The church worked with an Atlanta-based AV integrator, Clark, on the recent video upgrade. Fujinon's Susan Tuescher was recognized by the church as being instrumental in the choice of lenses. "Her willingness to bring those lenses to us herself and let us see the difference they could make, it was incredibly helpful," says Ryan Beckworth, director of communications at the church. Photo courtesy of Fran Speering.
The Fujinon ZA22x7.6BERM lenses, matched with Hitachi 5500 cameras, provide the added flexibility to deliver any shot in the room without the added expense of long-throw lenses.
Multi-generational Abilene Baptist Church has fared extremely well post-pandemic—experiencing a tremendous blessing with people re-engaging again and pouring into live services, says the church's associate pastor of music and media, Rev. Tommy Sunderland.
The church is located in Martinez, Georgia, a suburb of Augusta, home of the storied Masters Tournament first held in March of 1934. And yet, Abilene Baptist is older.
“Abilene Baptist Church was founded in 1774,” Sunderland states. “We’re two years older than the United States of America.”
The weekend of Easter 2021 when the church opened up for live worship, which happened NOT to fall on the final round of the Masters as it oftentimes does, Sunderland says the service drew in just over 1,500 worshippers. Then the following Sunday, a “regular Sunday,” 1,200 people attended services. And the church maintained 1,000+ in attendance four Sundays in a row following Easter.
“So people are starting to come back,” Sunderland says, about 94% of the church’s pre-pandemic numbers. And while the church streams its services now, its team did not stream prior to the COVID outbreak. Although they had a very strong broadcast presence on local cable for almost three decades with 25 years of that time span on the local NBC affiliate.
Broadcast and the church’s journey to higher pro standards
Currently, Abilene Baptist’s worship appears on three different media outlets on Sunday mornings. “We’re on at 5:30 a.m. on ABC, we’re on at 10:30 a.m. on Fox, and we’re on an ABC affiliate at 11 a.m.,” Sunderland shares.
MICHELLE ZINN PHOTOGRAPHY
The Fujinon ZA22x7.6BERM lenses, matched with Hitachi 5500 cameras, provide the added flexibility to deliver any shot in the room without the added expense of long-throw lenses.
On these broadcasts, he describes, “Since we are multi-generational and blended, we use everything—we’ll have a rhythm section, orchestral instruments, a praise choir team, all those pieces.”
So despite being new to streaming, the church already operated a sophisticated TV studio for its broadcast activities. In an AV upgrade some 14 years ago, they’d gone to digital, although not HD.
As Sunderland notes, “We upgraded the cameras from analog to digital with a high-end digital offering for the time, but we were not HD and so we’d cheat and digitally stretch to 16x9,” using an anamorphic feature that allowed them to take their 4x3 picture and jimmy it to deliver a live-screen effect. An experienced remote editor the church employed would then up it to 720p to make the content usable for TV broadcast. Which was, essentially, a time bomb waiting to go off. As Ryan Beckworth, director of communications for Abilene Baptist, puts it, “We were cruising toward a bad experience at some point, because we really were not compliant with HD [standards] and we were needing to do that.”
Looking to the future, Abilene’s music and media team began evaluating all the possibilities for its much-needed HD upgrade. Then COVID hit and threw a wrench into their plans—a tough pill to swallow for the team.
As Sunderland puts it, “We’d always had very high standards … we’ve always gone and upgraded … we’d always wanted to have our very best for the Lord.”
The addition of Fujinon glass
In November 2020, the team’s prayers were answered when a broadcast upgrade, implemented with the design and integration help of the AV integration firm Clark, based in Atlanta, finally became reality—and Fujinon lenses came into the picture. The team’s camera upgrade to Hitachi’s 5500 series presented a “good lens,” the pair admits, but the Fujinon lens Clark spec’d for the upgrade took their broadcast efforts into a whole new realm.
“It really helped us with our camera placement, being able to put our cameras where we wanted to, but still getting a really good picture,” Beckworth says of Abilene’s fan-shaped worship space. “We were really at the outside edge with our regular throw lenses, and this [upgrade to three Fujinon ZA22x7.6BERM lenses] enabled us to do what we needed to do without going too long through the lens.”
Prior to its upgrade, the Abilene crew had two cameras in its balcony at its main campus and two on the floor in between, placed a bit left and right about 45 degrees. The team at Clark, though, advised them that they needed a true center shot. “When you take budget into consideration,” Beckworth notes, “it seemed like the best plan for us was to move three cameras downstairs—one of those being a true center shot that we moved all the way to the back of the room,” underneath the balcony, shooting over people’s heads, so it didn’t pose a sight line issue.
“But it couldn’t hit the balcony top, either,” he adds. “It was a very, very tight window for this lens and this camera to pull it off. But the combination of the camera and the lens was able to do this without the extra expense of the long-throw lens.”
At its remote location, which meets in a middle school, the Abilene team employs a basic setup with just one Blackmagic URSA camera, Beckworth reports, with a Blackmagic ATEM HD switcher. And while that location has its own live worship music, the lead pastor’s message comes from the main campus. As Beckworth describes, the remote campus uses an encoder, which they set up every Sunday morning at 7:30 when the tech team arrives at the main location.
From the main campus, Beckworth waits for the remote campus teams’ text confirming that everything is set up, and he confirms that he is receiving their signal at the main campus. The team checks its connections, tests the pastor’s audio channel, and “if everything is coming in good, we know we’re good to go,” he describes.
With an LED screen on motors that the team installed at the remote campus, as each locations’ praise music wraps up, the wall comes down. “They’ve got the pastor queued up, they hit play, and we go on for about a 2-3 minute delay. It’s pretty amazing, and that happens every week.”
Words of wisdom
Of the successful setup and the quality of imagery they’re now able to achieve, the Abilene Baptist team credits Fujinon rep Susan Teuscher, in particular. As Beckworth states, “Her willingness to bring those lenses to us herself and let us see the difference they could make, it was incredibly helpful. The value we saw with them in our room, on the camera that we were going to be upgrading to, in the position that we were going to be placing it in, it was invaluable to be able to do that. It really got us to our best solution.”
Moving forward, Sunderland and Beckworth are confident in their current broadcast setup and in their ability to pivot when circumstances make it necessary. “It was important for us knowing who we are and what our goals are,” Sunderland says. “We were a broadcast church with more than 25 years of experience, and we had that context. For any church looking to make these types of upgrades, I would advise, ‘Know your context.’”
