Video Worship Backgrounds

I’ve always been an idea guy. As such, there have been a few projects in my life that are permanently marked unfinished. Thankfully this isn’t one of them. Today I hit the “publish” button on a purchase page for backgrounds that I’ve been working on for over a year. The journey has come to an end.

I’ll never forget the day I shot the first video. It didn’t make the cut, but then again only 4% of them did. I remember climbing up a mountain in Tennessee back in those days, only to climb a much higher mountain in the Peruvian Andes ten months later. This has been a remarkable project, and as I sit here tonight (about to go to bed at a reasonable hour for the first time in over a week) I can honestly say that the journey has meant as much to me as the final product.

…but the final product totally rocks!

Nothing about worship backgrounds today, but I did manage to find something else equally helpful.

Seven reasons you should part with your money for  this…

1. These guys know their stuff. Dustin is AMAZING with a mixer.
2. We all have room for improvement, even church audio guys.
3. Their video production is gorgeous.
4. I played the most important solo of my life completely deaf because of bad mixing.
5. It’s stupid cheap.
6. If it doesn’t work, they give you your money back.
7. Gorgeous audio pairs well with gorgeous HD video worship backgrounds.

Go buy it today.

Posting here isn’t one of my strong suits. Luckily though, color grading is. Like I’ve been saying all along, video worship backgrounds shouldn’t be lifeless and boring. When was the last time you were flipping through the channels on your TV and you recognized a show even though none of the characters or settings were present in that particular shot. That’s what color grading does. It gives shots a cohesive “look,” or in this case, a varied look. I want your church services and youth groups to get the most use out of these video backgrounds and am therefore creating a wide variety of looks. It’s kind of the opposite of what you’d normally do on a project, but it makes for a good test of my skills and my computer hardware (the full 1080p HD video is killing my machine).

While all of the files dissolve back into themselves at the end, I’ve actually been able to make several of the files into seamless loops already. Unlike animations, this generally isn’t doable with something organic like live action video, but why let a little thing like difficulty get in the way of awesome worship backgrounds.

Bringing you HD Video Worship Backgrounds since 2009,

Daniel

Update: The worship backgrounds are now here! Check them out.

Where else do you go when you need some awesome sunny beach video worship backgrounds? The Sunshine State of course! After two days of waking up way too early (did you know there’s a 5 AM just like there’s a 5 PM?), I’ve got more beach video than you can imagine. We were hoping to catch the shuttle launch while we were down there, but thanks to some nasty weather, that was a no go.

Here’s the first shot from the first morning. I was totally in love with the skies.

While shooting the ocean sunrise was fun for the first fifteen minutes or so, I quickly realized that if I didn’t change something I was going to have a lot of video that looked alike. Thus began the hunt to see how many different perspectives and subjects I could find. While this isn’t even the best of the more abstract stuff (think tripod and stupid-expensive camera out in the water shooting straight down as the water rushes in and out), it did lend itself more to being a still image.

This last one I got really lucky on. There were plenty of birds around, but for some reason they refused to fly over the water. This gull came right through my shot. Again beaches look the same after a while so I’ve done a retro cross-processed look for all you hip churches. If you’ve noticed it, the haloing around the sun is from the encoding software I use to generate my dailies and won’t be on the final product. If you didn’t notice it, continue on with your blissful life, pretending you didn’t read that last sentence.

Nothing here will necessarily be on the DVD (just have to say that as a disclaimer), but they certainly create some good questions. Do you like the effected files? To me it seems simple enough to do after you buy it, but that’s because I do this for a living. I’m really wanting to create a turn-key finished product that churches can just stick right up on screen.

So let me know what you think.

I hope everyone had a fabulous 4th of July weekend. There was a cool, if not cliche, idea floating around that we would write “Happy 4th” with a sparkler and a long exposure, but instead we were out shooting video worship backgrounds of much larger fireworks until 11:30 last night. It turned out to be really amazing stuff. I’ll get some stills up soon.

This morning in church the band played “To Know Your Name.” I have no idea what the worship backgrounds were, because there were two electric guitarist, and these guys are both so good that it should be a crime for either of them to ever play rhythm. Anyway, the song was rocking when the lead broke into his solo. What struck me wasn’t the flawlessly executed riff, nor the speed at which his fingers were moving, but rather the smile on his face.  I used to play lead in a band, so I know how difficult his task was. From that smile it was evident that he had paid the price of years practicing his craft.

At the end of 2 Samuel, God commands David to offer a sacrifice on the threshing floor of Araunah. When he hears what the king wants, Araunah tells the king to take the land and oxen for the sacrifice…

“But the king replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”

Take a minute and think of just how big and holy of a God we serve. No, I literally meant that. Take a few seconds out of your day and think about that right now. We’ll wait for you…

Now, doesn’t that God deserve an excellent sacrifice? We’ve all bought something. Whether it’s crazy guitar skills bought with calloused fingertips, or an eye for production value bought with long days and nights on sets. Whether with time, money, or any other resource, there is something you have bought that you can offer to God. For him it was mad guitar skills. For David it was pound and a half of silver. For me, it’s video production. For you it’s….

Grace and Peace

Good news! The site’s barely been up a week and we’re already hitting the #4 spot for “video worship backgrounds.” Looks like we’ll be in number #1 before much longer. Then onto “worship backgrounds.” Then we can do the same thing we do every night Pinky — try to take over the world!  Or maybe not. Sorry for you if you didn’t get the animaniacs reference. At the very least, hopefully we can help churches create more engaging worship environments though.

I know the updates have been few and far between these last couple days. Sunday was my God mandated take-a-day-off day. After spending so many years in the church world with Sunday being a work day, it’s really weird for it to be a rest day again. I wish Monday had been spent shooting more worship backgrounds. Instead it was spent resolving the LCA bracket situation on the Jeep. Today was spent planning, filing for an LLC, and building a intervelometer (more on that later).

To be perfectly honest, I don’t even know if anyone is reading this blog, but if you are, could you comment and give me some input on something I’ve been working through lately? While I’ve worked for churches for years in various media capacities, this is the first time I’ve ever been independant and selling something to them. I want so bad for the company to be successful, but I want the motive for that to be pure. I know what it’s like to invite someone to a church and them be so engaged by the environment that they call back the next Saturday to ask if they can go again. It’s just tough when you have your financial livelihood competing for your motives. It’s always been my dream to create excellent media products for churches that would otherwise be cost prohibitive and let them distribute the cost. I just don’t want money to take my eyes of my mission.

I will get some more video worship background screen captures to you soon. Until then here’s something I heard this week…

May the Lord bless you, and keep you;
May the Lord make His countenance shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
May the Lord turn His countenance to you and grant you peace.
Numbers 6:24-26

Grace and Peace

Yesterday after posting, we went out to shoot. First stop was Chickamauga battlefield, but just next to it, there’s a deserted gas station. Not much moving so no good video, but I grabbed a couple of quick still shots. Here’s one right out of the camera purposefully over-exposed by about a stop…

After leaving the battle field we grabbed some pizza and headed up Lookout Mountain to get some mountain and sunset shots. Our first stop was an outcropping called Sunset Rock. It’s got some nice trees that provide “living” movement to a video rather than just a “dead” still picture. Here’s another right out of the camera…

The sun still had a little ways to go at the time, but it was partially being blocked by cloud cover. It actually turned out to work quite nice though. By shooting some close ups of the trees and rocks and letting the landscape blur in the background, the clips we ended up with look more like Oregon than Tennessee. It’s not often you can get the Pacific Northwest in the South.

Since it didn’t appear there was going to be a sunset, we went back up the mountain to see a church I adore. It’s Lookout Mountain Presbyterian Church. It’s a gorgeous stone building that looks like something you’d find in Europe. The pastor there, Joe Novenson, is the kind of guy that you just really want to get to know. Few pastors posses the combination of speaking skill, humility, and compassion that he does. Every time his message ends I wish it wouldn’t. Definitely check it out if you’re ever in the Chattanooga area.

When we got there, much to our surprise, the sun was doing amazing things with the sky. Here’s an actual screen grab from the video we took. I’ll be surprised if some form of this shot doesn’t make it to the final product.

As we were leaving the church, the Jeep made a awful metallic popping sound. The kind where you know something important just broke. Checked under the hood and didn’t see anything out of place, so we started down the hill. We got about 100 yards down the mountain, and when I hit the brakes the front passenger wheel started rubbing the wheel well. I felt sick. Pulled it over and sure enough, pop went the lower control arm bracket.

That shot won’t be making it into the final product, but I guess I’ll have something to keep me busy on Monday.

Until later, grace and peace.

I couldn’t decide whether to reference “Rocky Top” or “Chattanooga Choo Choo” in the title. We’ve move up north a state, into the mountains of Tennessee for a couple days of shooting. I do love me some mountain stream shots.

Earlier today I was scouring twitter for some people to provide input for the video backgrounds. I was really blessed by the sheer number of growing churches and ministries I came across. Looking at the front page of a website hardly qualifies one to make an calls about their doctrinal beliefs, but it is inspiring to see other churches, from a variety of backgrounds, at the very least making a strong attempt to reach a dying world. God just keeps moving his kingdom forward.

Well, it’s time for me to head out for some magic hour shots. I’ll try to post some stills next time. Until then, grace and peace.

It’s been a busy day here at Video Worship Backgrounds.

Let’s see what we did…

• Twitter account created?  check (@noboringscreens)
• Email accounts up and running? check (info@videoworshipbackgrounds.com)
• Come up with awesome idea for first commercial? check
• Do some location scouting and shot planning? check
• Contact some churches for focus group input? Had to leave something for tomorrow.

We now have a twitter account @noboringscreens. We got our email up and running. We did some location scouting.

We’re really excited to be able to provide churches with high quality video content via worship backgrounds. We’re all passionate about God and video. This is just a happy marriage of the two.

Update: The worship backgrounds are now here! Check them out.

We bring your screens to life by providing high quality HD worship background libraries. While beautiful on their own, all of our videos are purpose suited to text overlaying for your church’s worship experience. No more boring screens, and certainly no more sorting through distracting backgrounds with fast motion. We don’t mind our products staying in the background, that is why they are there.

We are always looking for ways to help churches share resources while distributing the cost. Full motion worship backgrounds is one of those ways.  Stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks, and do your worship pastor or media person a favor drop them a link to this site. We’ll appreciate it, and they’ll apprcieate it.