Elijah Kruse
Fujinon provides a wide range of lenses for houses of worship, including the Premista line of cinema lenses and the UA Series broadcast lenses featured at World Outreach Church.
When I heard World Outreach Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, decided to upgrade its video production capabilities, including new Fujinon lenses, new Sony cameras, and more, I honestly got really excited for their church and how they are expanding their in-person and online ministry. But my experience has taught me, as with any church or studio big or small, upgrading or replacing production equipment requires me to slow way down, not get too excited, and take a thoughtful, careful approach from several directions.
My first approach is more of a deep philosophical one. If you were to call it my “step back” approach, I don’t think you would be wrong. Essentially, before you can run headlong into a new project, you need to slow down and step back to really think things through. My step one for any project with a church or studio normally starts with a big cup of coffee, finding some engineering help, and asking a bunch of questions that look like this:
What does our production (technically) look like right now?
Where are we right now, production-wise, and are we happy with that?
Why or why not?
How old is our production equipment, starting with our lenses and cameras?
Can we grow our production look and capacity and thereby grow our ministry and how do we do that?
Can we afford this project?
Can we not afford to make this project happen?
These are just a few of the questions, and they will bring up some very legitimate concerns. But once you have answered yes to all of these (and you will), then it is time to get a consensus by pulling everyone together. By the way, also having your pastor on board always helps, but you knew that already. Now it’s time to move ahead. So how do you tackle such a task?
Filling out the big picture
In a special report for Church Production Magazine, I caught up with two of the mainstays behind this ambitious undertaking to get a better understanding of their process. Nic Smith is production manager for World Outreach Church and Rob Wolford is a senior design engineer at Clair Global Integration, the integrator on the project and a key player in making the upgrade happen. Here's what they had to report:
Church Production: Tell me a little bit about World Outreach, your role with the church, and the thought process about upgrading your production capacity.
Smith: World Outreach Church (WOC) has been around for just over 40 years, beginning services on Easter Sunday in 1980. WOC is currently running three services each week, and we have around 7,000 people on campus each week, along with around 5,000 more joining us online for our live streams. The church is also on TV and radio across the nation and around the world on TBN, Fox Business, Sirius XM Radio, and several others.
My role at the church is to manage and coordinate audio, video, lighting, and staging for worship services and special events, and the technical teams that go with that. We have around 100 volunteers and 10 staff on our production team that help us make what we do possible.
Church Production Magazine: That is a really big church! Now I can see why you're such a busy guy. But why the upgrades now?
Smith: The decision to upgrade has been in discussions for a while, but there were a few deciding factors. First, most of our video gear was original to the newest facility which was opened in 2010, so age definitely played a factor in the decision to upgrade. But when we got into 2020, we also realized just how important technology was to us and how reliant we were on it to be able to reach people and continue to have an impact in their lives.
On top of that, our live stream and broadcast platforms are growing quite rapidly, and we have had so many opportunities through those platforms that we wanted to be sure we were doing our best to give the best quality that we could in those areas as well. The video upgrade is a way that we could impact all three platforms—live, broadcast, and live stream—and we were also able to design the system in a way to give us more flexibility for the future.
Image and production quality start with the lenses
Whether you have been in production forever, are just starting out, or somewhere in between, you've got to know one thing: image quality starts with the lens. Anyone can go out and get a shiny new camera or switcher, but if you go cheap on the lens it just won’t matter. So I asked Smith and Wolford from Clair Global Integration about it since lens selection may be your most important consideration.
Church Production: Why the Fujinon lenses? Did you do a lot of comparison tests? Was cost a consideration?
Smith: We have always liked Fujinon lenses, particularly when paired with the Sony cameras. We reached out to several of our friends in the production world and almost exclusively everyone recommended the Fujinon lenses. Since that was what we were familiar with and everyone seemed to agree, we chose to stay with Fujinon lenses.
Church Production: From the integration standpoint, what was the thinking on the Fujinon lens choice, and what was your recommendation?
Wolford: The camera and lens matching can be best described as a marriage. In fact, I actually refer to it as a marriage of the camera and lens in conversations with clients. When the right camera and lens are together, it works together to make a fantastic product. When the marriage is not so harmonious, the final product shows flaws and imperfections in the outcome—the picture. The marriage between Sony cameras and Fujinon lenses is a good one.
The initial RFQ had basic entry-level lenses that were not 4K-capable. The lenses would have worked, but not yielded the same image quality desired from the upgrade. I worked with our Fujinon rep and we proposed lenses that would not only yield a superior image, but allow for the future 4K upgrade when the church is ready.
Here are the Fujinon models …
(2) UA70x8.7BESM
(2) UA18x7.6BERD
(2) UA23x7.6BERD
(1) UA18x5.5BERD
Church Production Magazine: In addition to the lenses, tell us about other project elements, such as putting the new room and gear into production, the learning curve, and the new mobile production element.
Smith: There have been some learning curves, although we did stay with a lot of the same brands of gear that we have used in the past. Most everything is Sony, Fujinon, Ross, or AJA, and we have utilized gear from those brands a lot through the years. All of those manufacturers do a great job of supporting their products and making sure that the end user has what they need to be able to be effective with it. And yes, I along with the rest of my staff help with the training of volunteers. We have some top-rate staffers and they all have lots of experience in their areas. And they also do a wonderful job of learning new things quickly and relaying that to the volunteers.
Church Production: How long did it take you to do the system design and install the new gear? Was this a totally new install as in right to the router, a retrofit?
Wolford: The system design took a couple of weeks and drawings and system flows followed. The installation was delayed due to equipment delivery dates, unfortunately, not untypical for our industry. The installation was a retrofit adding the router, cameras, switcher, and infrastructure.
Church Production: Was there any concern about learning a new switcher and cameras?
Wolford: A little, but the switcher was a Ross upgrade from an older product to a newer product, so not as much as completely learning a new product. Once we got into it, the new hardware/software was really easy to set up and use. The Ultrix Router was [also] really easy to set-up and use. The router was a new addition [since] the church did not have a router in the previous system. [And[ the flexibility of the router is a benefit that was immediately recognized.
The cameras/lenses were an immediate quality upgrade in the broadcast product. The pictures, color, and depth of field were immediately apparent. Additionally, we added/created a three-camera fly pack for their outdoor shoots. The fly pack includes three of the new cameras, the existing switcher, and existing infrastructure gear all repurposed from the initial installation. It was truly a pleasure to work with the church to upgrade the broadcast equipment and audio system in the sanctuary.
Closing thoughts
Normally, this is the section where I try to wrap things up in a positive fashion. But when I asked Smith to give me his parting words, they were so much better.
"We have received overwhelming support from our pastor and the congregation," he says. "Our pastor has been involved throughout the process and has been very supportive and encouraging to make sure that we were getting the best and that it would allow us to be able to do what we do more efficiently and more effectively."
He adds, "At the end of 2020, we shared with the church congregation that we as a church felt like we needed to make an investment into the video systems and asked for their support. The church responded overwhelmingly, and we were able to meet our budget to make the upgrade possible. Everyone agrees that it has made a huge impact on the quality of what we do, now that they are seeing the results of the upgrade. And I am excited for the future opportunities that will come because of it."
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New Equipment Includes:
Seven new Sony 3100 cameras all with Fujinon Lens
Ross 3ME Switcher and Ultrix Router
