Red Digital Cinema is an American company that manufactures professional digital cinematography cameras and accessories.
As one of the churches that tech leaders look to for inspiration and ideas, Bethel Church in Redding, California, is always innovating and pushing boundaries. Most know Bethel for the music, but it's hard to separate the music from the YouTube videos. So, while thousands of church musicians are trying to get Bethel’s sound, many church creative and production teams are also trying to achieve the Bethel look. Church Production sat down with Jesse Maitland, Bethel’s broadcast director and production coordinator, and Drake Kelch, the lead system designer at Octane AV and the former production manager at Bethel Church, to gain some insight into what makes Bethel so special, and to talk about their recent switch to cinema cameras.
"How do we serve our viewers, how do we serve our body at the best of our ability? And what does it mean to step into true creativity, leveraging every single bit of what we have?” - Drake Kelch, Former Production Coordinator, Bethel Church
Maitland starts off the conversation talking about Bethel’s production journey away from traditional broadcast coverage. “We really wanted to challenge ourselves to take that further to where our viewers would experience the immersive experience as if they were in the room with us. I think one of the things we've done really well is bring cinema into a broadcast environment, and people are really experiencing this more authentic experience even at home in their living room,” he says.
Bethel trains their camera operators to avoid tapping into the ego of just capturing cool shots, but instead teaches them what it means to capture worship with every part of their DNA.
Kelch adds that especially with 2020 lockdowns and with so many more people watching online, they really wanted to bring viewers into the room. “We all have an option. We can do the minimum or we can really challenge ourselves,” he says. “We took what we had, we leaned in and really postured ourselves in a way to say, ‘How do we s
erve our viewers, how do we serve our body at the best of our ability? And what does it mean to step into true creativity, leveraging every single bit of what we have?’”
In 2019 Bethel Church did a live stream experimenting with all RED Raven Cinema Cameras. After that, the decision was made to use cinema instead of broadcast cameras full time.
First thing is they utilize the team very differently from most churches. Kelch explains, “The relationship with your team building, that core foundation with them and also providing the vision that they can come alongside and partner with,” he says. “It's not just day in, day out, we're doing the same thing. We're going to work, clocking hours, which that is a little bit different than most churches. Bethel's video team is paid—99% of them are paid. So, you know, the culture can be a little bit different because it's not all volunteers.”
"...one of the things we've done really well is bring cinema into a broadcast environment and people are really experiencing this more authentic experience even at home in their living room.” - Jesse Maitland, Broadcast Director, Bethel Church
Maitland says they are blessed to be able to pay their people. But says it's always important to remember that even though staff is paid, they're still making great sacrifices. He says some people might say since staff is paid it can’t be worship. But he says that would be wrong. He says the worship is everything. “We're training our guys to partner with the Holy Spirit to partner with what's happening in the room, to be sensitive, not to just what the director's saying, but to what's happening around them. And we really want people to anticipate, ‘Where is God going to be? Where is God moving?’ And to know where to point the camera. Honestly, it's beautiful.”
Maitland says what they don’t want is camera operators tapping into the ego of cool shots, but instead to tap into what it means to capture worship with every part of their DNA. “You're representing people online who are watching. They're not in the room, so you are their representative, you're an ambassador to their encounter. You are standing in the gap and you're their connection. You're the link.” He continues, “So, we're fully present and fully aligned with what's happening. And when that happens, we know when to have enough movement and how to do camera style and composition. And we start working as a team and in synergy. And so, all this stuff just starts to build and speak into this culture of worship and praise, where we hold each other to an extremely high standard where we love Jesus and we love him through our craft.”
Recently Bethel Church purchased several RED Komodo cameras for their color science combined with more affordable price.
But how do you train that? Can you train that? Kelch says, like most churches, the Bethel tech staff members start as supervised volunteers who shadow a crew member. “And then after a couple weeks of shadowing a paid camera operator, they switch to where that volunteer is operating the camera and that paid operator is now standing behind them to help coach them and guide them. They usually have a private com channel, so they can talk directly to each other and help that. And then that will go for a couple weeks until they're feeling comfortable.”
But Maitland explains how they’re not only evaluating volunteers on their technical skills but checking for their attitude toward worship to decide who gets hired. “We're definitely looking less about skill and more about, do you carry the same worship culture and is that like a true priority for you? And so, if you carry that same heart for worship, there's a good chance you'll be invited in at some point.” Kelch says either you have it or you don’t. “I'd always say this: skill is trainable, but the heart posture and the work ethic aren’t always as easy to train.”
On the subject of equipment, Kelch says Bethel currently has about 32 tech staff members with half of them being camera operators. In 2019 they did a live stream experimenting with all RED Raven Cinema Cameras. After that, the decision was made to use cinema instead of broadcast cameras full time. “RED, with their color science, with their dynamic range, it just brought this creativity in how it looks to what we were shooting. I think that first time we were all like, ‘Wow, this makes us want to shoot more!’ Just seeing how good the image quality looked and we've grown a ton since then. And ever since the Komodo launched, and now they're hitting that URSA Mini price point with a RED body and you still get that RED color science and that dynamic range that RED traditionally offers. And so, it's part of bringing the cinema to the broadcast was, well, I think we need to start using cinema cameras not traditional broadcast cameras to achieve what we're trying to achieve.”
Maitland says now that their broadcast is more on a global stage, they are taking that kind of influence seriously. “It's a humbling thing. It's quite the privilege, but we recognize that we have an influence in the world of worship and praise and that's a big thing of what we're known for,” he says. “We wanted cameras that empower the creativity that we have, recognizing we serve these external people, as well as our local church.” He says the camera changes they appreciated were subtle, but important. “It was really color science,” Maitland continues. “It's in the details where you see the real differences and we want to take it serious how we're leading people visually, and we are ready to go to the next level. And RED provided that.”
Maitland says RED has been very open to suggestions from them about what they’re looking for in a camera, and he says it’s humbling to have a company so open to making changes for the worship market. Bethel also appreciates the affordability, he notes, because they operate like any other small local church making due with what they can afford—and not having a huge budget for tech. “We want to worship through our craft and we're not using big budgets to do it. And most people are always surprised by that, but we don't have big budgets. We just have really big hearts.”
Kelch emphasizes that part of the reason they started the Bethel YouTube channel is to empower other churches. He says other churches can do what Bethel does without a huge budget. “We're trying to set the framework of, this is what we have. This is what we're accomplishing with what we have, and you as another church can accomplish this as well. There are a lot of churches that spend a lot of money, and at Bethel we're very thankful for the money that we have been able to spend. But it is not like some of these other megachurches out there, and we're still accomplishing what we are and getting the viewership that we are. And so, we're trying to help empower other creators and other churches that you can also do the same thing.”
Maitland turns the conversation back to the volunteers and staff saying, the equipment is great, but it’s all really about the people. “To build anything without building people first is probably not kingdom,” he says. “And so, if we're not building people up first, we're not building God's kingdom. And that's the same thing with volunteers. If you're just treating them as a cog wheel, you're not building people. Our team is a very strong and healthy team that really holds each other accountable because we have similar values. We value relationship and we value being connected. Those things are so vital to everything that we do.”
Another key to Bethel productions is passion. The work is hard and sometimes long hours, but Maitland says the energy comes from their passion. “I always tell people I'm running on passion, not energy because when you're aligned with what you're doing with your vision, when you have that mission and you're carrying that passion, you are tapping into a whole different level of energy.”
Finally, both Kelch and Maitland thank Bethel’s integrator, Octane AVL, which is Kelch’s new employer. Maitland says, “One of the reasons why Drake moved from Bethel to work with Octane full time, honestly, is Octane really carries a similar heart to Bethel to serve other churches. They're a great company with a mission that really aligns with a lot of the values that Bethel production represents. And honestly, he's in a position where he's trying to serve others and help other people as well.”
Kelch concludes, “Our goal is to so serve the church and help empower the church. And we got tired of the Church getting taken advantage of, and we're here to help empower and serve the Church in what we do—and that's with audio, video, lighting, integrations, and training. That’s our mission, to help serve the Church.”
