Asking someone else to make a Video
My guess is that most people in this situation from the church setting are pastors, youth leaders, church leaders, or someone else with a position of responsibility. You’ve been thinking that you want to make your church service a bit more appealing, and so have been using different mediums to do that. Maybe you’ve revamped the music, beautified your bulletins, run some interviews, and maybe even some skits. And you then think that having some video would be really cool. You’ve thought through why you’re using it and what you want it to achieve, and so you know now that you need someone in your church to make it. Here’s three things you need to ask yourself before you ask someone else to make a video.
1) ask yourself: do you honestly understand what you’re asking this person to do? I’ve had a number of people ask me to make videos for various things, and I reckon the normal assumption is that it doesn’t take too long. For example, making a vox pop video – I reckon most people who have asked me to make something like this think that it should only take about an hour – total! However, this just isn’t the case. Video always takes longer than you think, especially if you’re new to it. There are always technical problems, and there’s a lot of steps to take. Even if someone has provided you with the initial idea, you still have to work out how to practically execute it, then organise everything for filming, then film it, then import the video onto the computer, then edit it, then export it in a format that can be played. So if you’re asking someone to make a video for you, always remember that it is going to take a lot of time and effort from them. This takes us to the next point…
2) ask yourself: do you have a realistic expectation of the result? It’s probably not going to look like a Hollywood movie. If it’s the first time this person is making video, you might find that when you’re looking at it that you almost don’t want to use it. Are you ready for that? If you want better video, then it’s going to take time for people to get better at making it. You’re going to have to be ready for some shockers, yet at the same time to appreciate all the effort made by the person you asked to do it. Be ready to be patient and to encourage. That’s what it was like for you with learning to preach/lead studies/play music/etc right?
3) ask yourself: have you clearly communicated what you want? If you’re going to ask someone to make something, make sure that you are as clear as possible what you want. You can’t expect them to know what’s in your head simply because they’re ‘creative’. Make sure you’ve done some hard thinking about what you want, communicate that clearly, and then give the person you’re asking the license to make it from there. If you want something quite specific, then you’re going to need to spend more time planning and working with the videographer to make it closer to what you’re after.
Along with this also comes a responsibility to communicate things to do with video that they might not be aware of, such as info on copyright and appropriate content. Churches are generally pretty good at doing this with their musicians, making sure they have a CCLI licence and music. Why not make sure you’re clear with your videographers? My hope is that you would find this site a good place to refer them to, but I’ll also try to make a document that you could give to your budding videographer that might help give them a clear intro to making video for churches – keep on my back about this if it doesn’t come shortly. For now, get them to check out the stuff on copyright, resources, the two principles, and equipment.
