Imagine turning on the TV or opening your favorite social media app to browse through various programs or posts. You come across one of your favorite talk shows, speakers, music groups, pastors, or comedians. The stunning visuals and captivating audio mesmerize you. You become so engrossed that time slips away unnoticed. You're immersed in a well-produced, well-funded production. This thought crosses your mind: If only I had “that” [sound system, lighting rig, speaker rack, or another high-tech item], I could reach the world just like they do!
You begin an online quest to acquire the necessary equipment for your organization. However, you quickly encounter budget constraints, which limit your options. To stay within your budget, you opt for the most affordable choices, compromising quality for cost. This approach leads to investing in cheaper items rather than a few high-quality ones, hoping to upgrade in the future when funds allow. For now, your goal is to equip your church with new, budget-friendly gear, aspiring to emulate the polished look and sound of productions you admire on TV and online.
Once your new, “budget-friendly” equipment is installed, the results disappoint and fall short of your expectations. This leaves you feeling even more defeated and frustrated. Does this scenario sound familiar?
Instead of seeking out expert insight, they listen to friends, people on staff, YouTube videos, or they try to emulate whatever social media posts are popular. We call that “keeping up with the Joneses.” The Joneses represent anyone perceived as trendy or successful, whose style many try to copy.
Online, there’s no shortage of videos with poor sound quality and inadequate lighting. Is this the reputation you want for your church? Resist the temptation to release a mediocre piece just for the sake of appearing active. If your goal is genuinely to reach people, it's crucial to carefully consider how to create the most impactful experience for your audience. Reflect on the desired outcome and the reactions you want to evoke in your environment. The key question is: What vision do you have for the impact you want to make on those attending your services?
Let’s unpack the impact of your actions a little more. Consider whether they align with your core message and the community you aim to build. A relevant example is the tuning fork experiment, easily found online. In this experiment, a tuning fork with a light ball on a string is clamped in place. The ball touches one of the fork's prongs, allowing observers to see if the fork vibrates. A scientist places another tuning fork with a different frequency next to the clamped one. When this fork is struck, there's no effect on the clamped fork or the ball. However, when a tuning fork with the same frequency as the clamped one is struck, the clamped fork and the ball vibrate and move. This demonstrates how energy from the resonating tuning fork affects the other.
This concept applies to crafting experiences that resonate with your audience. It's about creating something people can connect with and feel activated by. This process begins with intent. From intent, you initiate action, and from action, you generate a reaction.
Many church leaders overlook the importance of viewing their church service videos and the content produced by their social media teams. This neglect can adversely affect the church's global mission. Conversely, the most effective church leaders pay close attention to the videos created for social media, YouTube, and other platforms. They often don't feel satisfied until they witness the kind of reaction they anticipate from viewers. Indeed, prioritizing quality demands time, creativity, vision, and effective communication to convey your passion for outreach. Having a team that shares and effectively presents this vision is crucial. If your team doesn't resonate with this vision and fails to deliver experiences you would appreciate, the issue extends beyond technical aspects.
If you cannot resource one of the items on your list, then you plan to work with the current piece of equipment until resources are raised to purchase that item. Then, when the resources are available, you deploy the next step. This sounds simple and is in theory, but it can be complicated to make happen in your very real-world context. In large part, it means saying “No” to something, maybe many things, for right now. It means you focus on only one or two things until you get them into really good shape. These one or two elements are most important, and you do not take your focus off those things until they align with the vision. Then, you pick the next one or two things to work on.
Church leaders often attempt to accomplish too much too quickly. While some succeed, many fail because they overextend themselves. One strategy is to construct a foundation for the entirety of the building, but build in phases where the central meeting space and lobby are built and finished first. This would leave some parts of the building’s foundation exposed with a central structure built and finished out for the most pressing meeting needs. This approach allows you to concentrate on building the main part of the facility exactly the way you want it and that it needs to be, ensuring quality over quantity.
Alternatively, you could build the entire structure but leave some rooms unfinished. This way, you can allocate your resources effectively to the areas you can develop fully, creating them exactly as envisioned. Adopting a phased approach gives you time to acquire or allocate the necessary resources for the next stage of your vision. As people experience the positive and resonant atmosphere of your church, they might be more inclined to support its growth.
Understanding the Real Costs of Strategic Production Planning
Earlier, we mentioned real costs. What are real costs? They are those things that aren’t covered in a budget. Real costs are the time, knowledge, equipment, labor, creativity, and square feet of space needed to bring your expertly engineered vision to life.
Start with defining the connection you want to create with attendees and how you would like people to participate in the space. Consider what they will respond to, and create a decision tree that helps you map out and decide what is important. This starts with making an intentional plan and figuring out which spaces you should put your resources toward. A good team who can come together in the same room and make decisions is an important key to a successful plan. You must have a consensus and a leader in attendance at these meetings who can make final decisions.
Once you’ve taken the vision and defined the most important parameters, you’ve started creating the framework for executing your vision. Then, as the decision tree gets more granular, the next steps can be taken with smaller groups of staff in more specialized, relevant roles. Remember that these meetings still need to involve a leader who has the authority to make decisions — someone who will own the decision. Your plan won’t work without involving a designated person with the authority to make choices at the highest level.
When you take the time to create a decision tree, you will find that it works on many levels with many things — from deciding if your church wants only to have a performance space, deciding if you need offices, figuring out what classrooms are needed, and the list goes on. The choices you’re making with the decision tree need to be resourced, and you must remain committed to choosing one thing at a time and doing that one thing well before moving to the next thing on your list.
On new construction projects or renovation projects, architects are typically involved in the overall plan. It’s very important that you and your production team be involved as closely to the start of the project as possible. When an architect isn’t involved, as might be the case when replacing or relocating equipment, it’s imperative to walk through the decision tree to make sure that you can make the correct investment based on your vision for the future.
The Psychological and Physiological Impact of Production Planning
One of the most valuable things you can do to improve your AVL is to research and discover how it impacts people psychologically and physiologically. There are real studies that can help you make better decisions for the execution of your vision. If you discount some of the research findings as irrelevant mumbo-jumbo, you could make mistakes and cut branches from your decision tree that negatively affect the experience you desire for your attendees. This goes back to that vision of reaction we talked about previously. Through audio, video, lighting, and acoustics, you can help guide people’s reactions. This is done all the time, in any live or recorded performance, in shopping malls, and even on social media platforms. This method of evoking a desired response from an attendee or participant is happening all around us daily — there is a whole industry built on it.
Look at places like Disney, playhouses, movie theaters, concert venues, etc. All these places use every ounce of creativity to create a reaction. You might be thinking: Well, that’s entertainment, not what we are about! Our team of experienced engineers would disagree wholeheartedly. Yes, you aim to communicate a message and inspire your attendees not entertain them. However, communicating in a way that appeals to their senses is one of the best ways to ensure your message takes hold in your attendees’ hearts and minds.
Let’s look at some examples that are the ancient equivalent to some modern-day venues. First, consider Solomon’s temple. Its entire design created awe-inspiring reactions. Second, the Sistine Chapel tells a story on its walls through pictures. And finally, look at the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, a beautiful facility that speaks inside and out. The people responsible for creating these spaces knew what they were doing and were focused on creating spaces that evoked the reactions they wanted their attendees to have.
In our modern world, we tend to think this is new, but really, it’s not. Let’s look at some parallels. Art is storytelling using different mediums to communicate, making ideas come to life, and inspiring responses. If you think haze machines and light shows are new, just think of the hazer as incense burning and wafting around while the sun shines through the stained-glass creating rays of colored light. Those light beams, when seen through clouds of incense, create movements of diffracted light and shadow that dance in the room. Now, think about being in this atmosphere as you listen to the words of a prayer while looking up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
The modern version of this is listening to U2 while looking at the inside of the Vegas Sphere, which is the new version of those awe-inspiring spaces of old. We’re not saying that you need to build any of these things but think about why these places have such an impact. And then think about what impact you want your spaces to have — and do it well.
For a simple, pared-down example, look up Pretty Place Chapel in South Carolina. This simple space was planned and executed with great intent, using nature to speak and create an unforgettable impact on anyone who visits.
With the right creative ideas, you could have something like Pretty Place Chapel in the middle of a city using technology. Instead of traditional windows and skylights, you could use screens framed to look like windows out into nature. Use imagery that transports people out of the mundane into another time and place, figuratively, to provide a moment of impact. Think of screens on the ceiling that could act like windows to the stars. Or think of the imagery on a wall as stained glass or a painting like in a chapel — or just a window to someplace else. Imagine being able to adjust elements of the room to change acoustics so that when the attendees are singing, it sounds like they are in a cathedral, and when the pastor speaks, it sounds like a small, intimate space.
Effective Production Leads Attendees Through an Experience
Think innovatively about AVL production regarding leadership and how it uses contrast to guide people through an experience. When AVL is utilized effectively, it aids in maintaining focus and minimizing distractions. Consider the adage, "A picture is worth a thousand words." Now, imagine the value of a video, with its 30 to 60 frames per second. Audio and acoustics play a pivotal role in communication. Grasping these concepts distinguishes the top 10% of tech teams, whether in studios, theaters, or churches, from the rest.
Many leaders lack the time or interest to delve into these topics or understand the basics that could enhance their decision-making. However, leaders who invest time in researching and learning about their craft and who apply this knowledge truly make a difference. They are the ones who ignite passion and progress. These leaders leverage all available resources and strive to comprehend these concepts, guiding their teams toward a clear vision.
Using a Decision Tree to Identify Production Priorities
When you create your decision tree, think of it as a custom set of questions you’ll ask of everyone involved in planning. For each question asked, have everyone rate the level of importance the question has in light of the goals and vision of the organization. Then, take the time to talk through the ratings together, coming up with a consensus as to the level of importance for each factor within the plan.
For example, how important is: Connection from the stage to the audience, and from the audience to the stage; hiding technology or showing it off in architecture; brand recognition; budget; strategic vision; multiuse; and a host of other things that must be worked through. Then, spread out from there, starting with the big questions and then branching off into more specific questions. Always go back to the top three priorities on the list, then move through the rest of the list once those top three are covered well. You only move on when resources are available to cover the next three priorities. When a church doesn’t work through a decision tree like this, there is a tendency to scatter-shot solutions blindly. You might hit all the things on your list, but they won’t be executed well because you are trying to accomplish too much, and your results will suffer.
The goal of a decision tree is to find out which factors supersede all others. Then, what’s number two? And so on, and so on. All these things can be important to some extent, but you need to find the value of each as a team. If this is a retrofit project, then it will require a smaller team. If this is new construction or a renovation, the team will seek input from the architects and designers because the plan would affect their work as well.
This consideration is so important when designing. A perfect example that we see all the time is when someone insists the church has center doors and a center aisle. Then, the architecture and infrastructure are shifted to make this happen. Later, you might find out that a center aisle and center doors will be used for a very small subset of groups and programs in the space — most of which are not even in your top three priorities. Why is this a big deal? Mainly for cameras, but also for some other technology in use. If providing streaming services online is important, you must have center cameras to look correct to your online viewing audience. Doing so keeps to the standards of your top three priorities. In addition, if the audio is off-center, it might affect the experience for attendees.
Fortunately, there are methods we can use to mitigate these effects, such as spanning the center for cameras. But correcting in this way means that you are spending a lot more money to handle the request for center doors and aisle, so you need to go back to questioning: Is this need something that you want to spend resources on? Or does something else supersede it? This sounds like a simple issue, but when you think about it through the lens of needing the proper camera shot (depending on where that is on your priority list), it becomes a big deal if you are going to produce it with excellence.
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nother example is that the tech people get seated in the back of the room against the wall or up several steps. You might think seating them out of the way gives room for more seats and helps the tech people see better. That might be somewhat true, but there’s more at play than that. What you are doing when seating your tech team “out of the way,” is putting them in one of the worst places in the room.
When placed up higher than everyone and against a wall, physics comes into play. Typically, this area is boomy and out of coverage. So, your tech team is producing the service from a location that has inaccurate sound and visuals. If you place cameras in the back too, you will have to use long lenses or compromise on what shots you can take. At the very least, you should consider having a two-tiered audio-video booth, with one level being higher for the lighting and video crew and possibly the cameras. Then the lower or forward area should be one step up from the audience and at least 10 feet from the wall. Having a higher booth area behind gives space and proper height so the audio engineers can hear what the rest of the room is hearing. This type of audio-video booth can be constructed so that people can be seated to either side of it. This keeps the same number of seats but transforms how much control the technical team has.
Sometimes the answer from the church is they still don’t want that two-tiered booth set-up, and they are willing to compromise their sound, lighting, and video quality for a cleaner-looking audio-video booth. If they know the true cost of this, then move forward with the understanding that the space's aesthetic is a top three priority for the church — more than maintaining a cohesive, connected experience for attendees. There is little doubt that you will hear comments from staff, volunteers, and attendees about how things sound different in various parts of the space, and there’s a reason for this: Physics. When aesthetics is a higher priority than an inspiring, connected audio-visual experience, you and your team will hear complaints and answer questions about the differences in quality. Money can bend physics, but it can be very expensive, and it still won’t magically be the same as if you had made a few different choices and compromises. Aesthetics and AVL quality can exist together when planned properly from the start.
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