Victory World Church in Norcross, Georgia, welcomes over 15,000 people to three separate campuses every weekend. Founded 28 years ago by current pastors Dennis and Colleen Rouse, the church has grown from its apartment Bible study roots to the megachurch it is today.
As with all ever-growing houses of worship though, the increasing number of attendees that fill the auditorium every week and watch the stream online prompted Victory World Church staff to search for some new ways to improve video production. What they wanted was to capture the service from new angles and positions and go beyond their normal stationary production setup.
“We have a bunch of studio cameras already, but we wanted to add some mobile cameras into the mix too,” explains Mike Paschal, Live Video Director of Victory World Church at the broadcast campus in Norcross. “This video gets sent to 60 different TVs around the broadcast campus along with all of the TVs in our two other campuses. If we were going to do it, we wanted to do it right.”
But this presented a challenge. Since the camera feeds needed to be transported to a production switcher behind the audience, extending cables through the large auditorium would be problematic. Not only would they be a safety hazard, but they would restrict the camera operators from being truly mobile in the church. As a result, Paschal and his team decided to go with wireless video.
The Production
With substantial video production setup before having added the mobile cameras, the production team already had four Hitachi SK-HD1200 studio cameras set up around the auditorium, which took HD video and sent it to the production team’s Ross Acuity 6ME Plus professional switcher behind the audience.
Paschal and his production team decided to add three Canon C100s into the workflow, using them as handheld mobile cameras to capture different shots from the stationary Hitachis. To transport the video to the switcher, Paschal added a Teradek Bolt 500 transmitter to each camera, which sends video feeds from the cameras to Bolt receivers connected to the switcher. With Bolt’s zero-delay transmission, the switcher receives the feeds instantly from the C100s.
Once in the Acuity switcher, the feeds are sent out to TVs all across the church campus, including two Barco 12K projectors, which produce the video displayed on the auditorium’s giant projector screens. The satellite campuses in Hamilton Mill and Midtown also receive this feed instantly by going through the church’s Fiber connection, a proprietary connection exclusive to the church. The feed is also live streamed to the church’s website, Facebook Page and YouTube channel from the switcher.
Blessed
Paschal says integrating mobile cameras and wireless video into the production has been a huge advantage for the church. Using the Bolts, the mobile camera operators are able to move around with complete freedom and capture specific moments of the service up close including the band performance, sermon and prayer, which gives attendees and at home viewers a unique and new perspective on the service, putting viewers in the moment with the people on stage.
“The mobile cameras were added to help enhance the worship experience in not only the room but in our overflow spaces and online audience,” Paschal explains. “By adding the mobile cameras we were able to capture the emotion of our band members, preachers and audience along with showing what everyone is hearing in the room.”
In addition, because the weekend production team relies heavily on volunteers, the church needed tech that was easy to use and operated seamlessly with the existing workflow. “We love the ease of connection and setup on the Bolt 500s. It’s just something we turn on and it does its job, giving us more time to focus on other aspects of the production instead.”
