Photo courtesy of Church of the Highlands
The music team at Church of the Highlands recently shot ten new music videos that are set to be released in Fall 2021. The videos have a "very dreamy, introspective feel," says the church’s creative worship coordinator, Caleb Dick.
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In March of 2020, as many churches were scrambling to launch streaming of their services, Church of the Highlands in Jefferson County, Alabama, already had a leg up. As the largest church in Alabama, with over 20 campuses, Sunday services were broadcast live to those campuses each week before the lockdown. But when the church had to pivot to everything being pre-produced, there was a serious shortage of staff and equipment.
“When it came to doing some musical elements, we were in a position where everyone was slammed,” describes the church’s creative worship coordinator, Caleb Dick. “We were letting other churches use our facilities to record services … college services needed to be recorded and put out, and our broadcast team was booked, working on four or five services in a week.”
During the pandemic, the church's worship team was forced to find the equipment, the staff, and the expertise to produce their own music videos. Learn what they know now, that they wish they knew then in this DAVE.video from Church Production Magazine with Creative Worship Coordinator, Caleb Dick from Church of the Highlands, Ananth Sundara, account manager for Adorama Business Solutions and Brian Blackmore, editor at Church Production Magazine.
Dick says the worship team members found themselves in a position where it was up to them to find the equipment, the staff, and the expertise to produce their own music videos. “The team and I jumped in,” he says, “but we didn’t have what we needed—different lights, stands, carts, things that make things happen.”
Photo courtesy of Church of the Highlands
Early in the pandemic, the music team at Church of the Highlands called on Adorama for recommendations on cameras, lenses, lighting and stands.
Since the church already had a relationship with Adorama, someone on the creative team recommended that Dick call them. “One of the biggest things with Adorama was support for cameras and lights and stands,” he says of the immediate pain relief his team felt once they paired up with the dealer. “Things were happening so fast, and with other vendors, maybe there wasn’t a piece of gear available to rent.” Dick found that the Adorama team, though, could deliver. “We had to do music for our student conference and I called them – ‘We don’t have enough people to hold stuff – I can’t Hollywood this thing – give me some C-stands!’ – and they made it work out.”
Ananth Sundara, account manager for Adorama Business Solutions, Adorama’s B2B division in New York and the point person for Church of the Highlands, remembers checking with manufacturers asking, “Can we drop ship to this client right away? Can we get this to them within a time limit?”
Since the Church of the Highlands team was basically wearing multiple hats, Sundara notes, “We were picking up where another team member would have filled in—maybe calling another vender or calling someone locally to source what they needed.” And he adds, “When we work with a house of worship, we work almost as an extension of their team to facilitate the backend administration and get them what they need.”
One might think the stress of this point in history, along with the desperation people experience around it, puts such a heavy strain on working relationships that they can’t survive, but Dick and Sundara say this one thrived because of it. “Having a person to call was massive for us last year,” Dick states. “Because the types of projects we were doing were so diverse and fast-paced, we needed somebody that knew more than we did. So having a person I could call, one who is a musician, and now over the course of time a personal friend, it made all the difference. I knew I was calling someone who would do their best for me.”
For his part, Sundara says, “I could tell they were figuring it out as they were going along. So being able to lean on my team and provide what Caleb needed so that he didn’t have to think about seven different things at once, that was really rewarding for me.”
Photo courtesy of Church of the Highlands
With Adorama and Sundara’s help, the Church of the Highlands production team is now up and running so well that they’ve shot 10 new music videos that will come out this fall. Dick says his team has a full crew on location, crafting a “very dreamy, introspective feel,” adding, “We wanted a more cinematic look, a shallow depth of field, and all the things you can’t do in a broadcast environment. Now we’re pushing more into that cinematic look, with more pre-production.”
Over time, Dick’s team has learned so much, and he says if he could talk to his 2020 self he would discuss the fact that it ended up costing less than he thought to enlist the help they needed. “That decision about whether you rent or buy something, if we had known a year ago what it was going to cost, we probably would have slept a lot better,” he concludes. “We want to do stewardship correctly. We don’t want to buy things and not have them be the right piece of gear. I think a lot of our success comes down to just the overall experience of having Adorama help us with how to do this stuff. That was a really big deal to us.”
