How To Film Your Church Event
7 things you need to do for a quick & easy edit
Enjoy this special guest post by my good friend Rico Molden.
Today, I want to share with you my approach to filming church events when I need to have it edited as soon as possible. I’ll break it into two categories:
Things to do before the shoot and things to do during the shoot.
Before we dive into the important stuff, here’s a video I was able to deliver to my church the next day because I set myself up for a quick edit:
4 Important Things To Do Before the event
1. ask for a timeline of the event
Connect with event leaders to find out what will be happening and when.
Ideally this would be printed out or saved on your phone so you always have it handy on the day of the event. Once you know what's happening and when, you'll have an idea of what to look for and you can even start thinking of some of the shots you’d like to get.
If you skip this step, you’ll be playing catch up all day, reacting to what you’re seeing and juuuuusssst missing the best shots because you got there at the wrong time.
2. Pre-select your interviews
If your event video is going to have sound bites or interviews then ask someone who is involved in organizing the event to preselect the people they think would be good to record sound bites with.
You could even set a specific time and place to meet so you aren’t having to chase down interviews in what could already be a hectic environment.
Sure there might be some great impromptu interviews the day of the event - and definitely get them if they come up - but you can burn A LOT of precious time asking people to do a quick interview while things are still happening.
In my experience a majority of people are intimidated and camera shy if I randomly ask them for an interview when I have camera and microphone in hand.
3. Pre-select The Music For Your Edit
Another thing I like to do before going out to film is to preselect music for the edit.
Even if you have access to a great library of music (I personally use Soundstripe) it always takes longer than you think to find the perfect song. And when you’ve got to turn around your edit the same day or the next day, that’s precious time going down the drain.
Also, if you know the song in advance, the style and pacing of the music might influence the way to film. A fast paced song lends itself to shorter clips whereas a slower paced song can support longer clips or slow motion.
4. Travel Light
I’m still working on this because I like being prepared for any situation, but the reality is that too much gear can slow you down.
If you have already picked out your music and you have an event rundown, you should have a clear picture in your head of the types of shots you'll need for the edit, so bring the minimum amount of gear you'll need to make that video that's already in your head.
For this particular shoot I only carried my camera and a fanny pack.
Yes I said it - a fanny pack.
I'd also advise to leave the drone at home unless you have more than ample time in your day. Drones tend to attract looky-loos who will want to talk to you all day, and if you hate to seem rude (like me) it can take several minutes to politely listen and then excuse yourself from the conversation!
3 Important things to do during the event
The day of the event has come. Here are the steps I’d recommend doing during the shoot to help streamline your process.
1. Take A Step Back
Instead of immediately arriving on site and recording everything you see, take some time to really see what’s happening and visualize the event as it might be in the edit.
Try to picture the things you see happening in stages “before, during, after” and then set out to capture each stage.
Visually showing this progression will add story structure to your edit and is what will keep the audience engaged.
You can capture the most beautiful shots, but if your audience is checking their phones because they've lost interest it doesn't matter. Remind yourself throughout the shoot: "before, during, after".
Here’s an example from my video:
BEFORE
DURING
AFTER
2. Ask people for what you need
If you haven’t done this before it might sound like it’s not “true documentary work”, but remember your recap video is to not just capture what happened, it’s also to capture the heart and spirit of what happened - and sometimes things need a little nudge to visually reflect that.
For example, I knew during this school clean-up event that the reveal of taking the tape off the basketball backboard was going to be a key moment.
I told Joe (the volunteer) a little earlier not to peel the tape off the backboard unless I was there filming it. I told him I’d be down the way getting video of people painting the map.
When it was time to peel the tape he sent someone to get me so I could capture it. Go team!
3. Don’t Overshoot
When you are covering the event ALWAYS keep your edit in mind.
If you’re planning to make a video that is 100 seconds long, you can think of it as 50 clips that are 2 seconds long (or even less if you’ll have interviews, too).
The worst thing to do for a quick edit is to have hours of footage to sort through.
Give yourself less options to choose from in editing.
50 decent clips that were shot with intention are way better than 300 unplanned in-search-of-the-perfect-money-shot clips.
For this particular video I saw that there were 4 main projects: Painting the map, gardening, picking up trash, and painting basketball hoops.
As I covered each activity I recorded clips that were only 10-15 seconds long.
For each subject I first captured a wide shot, then some mediums and close ups.
WIDE
MEDIUM
CLOSE
After doing this for each subject I knew I’d have enough material for the edit to show the full scope of the clean-up event.
Remember, when it comes to event coverage, searching for greatness can be what kills a really good AND fast project.
I hope this helps you on your next event video! If you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out on Instagram @tamariskbass (Rico Molden)
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