Camera Work

It's a few before Christmas, and Rock Harbor has been preparing for their special Christmas services throughout the entire week leading up to this. This Saturday and Sunday were the first two days that the Christmas services were being done, and needless to say there was a lot of excitement and some nervousness around the church. Unlike regular services, this special Christmas service incorporated a choir, dancers, and A LOT of special light cues to go with it. The sound mixers had more microphones to handle, and for the Sunday night services there were three cameras being used as opposed to just one.

My main job for that weekend was to help run one of the extra cameras during the 7pm Sunday night service. These cameras served a different purpose than the main camera because they were not used for any live feeds. Instead, they were being used to record the service from different angels in hopes of incorporating them into a video later. Fortunately for me, this meant that I could get some video experience without having anyone see my mistakes.

For the most part, the job was extremely easy. I was operating a camera that was positioned in one of the back corners of the room, and my main goal was to capture the choir, worship team, and audience. I controlled the camera by moving two large handles that were attached to it. This made it possible to pan up, down, left, or right very smoothly. During the worship sets, I basically panned back and fourth on close-ups of the choir. Later during a moment in the service where the congregation lit candles, I panned around the entire room to capture everything that was happening the best I could.

I only faced a few problems during that night. For one, my camera was mounted on a portable tripod on the floor. This meant that I had to be careful were I placed it because people continually walk down the isles and could trip over the tripod. Another problem I faced was that the tripod did not extend very high. As a result, when people near me stood up or walked in front of the camera, they easily blocked my frame; and I had little control in correcting the problem. I made some efforts to physically lift the camera enough above the audience to get a good frame, but it was difficult to keep it still and level. For the most part, I resorted to focusing on anything that was not obstructed by people - which was mainly the choir because they stood on risers.

Overall, I found this experience to be intriguing yet somewhat un-challenging. I hope in the future that I can get more experience with the main camera since it is set up for a better display.