Multi media and technology resources for creative worship

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Permalink Reply by Andy on June 6, 2008 at 10:06am

Aside from the basics of PowerPoint, what I tend to use are video clips from popular television and cinema. Everything from Seinfeld and The Office to Lord of the Rings, Spiderman, X-Men, and Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. But we have Media Shout on the way as well, so we'll see how fooling around with that goes.

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Permalink Reply by Richard Webb on June 8, 2008 at 1:33pm

In our congregation we use all kinds of media resources. When preaching we use a lot of movie clips, still shots that work as metaphors and, oh yes, powerpoint, often to help the congregation know where we're going.

Recently we made the move from SongShowPlus to ProVideoPlayer (http://www.renewedvision.com/pvp.php) which runs on a Mac platform. So far so good. It's non-linear in architecture which is great for following a worship leader when he or she is jumping around in the song. The one thing we don't like is that, unlike SongShowPlus, multiple copies can't share a common database so we're having to use a flash drive to keep all our venues' databases up-to-date.

Right now we're also experimenting with image magnification in our worship space. Our goal is to increase intimacy without getting cheesy. We're discovering that this is a tricky task. Again so far so good.

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Permalink Reply by Rick Deasley on June 13, 2008 at 2:51pm

MediaShout seems to be the presentation tool of choice right now with built-in Bibles, importable song database, etc. and the ability to accommodate spontaneity at service time. A great source for thematic video is http://www.highwayvideo.com -- very well-produced. A source for worship backgrounds (stills and movies) is http://www.worshipfilms.com

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Permalink Reply by Steven Sjoberg on June 18, 2008 at 3:51pm

Steve in Fargo!

Right now we are using Easy Worship and having great results. In the long term, i would really like to use pro presenter. We also make a lot of our own videos and use clips from movies from places like sermonspice.com and recently found the recources at WingClips.com. We have many backgrounds from Igniter Media, and Hot Digitalcakes,

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Permalink Reply by Justin Johnson on June 19, 2008 at 11:42pm

So, I see almost everyone who responded thus far uses Media Shout. How easy is it to use? I am so far a one person media team for my own sermons and have been using Powerpoint, which is so buggy and lacking in stuff I would love to do. Such as this past Easter, I wanted to play 4 songs throughout the whole presentation without having to use a CD. Man what a pain.
I just bought a Mac and am interested in using Keynote, which seems to have more functionality.
The church though is very interested in Media Shout, so any info would be helpful.

Now besides a projector and laptop, the best extra was a long range remote for advancing slide. We used to just use a wireless mouse, but the remote has changed my life, since I can walk all around without having to get into range. The new range is like 500 feet or something like that.

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Permalink Reply by Jake Bouma on June 27, 2008 at 1:44pm

Richard: Good list.

For churches that are small enough to be without "graphic designers" and "media specialists" and so on, it can be difficult to find quality audio, video, and graphics to use in worship.

Here are a couple more:
CreativeMYK: "Free Christian graphics for download shared by artists around the world."
Thinker Labs: "An open source experiment" where several Canadian churches give away their videos/illustrations/images.
Flickr's Church Marketing Lab pool: A good source of inspiration to see how other churches are designing their literature and graphics.

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Permalink Reply by Taylor Charboneau on June 29, 2008 at 11:00pm

We have MediaShout! We the technical production team love it, the worship leaders get frustrated with it. The reason why the worship leaders get frustrated, is because they haven't been officially trained on it. The initial learning of it is quite hard and confusing, but after the learning curve, it is simple. I make the presentations for sunday everyweek, and I love all of the features. At my church, I am the lucky one who gets to do it because I am the Assitant Technical Director, and the Video Lead has a full time job. :)

I love MediaShout, but if I had the option, I would switch to Renewed Visions "Pro Presenter". It is more flexible, has a countdown time that overlays your graphics to whatever time you want, and it is on a Mac platform. Thats all good things right there.

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