Show Notes:
35:30 – Rapid Fire Questions
Links
Hamish Hamilton U2 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45GluwLCvao
Transcript
Welcome back to pro status podcast. I’m Drake and Jessie, and today we have Chad Vegas with us. Hey, what’s over buddy? Chad Vegas is the alive. Broadcast video director for Bethel church. He does a lot of free Lance video work as well. So today, same thing. We’re going to be talking about what it means to be a pro in your industry, but to start things off light chat.
[00:01:25] What is the newest piece of tech that you’ve purchased? The iPhone 11 Perot. A camera’s just met. Wide angle lens, just freaking, it’s actually re rekindled my love for shooting with my phone. Now every chance I get on my gun, let me take out my phone and try to get a shot of this, see what this looks like, and we’re taking a walk on the sundial bridge the other day actually, and started filming and taking stuff.
[00:01:53] And. Just, it looks phenomenal processing behind it and everything. The wide angle is what makes me want to get the 11 yeah, it’s so cool. And then of course the pixel four said we don’t need a wide angle lens. That’s a whole other topic. But I thought that was funny that they didn’t go with the wide, I think anybody was pissed on that one.
[00:02:17] Well, I think on a nerdy side, like. Apple is a hardware, like they fix everything with hardware and Google fixes everything with software. It’s true. It’s just the is two different approaches. They said this is like a whole nother topic, but Google said in their thing that a telephoto is more useful, but then they only put a two XL photo in the camera and it’s like, well, why not put a three, four, or five.
[00:02:40] Times zoom in and optical zoom in there total. You’re saying that a telephoto is better? Two X zoom is not that much. Yeah, they do have really good digital zoom. There’s this the, yeah, that’s true. Just to be fair, so you do a lot of live video broadcast, so what would be your go to camera and lens choice right now?
[00:03:04] Oh, that’s what, what’s the budget? I know budget. What would be your go to camera and lens choice? Obviously they read that lens that we’d be got the 80 to 200 just at the bat. It just looks so dreamy. It looks so nice without having any promise filter on it or anything. It’s just. It’s amazing.
[00:03:27] Yeah. The old, the original 70 to 200 by cannon, and it does an 80 to 200 it’s black. It doesn’t have any stabilization. No, but it looks so, it looks different, but it looks so good. Yeah. Those, the flares that you can get on them are just insane and to keep it and still have your subjects sharp.
[00:03:50] Yeah. Which is very interesting. Yeah. That’s great. Great lens. Yeah, it’d be red and all that. Are you guys are just squirming right now? Yeah. I mean red has the red or a ranger in the helium and the Gemini sensor. That looks super cool cause it adds all of the broadcast and like production outputs and inputs, but built into the camera and starting at.
[00:04:19] 20 or 25,000 because the Gemini model is actually, it’s a good price. A great price. Yeah. For that camera, I’d be super interested to actually mess with it. The only thing that I would be curious about what that one is, how much heavier it is because. Most of the time we use like a Raven or right, like a monster, but it’s super compact.
[00:04:41] Yeah, the camera, the base module, a battery and a lens. Right. And the broadcast back module would be, it’s like big. I know Jared, when we try in the production module at the last conference with like, this is way heavier. Oh, that’s funny. But. If it’s lighter than it are. So many pro, you have to win.
[00:05:01] I remember going from shooting on the red and then back to the, there’s so many pro L’s like, Oh my gosh, this thing is so heavy. It’s crazy. I’m pretty sure I, it’s the difference of holding that camera for another 20 minutes or more. Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, 20 minutes is a lot. Yeah. We used to do the a SonyF fives with the Fuji non-broadcast E and G lens on it.
[00:05:25] Oh. And that used to be camera five on drums. So heavy. Oh gosh. We have to keep it on your shoulder. Yeah, with a Teradeck on. It can’t, you can’t not have a shoulder rig with that because it is too heavy or an easy rig. But yeah, a lot of guys would think, guys, suck it up. But you’re doing this for an hour.
[00:05:47] Oh, yeah. Oh, and you’re sometimes doing this three or four times a day, right? That’s a long time. Or can you imagine like the worship nights we do at Bethel? Two hours. Yeah. Two, two and a half hours long. Straight through you. Oh, that’s brutal. That’s nuts. Hello pockets cinema. I mean, that is a great little camera and that raw looks really good.
[00:06:11] They just need to finally get the raw into Adobe. Yeah, actually. So I was on the shoot the other day and we were trying to evaluate which, what we were going record in and we realized we didn’t have enough media to do programs and realize black magic. Raul was actually a smaller, it was actually smaller than pro Rez.
[00:06:32] What the like same comparable quality. Yeah. They did an unreal, uh, Nathan, one of our camera apps. And he’s like our video supervisor for Bethel with me. Um, he did a, uh, shoot, I think a few weeks ago, and they did that. A constant bigger, another variable bit rate one. And they actually shot on a one 28 gigs CFS card and they were able to get almost eight or nine hours total shoot or the day they were able to shoot throughout the day and they still had room left on the card.
[00:07:07] Wow. Damn. I was like, dang. Yeah. That’s crazy. Yeah, because if you shoot sick, so we shot six K raw variable frame rate. At eight to one and that’s all about a terabyte in like 40 minutes. Yeah. But obviously if you shoot in, that was slowed down. So it’s like 60 P yeah, trans coded to 24 so of course it’s going to take up more and more storage, but the sixK is way nice.
[00:07:42] To be able to have a project inK and then you can like stabilize and zoom and crop and do all that stuff. So, so, yeah. So Chad, tell us a little bit about your video background and like, what got you into video production? Um, yeah. Basically it just happened by chance. I was actually doing web development for my church and, uh.
[00:08:05] Like graphic design and web, and one day they came up to me and they were like, Hey, we needed video editor. Do you know how to edit video? I’m like, Nope. And, uh, they’re like typical church stuff, you know? Okay. Your video editor. Now, the media director at the time sat me down and showed me some stuff on final cut seven.
[00:08:26] Wow. Final cut or final cut seven I used to it at all. Finally, Jesse refused at it, I’ll find. Okay. I did for a, I’m not just, I was already on advert. Well, you actually, I was between, uh, the early version of Adobe premier, so I was like CS three. It was like either CS one, like the first CS or a okay.
[00:08:47] Version 6.0 or whatever, right? Yeah. Yeah. Started editing and one day they actually. Needed a live director for a service and they’re like, you want to try it? I’m like, yeah, so the small little Panasonic before four channels switcher. To now he had three cameras, I think at that time. Standard definition is Dan STI.
[00:09:10] Yeah. Sony premium monitors were do old CRT monitors from there. I just, I just loved it. I didn’t do much directing after that. I did at a couple of your things and then, uh. Became more of a editor, and then I used the after effects. That was the only Adobe product that I use as like Photoshop after effects.
[00:09:31] And then I got hired at a production house in Vegas. We started doing like an entertainment magazine. TV shows. In house commercials for Alec casinos in Las Vegas. Then I went back to the church and became the media director there. And then it wasn’t until, uh, like a year before I moved up here that we, I started doing a little more live video directing and then, uh, then we moved up to Redding.
[00:09:57] Yeah. And then. It took you awhile to get hired at Bethel, right? Yeah, that was, that was crazy. I had friends of Bethel that are like friends of the house, you know, so, and when I came up here, I had a couple of interviews with Bethel media, but nothing panned out. And I was just like, man, what’s going on?
[00:10:17] Like, I really want to work, you know, not just work, but really, I just wanted to just be a part of the, the crew and really run with this crew. Cause it was. It was something that was, I mean, the reason why we came up here was a four BSSM so that my wife could go to a first year, but also there’s just at the time when we were doing, you know, Bethel is doing.
[00:10:42] Something amazing with their broadcast. You know, it was like no other church. I mean, we still do it today. I don’t think there’s a lot of churches that really does broadcast the way we do. So I just wanted to be a part of it. And yeah, it took me like a whole year to actually get hired. There’s a whole crazy story about that super long, so I won’t talk about it here, but it’s a good story.
[00:11:02] Yeah, it is a good story. Yeah. Which actually, it’s funny because, uh, it’s a, it’s a story like most of the people that. That live here, that called Bethel home, that transitioned here from another place. We all have almost the same story. And, um, just crazy trials, crazy, crazy things, you know, just see.
[00:11:24] Plow through and get through and long story short year later got hired as a camera app. Two years later, I ended up working my way up to now being in charge of live video. yeah. I think the first time I remember working with Chad was 2017 um, for worship, you worship you and. That was one of that was the event that we kind of started to change things, but we brought in all of the on-staff camera ops to like join with our other team for that conference.
[00:12:01] And that was the first time I remember working with Chad. But I mean, he wasn’t a director at the time. He was just a camera up and literally camera. Oh, so what’d you say? Was it, um, so you said something about like, you just wanted to run with the crew. Do you want to be a part. So basically like I’m hearing community, like you saw something happening there.
[00:12:19] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what did you observe. Besides style. It was definitely community, especially when I got here. Just seeing, seeing the aspect of how everything was run, seeing how basically just where I was before. There was never really a lot of community as far as media goes in the church area, I should say.
[00:12:42] They, it was always like, Hey, we’re doing this over here. Okay, that’s cool. But we’re doing this, you know, Oh, we’re doing this. It was instead of a friendly competition, it was kind of like more of a ego driven and ego driven competition. Yeah, totally. And uh, so coming up here, I was like.
[00:13:00] Oh wait, you guys actually work with other churches too? You guys do this and work with other, I’m like, wow, this is like amazing. Like this is a cool thing that I’d really love to be a part of. You know? And as for Bethel, it was really about technology, friendships, just just seeing how the crew interacted with each other.
[00:13:18] That’s great. It’s cool because I was actually on a call and we were talking about something really similar. He, he’s a voice actor, so he’s not necessarily directly in our industry, but it was just a, a. A friendly meeting, Jessica, just to get to know each other and yeah. And connect. And one of the things that was really cool was he was talking about how he was so thankful for our conversation and the fact that we had community and we talked about that.
[00:13:43] How like most people in in the industry, like. They’ll get, they’ll have relationships. But what they’re really doing is they’re seeing if like how they can leverage that person to get more work, right? How to make money or you know, how are they going to elevate my status in some way? And you know, one of the things that I think is really cool is I, which I know this because I know you, but to be a part of being pro is.
[00:14:08] Like a life of service. Like are we really serving people already paying attention? And like true relationship is like what you are looking for. Yeah, and I think people who think to leverage or think everyone’s competition in our industry are missing out because real community is such a, an amazing source of energy and creativity.
[00:14:28] Speaking to that scarcity mindset, right? Like we live in an abundance. We don’t live in Lac. And I think, I just think that was cool. That’s something to point out. No. Yeah. And then throw it doesn’t operate. Yeah. And this entirely true. I mean, out outside. And I don’t, I don’t just do stuff for a Bethel.
[00:14:45] I also do freelance stuff. And outside of that too, it’s, it’s definitely my heart is to actually bring this community style to the industry, you know? Um. Just communication-wise them. When I get into a place and that, that I’m going to stream at, you know, I’ll, sometimes I’ll work with some, some, uh, some, some, uh, sometimes I’ll work with people that.
[00:15:09] You know, I’ve never met before. So I’ll go in there and just try to serve them as best as I can, even though I, you know, I’m there to get a job done. They’re there to get a job done. But if I can go in with like, Hey, this is my space, this is what I need, you know, you need to give me my SDI feeds, you need to give me now is, Hey, is it possible to do this?
[00:15:27] Can we, can we do this? Can you know, just to create that, that, that atmosphere. Yeah, that atmosphere because it, the industry itself. It’s so cut throat where everybody’s against each other and it’s just gotten to a point, you know? Yeah, yeah. Where, where a lot of times the, you know, it reminds me of a funny story where this guy was dealing with actually a union, which is a whole nother topic, but a, he’s dealing with a union and he, he offended one of the main bosses of the next morning.
[00:15:56] He came in and he came in the next morning and all the tips of all of his lines were cut off. Oh my gosh. And he’s like, Oh my gosh. Like, you know, so like scrambling just to get a couple of things up just before the show starts, like two, three hours later, you know, just crazy stuff like that.
[00:16:15] And it’s, you know, it’s, it’s, that’s, it’s, that’s what the industry is like, which unfortunately, you know, it as it has become, I should say, unfortunately, I don’t think it ever started that way. Yeah. I actually, yeah, that is a real thing. Like. It’s very cut throat, every man for himself.
[00:16:35] If you don’t do it right, some ding-dong. Yeah. Probably cut through your thousands of dollars worth of fiber. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I think that’s, that’s also, I mean, that goes off of being a pro being pro status is that you want to go in. With the right attitude in mind. You don’t want to go in with an ego.
[00:16:58] You know? You always want to stay humble. You stay teachable. Cause there, there are times when you know that us, I know more than there video tech, you know, and their video texts like, Hey, what if I did this and this and I’m, no, I actually, I need this and this. But still staying humble enough to just not be like walking all over him, you know, or going over his head to his boss.
[00:17:22] You know. Yeah, and I’m sure like production managers and the producers of the event like that, that’s huge. Speaks volumes to them. Well, and as a like a producer or production manager, you can quickly tell who’s pro and who’s not. When you’re working with someone just by how they handle themselves and their attitudes and what they bring to the table.
[00:17:45] Especially in the non Christian industry, you can, those guys can be a little worried bringing on, you know, outsiders, like, how’s this going to be? And I’ve been to a few shows like that where I was like the LD and they brought me in, had no clue how I was going to be. But then you’re there and it’s just like, I mean, I’m just here to serve and make this event happen.
[00:18:10] I’m not super, yeah. Crazy about everything, or like nitpicking every little thing. It’s just like, all right, we’re gonna all right. It’s fine. We can make this show happen. I’m not, I’m not worried. So you took over and. The LA, it’s been like a year now. Yeah. A little over a year. Little over a year and part of that year we implemented a huge change.
[00:18:33] Yeah. In our broadcast. Yeah. Coming into it, when I took over, I was already feeling like we needed to change and we needed to just revamp our whole style. It’s, it was good and it was, it was at a spot where, I mean, we’re still doing better than most other places. But I really wanted to get it to a place where we could feel, if you’re at home, I wanted you to feel like you’re inside of the room.
[00:18:57] You know, when you’re on one year in the building, I want to do you feel like you’re on stage, you know? And to get it to that point. And, uh, at that time, we actually moved over to Bethel’s, uh, church production team. At the time, we decided to move a Bethel TV from Bethel TV, the production, the video production team over to the local production team of the church, and to merge those two departments together, which has been probably the best decisions I think we’ve ever made.
[00:19:29] And when we did, um, that’s when you and I started working together more. We ended up talking and Jesse was, Jesse and I knew each other already for a little bit. I think my wife for that one, that was great. She met. Do you remember that? She mentioned in translation during when she was doing translation and she said, yeah, and I was like, why is this French lady speaking?
[00:19:51] I’m proud in my space. I was like, okay, I gotta. I got to check myself like. Don’t be that guy. Yeah. That’s funny. So we just, we sat down and talk through the incident. What do we want it to look like? What did, what did we want it to feel like really? We ended up coming, we were coming up to the, we have like three, uh, three big conferences.
[00:20:16] That are almost back to back in October in November, and we figured this would probably be the best time to actually just totally change it and change our style and just just go full on, for lack of a better term, balls to the wall. You want evidence and see what happens. Exactly. I think there was a lot of shakedown, like there’s a lot of things that just kind of shook and readjust it into place and there was this opportunity.
[00:20:44] Yeah. Yeah. There’s, yeah, it was like the perfect window to I th I don’t think that we could have, it would have taken longer for us to implement what we wanted to do. I think if we didn’t, it was like an intensive, almost like an intensive bootcamp for a month. And it was great too. Cause it was, it was, it was perfect timing for our camera operators to you.
[00:21:05] Like really like hone their craft, you know, hone that, that style. Yeah. And yeah, I know that we really had to, not just with the camera ops, but even with our leadership, like they were on board with us trying something new, which is important, but we had to like open everyone’s minds and like break open that box.
[00:21:30] Right. Of what. Broadcasts can look like. Cause we, I mean the three of us here, we’re so bored with the typical broadcast and just like, why do we keep doing this and why do you keep cross feeding on a fast as long as it’s real talk. I had a dream last night. That, I think it was Nathan grabs, which we should definitely have on the podcast.
[00:21:53] Yeah. But was actually cutting something with cross fades manually, and I was like, well, what is going on? Anyway, split. It’s funny. So yeah, we kind of just implemented that. That changed, but yeah, it took a little bit and it wasn’t, you know, it’s not like it just happened overnight. It took a little bit on everybody’s part, a lot of dialogue back and forth with senior leadership, you know.
[00:22:18] And a lot of basically just, Hey, coming together. Let’s watch this, let’s look at this. Hey, what if he did this? What if he did that? And you know, actually physically pulling the camera out, going up onstage and showing them, now let’s look at this. Let’s do this. Let’s So that’s a really hard thing to do.
[00:22:36] And I think a listener would probably want to know, how the heck can I get my leadership to see that? So you’re talking to them right now, and this isn’t going to be a hot topic. Well, one of the things too that not a lot of churches do. We have our broadcast cut, our stream cut. So what goes on the web is also on our IMAX screens.
[00:22:56] Yeah. It’s not two separate feeds. Yep. And so every single. Service in the in the morning. Well, and at night, but every service during worship, the our senior leadership team is watching. Yeah. What was going on in the stream? All the screens in the house, so they get to see it in real time.
[00:23:14] Every, every day. That was travel leave and worse, because it’s magnified in the room. It’s usually like 20 foot. I like screens and so every little move they can see Yeah, actually they, we’ve discovered that our screens enhanced some issues that the stream covers up. Yeah. Like some noise issues and things like that.
[00:23:34] So now we’re perfecting it even further. That right. You can’t. Ever really see that on the stream, but we know that it’s even more perfect. Yeah. So we’re still, we’re still on the journey. So what happened? Like how did this. Yeah. I mean, it’s been a year. Yeah, it’s been a year. We’ve actually done a very good job, I think, of being able to find a, a balance.
[00:23:56] We, we do go a little harder during conference times. Um, just a little more active, a little more. I think it’s a response to the room to, yeah. Yeah. So a little more active, you know, responding to the room. More people there. They come from all over the world and they. They want that experience.
[00:24:14] They want to, you know, we want to give them medic that experience to feel like, Hey, you know what? You know, we’re here to serve you guys. And I think that’s a, that’s another part of it too. It’s like our, our video team. It’s not just there to capture something to make it look good. We’re actually there to serve.
[00:24:29] We’re actually there. We’re worshiping along with them and worshiping along with the worship leaders. Yeah. I’d like to hear, you know, we’ve seen the creative process. We’ve seen what’s been happening over the last year visually. Talk about the team and the culture, like what’s happened with that with individuals, and.
[00:24:45] Yeah. The thing coming into it for me, especially being at other broadcast places and you know, coming into it, for me, I really wanted to create a culture where everybody felt empowered in the broadcast industry. A lot of times you don’t, you don’t necessarily feel that because there are. Your director is either yelling at you, you know, through the comms or telling you how bad he did on that shot that he just took, you know, or if they’re not doing it there, did not donate vocally.
[00:25:14] You know, they’re doing it by the way they breathed over the complex or, you know, and sometimes, and a lot of times too, if they don’t communicate, they could be just. It could be just them, like, Oh, I took the wrong cut when I wanted this, you know, kind of a deal. So coming into it, my, my goal was to make sure that everybody felt empowered and I didn’t want to have any, cause I, I know from my experience, if I’m taking a shot and I’m doing, you know, if I was on the jib and I was panning writers swinging right.
[00:25:45] And I get taken in, I hear, Oh, you know, over the coms immediately I’m just taking out of my worship. I’m taking out of what I’m doing, and I now I just want to try to impress the director. You know? I don’t want to having to have something where I’m always encouraging them. I’m always like, yes, that’s great.
[00:26:04] You know? That’s not to say I don’t give constructive criticism. You know, I will, I’ll definitely call them out and say, Hey, Ashley, do this better, or let’s slow it down a little bit. Let’s, you know, speed it up, give me more energy kind of deal. But for the most part, I’d say 90 95% of my job or what I’m doing when I’m directing is, is really just encouraging them.
[00:26:24] Uh, we are, we’re a little different because we all have, our cameras have creative, basically, they’re free to be creative. We just give them a little bit of guidelines in a zone, and then they can. You know, get the shots. You know, they practice active listening. They, they constantly listen to the song as were or in the set, and they’re like, Oh Hey, violence happening.
[00:26:45] But I know camera, this camera is not on violin. That’s usually, that’s usually on violin. So I’m going to cover that guy. I’m going to get violin. That kind of a deal. I saw a great example of that on Sunday where it was only piano. And no one was shooting the piano and one of the officers turned like it’s not his shot.
[00:27:03] He just turned and shot the piano and that’s, that’s that active listening, paying attention to what’s happening. I know that a big thing is having the MD in the, the clinic and just having the information in comms. It helps the video guys know what’s happening and transitions and whatnot, but probably the biggest thing for.
[00:27:24] That I’ve observed is, is making sure that you’re listening to the music, and that’s been the biggest adjustment for the camera guys is, yeah, actually listening, actually we’re sharing. Yeah. Being there for sound check really. Because the live version that we do sometimes don’t sound exactly like the way we do it on an album, you know?
[00:27:44] And so being able to come to sound check and actually, okay, this, they’re actually going to take a break here. You know, they’re gonna do a build on this part instead of this part on the CD. They know kind of that, you know. Yeah. So when you’re not actually directing shots, all that stuff is super important.
[00:28:00] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think if you haven’t seen on Bella productions, YouTube, Chad’s posted a lot of his multi views with the columns in it, so you can see how he directs and it is a lot different than a typical broadcast. He’s not actually giving direction to the ops of what to shoot and when he’s letting them be creative.
[00:28:22] And they’re pros like they know what they’re supposed to shoot. They have their zone that they’re supposed to be in. Yep. Let them get the shots and he’s just piecing the story together. So it is a lot different, but that goes to, yeah. Listen to actually what’s happening in the room. Yeah.
[00:28:37] Instead of listening to the director telling you what to do, it’s an hold on their style and practice too. I mean, it’s a little different for us because we’re pretty much. Every week, every weekend where we’re streaming something. so, but the times that we’re not, you know, sometimes the camera ops will come in and just practice though.
[00:28:56] They’ll, you know, figure out a time, Hey, can we come in and just do, you know, some movements, try some stuff, you know? Um, so they’re constantly, um, for them, you know, they’re constantly trying to get better at their craft, trying to, you know, improve on certain things. Mm. Um, and we’d like to challenge them too, which I think is a good thing.
[00:29:16] Like for example, on drums, we bought a lens and we’re like, all right, this is the drum lines. And some of them are like, what am I supposed to do with this? Let’s do this on drums. But it’s that challenge of like, there is plenty of shots that you can get right here. Now we get to figure them out and yeah.
[00:29:35] And Chad and I will always work with the G and Jesse as well. Actually, we’ll like work with them and show them exactly like what we’re looking for. Oh, absolutely. I think too, to mention, directors get a lot of the attention, but you’re really only as good as your camera guys. You know what I mean?
[00:29:51] Like if you don’t have that culture and you’re not establishing a culture that empowers people, right? I mean, you know, if you want me to Yoker coverage, I mean, treat them mediocre. You know? Like if you’re actually gonna care about your team and like draw out of them like a true leader. Right?
[00:30:08] I mean, that’s the difference. It’s like a director doesn’t need to be a butthole. He needs to be a leader, right? Yeah. Right. Yeah. I’d go even further on that. Not just a leader, but also a father. So that’s the way I approach, I approach my leadership more like as a father, where I’m going to allow you to be creative or allow you to do something.
[00:30:26] Even though I might, I may not think that it’s possible, but I’m still going to allow you to do it. And if it fails, it fails and we can come back to the drawing board and figure out, Hey, where did it fail? Okay, can we actually make it better or can we still do it by changing this? Or, you know, or if it, if it’s successful, then.
[00:30:47] That’s awesome. You know, I, I still, I’m still a proud dad that’s actually celebrating the win, you know? And I think that that comes down really from our leadership too. I think that’s the, one of the main reasons we were able to do it and to change. Our style very quickly. It was because the leadership trusted us enough like a, like a father and said, okay, let’s try it.
[00:31:07] Why not? And I think this works too. Like even if you’re not working in a church, you’re working in a secular venue or you know, you’re just a road guy, but you know, the same rules apply. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not just because we’re in a church environment that it’s different. I think that’s one of the great things that we’re, that we’re trying to do as well.
[00:31:25] It’s like, you know this, this can be multiplied or copied in any area, any aspect. You know. Hmm. This way of leading this way over directing. Absolutely. And it’s also really personal. I mean, it’s true in every aspect of your life, like we are directing, but you’re encouraging people to be confident in their work, but it’s an attitude and a stance that applies to life.
[00:31:51] Right. And you have got a, you’ve done a really good job of getting to know your team and actually having those one on ones and connecting with them. And I think that’s a big deal is, yeah. It’s not, they’re not just employees that show up and work, right. Yeah. When they need to. Yeah. Yeah. I want, you know, you want to build that community, really, that, that having everybody know each other and know, you know, I think a lot of it too, is I think Assad during the conference, our youth conferences this past week, uh, where.
[00:32:25] They all know their zones, but they, they also know like, Oh, you know, this person is actually better for this, you know, and we want, we still want to do the best. We still want to output, for lack of a better word, of PR, like great product, right? Yeah. So. They, they know like, Hey Ashley, can we put, you know, Jayden on drums for instance, because we know that she’s going to kill it on drums.
[00:32:51] Especially cause we did something different for the youth conference. And usually there’s a lot of places for us to move around drums. We can do wraparounds run ups, all this stuff. But. There wasn’t because it was on a riser this time. There wasn’t a lot to do, and so they’re like probably the best person, you know, one of the other camera ops that we had and was like, can we put Jayden this swap?
[00:33:13] I said, yeah, sure. That’s fine. You know, because they knew that she would be able to get the shots that that was, you know, required. Absolutely. That’s cool. What’s on her right there? That’s awesome. Well, that’s it. Yeah. I think.
[00:33:33] Like, yes, we want to push everyone to be as good as they can in every single position that they are working in. But also it’s that respect and honor of knowing that person’s actually better than me in this situation and this situation. Yeah, totally. So transitioning here, pro status, the name actually kind of started in this department.
[00:33:58] Oh yeah. We should probably end on this. Chad and Jesse and, yeah, I think, yeah, we do a worship you online on campus, and it’s a two week school where it’s pretty much where streaming every day for two weeks straight every day and Sunday. We usually have to get there usually by 7:00 AM every morning and.
[00:34:22] Eli ended up getting there before Jesse, cause it’s always, usually Jesse or myself or Drake will always get there a little earlier than call time. And uh, Jesse got there earlier or late and Eli put up a story that said basically like I beat Jesse like a pro status. He hashtag pro stuff and I and said started off the next morning.
[00:34:47] I actually got there earlier before everybody. And so I did a little five in the morning. Yeah, like I couldn’t sleep that night. Oh no. I know I slept. I slept fairly well. If it was just, I just got up early and couldn’t go back to sleep. I was like, well, I got stuff to do. I’m going to go in And so when I was there, I just decided to do something and take Eli and Jessie.
[00:35:06] I’m like, you know, I’m here earlier than you guys, so this is mine. Hashtag pro status, and it just took off from there. That whole week we were just posting Instastories Oh, let’s do, it’s true. Yeah. Originally I would make fun of him for taking bathroom breaks when they’re on camera. Oh, yes.
[00:35:23] That’s a real pro. Can wait. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just every time they would say something, just have some silly knee that I just like. Come on guys, suck it up. Yeah. So your pro doesn’t need that. Yeah. And so definitely there was a little bit of that tension there or on purpose. It was fun.
[00:35:38] That’s great. And that, that was the event that actually secured it. It became something. Yeah. And now to even like the other day I was working on another production and thought I had. Don’t, all the cards are, and I was missing an audio file and so I texted the group and the sound engineer. I was like, actually, I think I have a backup of that, not his job.
[00:36:04] To dump his card. Like that’s definitely my job. And I missed it. And he was like, I have a backup of that. And went and found it. And so in the text already is like pro status, you know? And it’s just like that, those extra little things, it’s, it’s not, it wasn’t his job to do that. But he did it as a cause he’s a pro, cause he’s a pro.
[00:36:24] He knows things can go wrong, which happened. And then we weren’t having to edit an MP three file or reshoot. We had the original wave to be able to mix. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s that. So, um, I think we can wrap up with a, a couple like rapid fire questions from the questions that we’ve collected.
[00:36:45] There’s a few, there’s some good ones. Cause one of these I think is really good and it goes into the pro status thing a lot. But. What do you do to prepare for a service that makes production invisible example, like seamless transitions, those kinds of things. So what are like some preparation tips that you do?
[00:37:06] Listen to the set list prior? So we do this a lot for the Bethel music conferences. We’ll give out a camera plot and their positions to each op. We’ll also give them the set lists on Spotify. A, what songs are you going to be there? If there is any new songs that aren’t on an album yet, we’ll uh, upload it and send it out to them so they can listen.
[00:37:26] They can know like, Oh, this is how the song sounds. Things like that. They picture in their mind imagining themselves. Actually in the venue, how they’re, they’re opping how they’re, you know, getting their shots when we’re there and where we got cams up. Everything’s already set up. They’ll go out during soundcheck and not just listen, sit down and listen.
[00:37:49] A lot of times they’ll actually, Hey, let’s pick up the camera and let’s, let’s try our movement here. Let’s say, Hey, let’s look at this. What does this look like? And even in that chat, and I will make changes based. Like from the original document, which I think is important cause I’ll, I’ll send something out and then we’re there and we’re like this actually.
[00:38:08] Yeah. It gives me, I going to think. Yeah. And being adaptable to that. That’s probably a big thing about being a pro, you know, being pro status, right. Is the ability to, to adapt to on the fly on the fly. Yeah. Cause there is definitely things that are going to happen that you’re like, Oh. You know, this, this doesn’t work.
[00:38:27] Let’s try this. And um, a lot of people don’t know, but we, we do change a lot from one worship night to the other just because we didn’t like the way it looks. So the next morning, and totally changes, sometimes we even, we basically move the whole crew around. Actually, you’re going to be on camera for now.
[00:38:45] You’re going to be in camera too. You know, the last. Having come conference, we added a camera. Second day we were like, Oh, we don’t have enough coverage. We’re gonna do it. We have to do to add a camera. Yeah. Next question. What is the best platform to live stream? And I know this is a two big question, but you guys are really nerdy about this, but there’s a lot of options out there.
[00:39:13] I actually still enjoy wows. Wildly. Yeah. It’s a really like a CDN. Isn’t that the only way to get stereo on Facebook or is that fixed? No, no, it’s fixed now. Okay. That was, it was the only way. Only way. Just streaming your audio and stereo. I like it. I guess cause they’re cloud. It’s an easier cloud platform.
[00:39:35] Oh the things they can do in the cloud is a lot better than right now. I think Vimeo livestream because they bought out live stream. They’re still trying to figure out like, Hey, Oh, how do we best merge this two entities together? I know Jessie loves it at meal. I know it’s nice to, I do idea. I mean, for the most part, I still.
[00:39:55] 90% of the time on my freelance stuff. I mean, this isn’t my podcast episode, but I definitely have an opinion. I knew you would, I mean, we could talk about a live stream forever. Okay. Live video inspiration, like where do you get your inspiration from? There’s a lot of places other churches.
[00:40:16] Definitely look into other church, even smaller churches. Sometimes there’ll be doing stuff that, that are very creative. We’ll go and use that sometimes, you know, and be like, Hey, this church did that. Let’s try it. See how it works for us. But I also, I’m a guy by the name of Hamish Hamilton.
[00:40:30] He’s got a couple of videos on YouTube, but he did a you to the tour back in the day, and he is very energetic languages. A, not safe for work, but, uh, he did that. Um, he did that, I think Superbowl 50, uh, the halftime show, and he’s done a bunch of, he’s from the UK, so he’s done a tons, like tons of tons of live stuff in the UK, and that’s why he swears.
[00:40:54] Yeah. That’s why he’s, yes. Yeah. Those English. Oh yeah. Hamish Hamilton, he’s, yeah, and he’s done like, uh, I think the Oscars and stuff, it’s more like traditional broadcast stuff, but I really liked the way he, he encourages his crew, how he talks to his crew and stuff. And, and really, especially with the YouTube one, like that, for me, that was like, man, I really want to.
[00:41:17] Be like this in the control room. Like, I really want to empower these camera ops and really just, you know, have fun with them. well, we’ll, we’ll link that in the show notes. Oh, for sure. Okay. This is the question that we get all the time. So we’ll land on this question. What camera’s in switcher do you use.
[00:41:36] Regularly, regularly. All black magic Lee’s Blackmagic Ursa mini pros, Ursa broadcast, and pocket cinema, and fourK and six K. as far as switchers, we actually go between two different ones depending on if we’re in the fly pack and traveling or not. It’ll be either the production ATM, a fourK or the broadcast eight.
[00:41:58] Tim. Sweet. Do you love it? Yeah, I do actually. I would prefer something like something where I can get more customizable multi-view. Yeah, so that would be, if they did that, if they did a fully customizable multi-view, like, like the RA, like rostas or grass Valley, like all of them, then that would be like a game changer.
[00:42:23] Like if they ever did that, that would be, that would be insane. Same. Well, can’t you create? No. Right. It’s probably not the same though. And thinking the new black magic, the eight K switcher, you can create a multiview, but. If I’m not mistaken, it’s like there are other multi-years which always in grades.
[00:42:41] Yeah. Told us in grids, you can play things around, like I’ve used the decimate or multi viewers before and then I can custom make every square and put it right. Right. Which is what we’re looking for. So thing. Get rid of the grid thing and just let us put the windows where we want to. That would, that would be, that’d be amazing.
[00:42:59] That would be true. That would be cool. Yeah. I can go back and forth on all that. Cause I think what you, what you gain is quality of preview. True. It’s a lot of the ones that you drag and drop ease, you sacrifice image quality and clarity. I have seen, so yeah, that’s true. The, the black magic, both of yours do look super clear that multiview 16 yeah.
[00:43:21] That’s really nice. Very sharp. It looks super nice. Cool. Well thanks for having me. Yeah. Thanks Chad for being here. If you want to hear more, make sure you subscribe to wherever you listen to podcasts. We’ll link some of the references that Chad did as well as his multi views in the show notes so you can actually go watch and see what we’re talking about.
[00:43:41] Yeah. And if you guys have questions or things that you want to talk about, please comment them cause we are actually gathering that information and we’ll definitely put that in our, our shows. That’s a wrap.