

Worship media adopts new production pipelines and new distribution channels.

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For a complete list of the equipment used at The Crystal Cathedral, click here.

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As church leaders understand the expanding role of AV in their ministries, they accumulate a list of skills from event producer to ENG newsgather to niche broadcaster to content distributor — even stock footage house. With the runaway popularity of worship media, churches rapidly face questions that are common within the secular broadcast industry, corporations, schools, and all who deploy their message through video to a demanding constituency.

And, like the secular video industry, churches and other worship entities are accumulating video — potentially valuable video — at an enormous rate. Not only must they understand how to capture, edit, and output it all, they must learn how to design, convert, track, and manage their assets for potential reuse and/or resale.

For those who are blessed with large budgets, this proliferation presents opportunities, but it is also good news for smaller ministries who can begin to gain access to high-quality AV elements without having to produce them. For those who do produce content, the distribution options — even for small, niche messaging — are on the rise via various broadband outlets.

As costs for SD and HD continue to converge, the pace of HD adoption in worship is gradually increasing both for live, broadcast-style production and for production of packaged content for broadcast and/or DVD distribution. In many ways, HD is intertwined with the new opportunities. Not only does it provide more visual impact; in many cases, it also supports a multi-product, multi-platform distribution model. Assets that are acquired in the highest possible resolution are often the most futureproof and flexible to repurpose and resell, even if they are initially downconverted for standard-def media.

These new production and distribution models also come with significant challenges — both technically and from a business standpoint. Here's a look at two recent examples as established worship producers Crystal Cathedral Ministries and the Worship Network expand their missions, workflow, and product line through HD.

An analog linear workflow goes tapeless

One of the oldest and best known producers of worship content is Los Angeles' Crystal Cathedral, whose unique Christmas and Easter extravaganzas have grown to incorporate ever more sophisticated AV, including a major upgrade to the presentation and show control systems last year. Crystal Cathedral's weekly Sunday service is carried on the largest of the religious networks, Trinity Broadcasting. In addition to installing millions of dollars of digital AV presentation gear, Crystal Cathedral has just completed a unique tapeless HD production workflow with the help of San Diego-based integrator TV Magic.

Pat Thompson, VP of operations for TV Magic, explains that the starting point was a 1980s-style, analog, multi-camera, linear Beta SP pipeline — a traditional broadcast workflow with which the Crystal Cathedral worship producers were comfortable. So comfortable that they did not want to mess with adopting digital tape and a new workflow. They charged TV Magic with making a tapeless nonlinear system feel just like a linear tape system, while incorporating as much of their legacy system as possible.

That's how the Crystal Cathedral leapfrogged more than two decades of production progress in a single 18-month bound. As we go to press, the team is ready to throw the final switch on its old SD system and put an unusual Thomson/Avid HD infrastructure to work. (For a full equipment list, click here)

The most remarkable part of the system is the use of seven Avid HD Adrenaline systems (running on HP xw8200 workstations) as essentially “universal tapeless decks,” as Thompson describes it. The church planned for nine camera positions; right now, it's using five Thomson LDK 4000 single-format HD cameras, plus ISO and a switched feed — all recorded directly into one of the Adrenalines. An Avid Unity network serves as a backbone for postproduction, which starts first thing every Monday morning as the small Crystal Cathedral team begins preparing the DVCPRO HD 100 deliverables for Trinity Broadcasting.

“We eliminated the time and manpower associated with tape ingest,” Thompson points out, adding that the team also took advantage of Adrenaline's ADAT optical interface for audio. “[This is] the first time I think anyone's actually used that capability of the system,” he says.

Though TV Magic custom-designed the Crystal Cathedral pipeline to meet the client's specific requirements, TV Magic President/CEO Stephen D. Rosen says this installation is part of a growing trend that is expanding his traditional broadcast integration business to ministries, education, and government institutions. In the process, the systems are changing as much as the customers. “You're starting to look at a very serious convergence of broadcast and IT,” he says. As a result, he is hiring for both skills and cultivating a collaborative team approach.

“Many of the established players need to move away from workflows that are no longer viable and are costly to maintain, and they have to keep up with FCC mandates and business realities,” Rosen says. “At the same time, they have new opportunities to expand their reach and message if they use the transition to take advantage of things like broadband, cellular casting, and video on demand. It's an exciting time for them — and for us — because in many cases, it's just not cost-effective for businesses to make the transition by themselves.”

Content: creation

But what of the small church that cannot afford a broadcast studio and production team? Enter The Worship Network, which can help bring gorgeous high-resolution video imagery to a single-sanctuary church near you. Through two new marketing and distribution agreements, the network is offering segments of AV content that can be purchased and adapted to various settings and productions.

This is just part of an ambitious new initiative to grow new opportunities for the network across four main media: television/broadcast; worship resources/products; internet/emerging technology; and events. President Bruce Koblish, who joined the network in 2004, is tackling product development and branding in forward-thinking ways.

Founded in 1992 by Lowell “Bud” Paxson, The Worship Network began as a provider of distinctive overnight programming for PAX-TV (now NBC's ION). The meditative creation-oriented nature footage combined with music, scripture, and other inspirational prose — is still a core part of The Worship Network's programming as it's grown to reach millions of households in more than 50 countries.

In 2005, an amended carriage agreement with ION, which established The Worship Channel as a 24/7 digital network, positioned the network for growth as analog television goes dark on February 17, 2009. Last month, the network moved into new corporate offices near Nashville, Tenn., where Koblish will continue to pursue a focused growth strategy across multiple media. “Our mission statement did not limit us to television,” he says.

Koblish understood audio/DVD products from his years in the music industry, but he also recognized other distribution possibilities — some unique to worship, some part of the broadband revolution. He started looking at potential partnerships for distribution, both directly to the consumer and through retail, as well as for streaming. New products would need to include a branding opportunity for the network, a new revenue stream, and the acquisition of synch rights for on-air use whenever possible.

For example, through a partnership with Lifeway, the network began releasing what it calls Transitions content. Churches can play the pre-edited 15-minutes packages of music and images as people enter and leave the church. Transitions is co-branded with Lifeway; the network receives advances and royalties on the product sales, and Lifeway is responsible for securing synch rights whenever possible.

“The business model is effective for us and our partner because we now can pre-produce pieces of content that we can later build into our core broadcast programming, which helps offset some of our internal production costs,” Koblish explains. “The return to Lifeway is that this gives exposure and creates a future synergy between Lifeway and The Worship Network that can have longer-term value. We are both not-for-profit organizations/ministries, so it is easy to make our bottom line mission-driven rather than profits-driven. Profits may be realized, but they are re-distributed back into the organization to help expand and serve our core mission.”

The Worship Network also has new line of DVDs called Visual Tracks as a partnership with Word Entertainment, a leader in providing music tracks for singers to use in live performances in churches and coffee houses. “It seemed there could be a market for not only providing the music track but also full video backup. Again, The Worship Network is strongly branded with this product and receiving other integrated benefits, while Word is responsible for all marketing and distribution of the product, as well as providing us with the musical tracks.”

For its nascent Internet strategy, the network leveraged its existing satellite feed through a streaming supplier. In October, the network will launch a subscription-based service to make its enormous library of distinctive nature images available to churches worldwide.

Last year, the network committed to shooting only in HD and film to ensure the future value and flexibility of the footage, says Tim Brown, VP of programming. A weeklong shoot in the Colorado Rockies gave Brown and fellow cinematographer Tim Rasmussen, director of production, a chance to do side-by-side experiments with their trusty Vietnam-era Cinema Products CP16 Super 16 camera with Kodak Vision2 stocks — the footage from which they later converted to HD — and Panasonic's VariCam HD camera. Brown says he had loved both the Panasonic AJ-SDX900 and VariCam for SD, but approached the HD shoot with some trepidation — especially given the bright, snowy conditions.

“I wondered if the HD would blow out, but we were really impressed with the camera. When we saw the footage, it was pretty hard to pick out the film from the HD, and it is so much easier to shoot video. When you're standing waist-deep in snow at 6 degrees, it's tough to change a magazine every 10 minutes.” Brown expects to use the VariCam HD with increasing frequency, both to shoot The Worship Network's signature nature footage, as well as for the newer story-driven projects that he is actively looking to develop either inhouse or through partnerships.

“We are a mission-driven ministry organization and that will never change,” concludes Koblish. “But the tools, the methods, and the platforms are all changing; we are positioning ourselves to take advantage of all of these areas. We are doing it through a ‘regionalization’ philosophy, which says that we want to give greater exposure to regional music, video, art, and worship styles without changing them so everything looks/sounds alike. We believe people are increasingly interested in the undiscovered, the unique, and the local qualities from around the U.S. and the world. Through this expanded vision and through a networked way of looking at content development, we believe we continue to grow in all of these areas and have an increasing impact on people's lives.”

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More Worship Resources

iworshipnow.com

Integrity's iWorship site offers the “total worship experience” for houses of worship through its DVDs, CDs, and sheet music selection, with one million units sold thus far. The iWorship DVDs combine sight and sound for an interactive multimedia dimension, allowing users to use split tracks, click audio, and lyric and theme options for a customized live worship set. Video and audio previews are also available for iWorship products.

worshiptogether.com

Operated by EMI Christian Music Group, the Worship Together network creates a sense of community amongst users with online discussion boards, weekly newsletters, and access to sheet music with a free membership. Amongst its media offerings, Worship Together's “Here I Am To Worship” DVD features 10 popular worship songs; the disc can be played directly from a DVD player or via MediaShout V2.5 presentation software for a complete media-for-ministry console with lyrics accompanied by motion backgrounds, scripture passages, message points, announcements, DVD, MPEG, or QuickTime video and audio.

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.