Blog – Page 2 – Motion Worship – Video Loops, Countdowns, & Moving Backgrounds for the Christian Church

Hospitality at the Heart: A Pep Talk for Tech Directors

I once worked with a tech director who was supremely talented and could solve any fix in the nick of time. It was actually quite impressive. The problem? All of these saves could have been preventable with a little bit of forethought. However, this director thrived on the attention he received for “saving the day” and consistently failed to put in the preparation necessary to avoid issues. Ins...

Top 4 Mistakes of Church Tech Directors

“Church Tech Director” is a pretty high-intensity position. Not many congregation members see you since you’re not on stage like the worship pastor and lead pastor, but the truth is that none of it could happen without you. Depending on your church staff and organizational structure, you may be helping with a number of things – lyrics, designing slides, running the computer, running lig...

Buying Church Media Assets: How to Convince “The Boss”

Aside from a few larger churches where everyone has a departmental budget, most church media teams need to convince their pastor to purchase any piece of gear or new media assets. If you’ve been left with that role, you know the anxiety that comes before “the pitch.” He’s going to ask why you need it, how much it costs, probably stall for a second, and then ask you why you don’t consi...

5 Tips for Making the Most of Your Church Tech Budget

I’m convinced that nobody - absolutely nobody - would be capable of spending a six or seven-figure budget as fast as a church tech director. While I joke, the truth is that everything in that world is expensive, and there is always a better version of whatever it is you’re buying. Cameras, computers, light boards, lights, sound boards, stage designs, audio systems, music gear, software… U...

Best Places to Find Youth Ministry Countdown Videos

Finding church media can be really difficult – especially when you’re looking for quality stuff on a low budget. It seems like there’s a million different companies offering countdowns, motion backgrounds, and mini-movies, and it’s hard to know which one is right to go with. Some services are hundreds of dollars per year, while you can find free media in other places – but it all varies ...

3 Tips to Improve Your Church Screen Media in Youth Group

It seems that the youth room is often the most neglected when it comes to quality gear, sound systems, and stage setup. Obviously, most churches don’t have an infinite budget to spend on every single room in the building, so most attention is put towards enhancing the main worship center. However, improving the atmosphere, appearance, and experience in a room doesn’t need to cost a ton of mone...

5 Tips for Being Efficient at Church Media Production

There are so many moving parts in church media production. As a media director, you’re constantly doing things on the fly – changing song setlists, replacing lyrics, reordering songs, switching backgrounds out, importing and adjusting sermon notes, etc. You know the story. That’s why it’s so incredibly important to have a good grasp on ways you can make your work more efficient. The quicke...

3 Ways to Make Sermon Slides Look Better

Accompanying a sermon with visuals helps to clarify and drive home the message exponentially. That’s what sermon slides are for. It’s meant to reinforce the message and give an easy-to-digest summary of the main points of the sermon. But sermon slides aren’t always helpful. In fact, in many instances they can detract from the message. Bad design, poor font choice, improperly sized text, t...

Healthy Church Tech Director to Worship Pastor Communication Tips

Communication is everything in ministry. Good communication practices can help a ministry to operate ats fullest potential, while poor communication (or a complete lack of communication altogether) can cause a ministry to crumble. The same is absolutely true for worship ministries. More specifically, the communication practices between a tech director/media director and the worship pastor are s...

How to Plan Ahead as a Church Tech Director

You’re the first one to band rehearsal and often the last one to leave. You may frequently be in charge of setup and teardown in addition to all the work you have to do during rehearsal and on Sunday morning for all services. Being a church tech director is a lot of work. We understand! Most church tech directors will agree that the most valuable thing to them is “time”. You need time ...

Where to Find Great Affordable Church Media

The modern church relies heavily on media for worship music, lyric and sermon slides, sermon videos, livestreams, and social media. The reason is simple - media can aid in communicating a message clearly. Audio and visuals accompany messages to make them “stick” with people. Whether it’s premade and purchased videos and mini-movies, or separate media components for in-house video producti...

Church Media Directors: Where to Get Design Feedback

Church media and tech directors are certainly never short of stage design inspiration. Between various Facebook groups, referencing other church’s livestreams, finding Instagram posts, and looking at church stage design Pinterest pins, chances are you have more ideas than you even know what to do with. But when it comes to design feedback, most church tech directors don’t know where to get ...

Streaming Motion Worship Media

Dear Churches & Members, In recent years, livestreaming, social media, and online services have become key platforms for churches around the world. We recognize this new paradigm and want to support all of you as you share the love of Christ. We encourage you to utilize our media in your online services. No extra charge. Regardless of how you broadcast your services, we don't want to put up ...

4 Ways to Livestream Your Church Services

This is certainly a difficult time for many churches. The coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak is forcing many churches to keep their doors closed until the pandemic is calmed, but amidst the chaos, we still hold a responsibility as believers to continue sharing the good news of Christ and assuring the world that God is in control. Unfortunately, that’s difficult to do if your church doesn’t know h...

Media Production: Getting Sermon Notes and Lyrics on Time

Everyone has a different responsibility at church, and the general philosophy is that “as long as I get my work done when I need it done, Sunday will go fine.” And most the time, that’s kind of a true statement. In a sense, the thought is that it doesn’t matter if you practice the songs 2 weeks before rehearsal or 2 hours before rehearsal – as long as you know them by the rehearsal or Su...

Part-Time Church Tech Directors: Organization Tips

Church tech directors carry a ton of responsibility. Any time someone has tech related issues or questions, the ability to get it fixed and keep moving all hinges on the expertise and involvement of the church director and/or tech team. But having that much responsibility comes with an unfortunate caveat – you have to keep it all organized. Whether it be lights, worship backgrounds, worship l...

Using Powerpoint with Video Backgrounds

In this tutorial, Chris talks about the challenges and pitfalls of trying to use motion backgrounds across multiple slides in PowerPoint. Although PowerPoint is great for placing text on video for a single slide, problems occur when trying to loop a video and change the text. Instead, we recommend worship presentation software such as the those listed on our homepage.

How to Shorten a Countdown Video

This is a quick tip on how to make a worship countdown video shorter, e.g. taking a 5 or 10 minute countdown and bringing the length down to 3 minutes or 1 minute. It involves starting the video later, or setting the "in" point of the video to a later time This can be done using just about any worship presentation software, but for demonstration purposes I used Media Shout (MediaShout) and...

Placing Text on Motion Backgrounds

This is a brief tutorial on placing text over video in worship presentation software. These techniques can be used in most any software (except Powerpoint), but for demonstration purposes I used MediaShout (Media Shout). I cover ways to make text show up clearly on most backgrounds, and how to position text so that it compliments art and imagery instead of fighting for attention. I also sho...