Worship Musician July 2020 | Page 131

show time. Streaming has a built-in stress factor that I’m still not ‘over’, and pre-show stream tests do a lot to reduce that stress. By having that hour of margin, I’m purposely leaving myself a healthy window to address any issues with connectivity. For me, that connectivity includes cameras and audio feeds, Ecamm Live, Restream, as well as Facebook and YouTube. At this point, I’ve had meltdowns at pretty much every ‘connectivity node’, and that includes YouTube’s infamous “Live streaming is not available at this time” error message appearing even once the actual stream green lights and goes live. The technology is not perfect, so giving yourself a buffer is key. The aforementioned actually happened during my “Music + Technology” episode, and I actually screen-shared my walk through the experience. People got a chance to observe that I didn’t have an online meltdown, and that I finally had to resort to leaving a message and link for people to jump over from YouTube to Facebook – and they did. It was actually a huge help to be able to share this experience with people, but at the same time it should come as a stark reminder that even with pre-show stream tests, YouTube can go upside down on you, ditto for Facebook. The moral of the story is to test, but don’t trust! CONFIDENCE MONITOR Honestly, stress is a constant factor in this process, so anything I can do to reduce the stress level is key. I recently picked up a fiveinch confidence monitor so I’m absolutely positive about what is actually streaming out to Facebook and YouTube. Akin to the audio engineer being able to solo the broadcast mix in headphones, this gives me one place I can always turn to for a clean image of what the stream is seeing. There’s a reason they call it a confidence monitor! SCENES Regardless of how many cameras you are using, scenes can and will make a world of difference in the production value of your stream. While your experience may be different (and I celebrate that), between camera freezing and other challenges, I moved from OBS to Ecamm Live and have been loving pretty much everything about the experience. The built-in camera switcher, camera effects (color, zoom, pan) and green screen make for a ton of great options that you can easily map to scenes. I’ve spent a lot of time editing video in post, so I tend to use any streaming application or switcher as a vehicle to avoid staying on a static shot too long. If you’re shooting with one camera, its super easy to use Ecamm’s zoom feature to create wide and medium shots, which you can save to ‘lockable’ scenes. With a little practice this makes it easy to develop a nice production workflow that’s there with the click of a mouse! GREEN SCREEN If you’ve spent any time on Zoom.us, you’ve probably seen enough green screen for a lifetime – I feel you. But… the green screen functionality in Ecamm is really, really good, and the ability to easily load my own custom backgrounds gives me a huge amount of freedom to craft my own look and feel, the antithesis of the Zoom green screen experience. With the right background photo or video, many pastors and worship teams could benefit from this functionality. Announcements are a great example of how this could work well. Since handing off a mic is a no go right now, you could easily shoot announcements remotely and use green screen to fly in a photo of the background where the main message is being shot. That said, doing green screen because you can, does not always mean that you should. Technology when used judiciously adds to the production, when used poorly, it gets in the way, which gets us to our next point. AVOID DISTRACIONS As you my might imagine, I’ve been spending a lot of time watching how churches of various sizes approach what they’re doing online. As I was watching the pastor of a well-known church movement speak, the amount of audible compression artifacts on his voice become so distracting that I had to stop watching. TURN OFF ADS While I’m sure it was not intentional, another well-known church movement’s re-broadcast jumped to a Mailchimp ad right in the middle of the first song. Not the worship experience they or I had in mind. STREAMING YOUR WORSHIP Like the previous points, the phrase, “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should…” comes to mind. On another rebroadcast, the vocals were so painfully out of tune it reminded me that streaming is not the only problem that needs fixing. If the team can’t sing in tune, you should really consider not streaming them until they can, or until your tech team has mastered the use of auto-tune. And by the way, many churches use auto-tune, so it doesn’t carry the stigma it once did. Ditto for running more tracks than team members, in this era at least, as it can do a lot to lift the streaming worship experience. MAP A COURSE One of the most important things that God put on my heart about all of this is the analogy of ‘travel tacks’ on a world map. We’re on a journey, and it is vital that we realize that most of the time we’re not at our destination yet, which means we need to keep our head up and our eyes open in these busy times. Don’t let something as important as your live streams become matter of fact – they matter too much to the people who are tuning in, seeking a much-needed connection to God. Set course on a destination with some specific production goals in mind, and stay mindful of reaching that destination each week. In turn, when you reach that destination you’ll know it and be prepared to set your eyes on what comes next for you and your teams. REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW Even on challenging weeks I try to review the July 2020 Subscribe for Free... 131