Testimonies are an important part of the fellowship that goes along with a church. They allow us to rejoice together with someone who has been blessed and they provide another means of giving praise to God.
As a church grows it can be more difficult to use testimonies from the congregation. Video testimonies allow you to plan your service and keep it on schedule while still allowing congregation members to benefit from each other's testimonies. A well-edited video can turn a slightly nervous 30-minute talk into a powerful focused 2-minute testimony.
One of the easiest places to start with a video testimony is tithing. Showing a video during the offering where a layperson tells about their experience trusting in God and how He provided financially can encourage others to grow in their faith in the area of finances. Most churches receive letters from time to time from people with testimonies. Perusing the letters can give you a good starting place and let you find the testimonies that would be easy to convey on video.
Another good place to start is with the church staff. While it is good to utilize members of the congregation, staff can be a good starting point and will help your members connect better with those who are serving them.
When shooting the video you will need two types of shots. First you will need the actual interview. Second you will need cut away shots to keep the transitions smooth between edits. Ideally the cut away shots should be related to the testimony and help tell the story visually.
For the interview you will need some type of setting that allows the person being filmed to be comfortable. If they don't look comfortable on tape, it will be more difficult to use the footage. Sometimes going on location into their home works well, other times it is better to have them come to the church or some other location. It depends on the story and the individual.
From a visual point of view the most important element in the interview is the lighting. It is a good idea to do some test shots first to make sure you know how your scene will look when the tape is played on a TV or on your projector. Often times what looks great on your camera LCD looks washed out on a projector in a large sanctuary.
Generally the more light the better. However, it is important to make sure you don't cast any odd looking shadows on the subjects face. Also be aware that different lights are slightly different colors. Your eyes tend to compensate for this when you are looking at a scene, but it can show up when you are watching a taped video.
The best way to adjust for different colors of light is to use the white balance feature of your video camera. You'll have to read the manual for your particular camera, but basically the white balance allows you to tell the camera what is supposed to show up as white. Usually you do this by holding up a white piece of paper, pointing the camera at it and pushing a button to set the white balance. It is best to position the paper where the subject's head will be, so their face is balanced properly. This is generally an area that you will have to experiment with, so expect to try several different things before you get it where it looks right.
Using the sun as your light source can be a good way to make sure that the scene is well lit. Be sure to watch out for any harsh shadows. You will usually get the best results if the subjects face is being lit indirectly instead of straight on. You can experiment with using a large sheet of white poster board to bounce sun light back toward the subject to help fill in shadows.
The hour before sunset and the hour after sunrise is often referred to as the "Golden Hour" because the sun light is diffused and has a golden tone that can make skin tones look really good on video. Usually with people's schedules this isn't an option, but it is good to be aware of.
The most important part of the interview is the actual sound. If the video is less than perfect, there are ways to work around it and use other shots to cover up problems, but if the audio is bad on a clip, it is pretty much useless.
If you have a choice you should avoid using you camera's built in mic for interviews. They tend to pickup everything else in the room. Clip on microphones called lavier mics that attach to the subjects collar seem to be a good balance of quality and cost. You can get mics like this for $30 to $50. Your camera should have an audio input that you can plug the microphone into. Be sure to test your audio before shooting the interview. Some cameras require that certain menu settings be configured to tell it to use the external input. It is better to discover this before the shoot than afterwards when you are trying to edit. Some video cameras will allow you to plug in a set of headphones to monitor the sound as you are filming. Using the headphones helps make sure that you know exactly what is being recorded. What the microphone picks up can be significantly different from what you hear with your ears.
There are several ways to do interviews, but the simplest is to have the person conducting the interview off camera asking the questions. When you edit you don't include any of the questions. You just put their answers together into a logical story.
The person asking the questions needs to ask open ended questions that will get the subject to tell their story. They also need to make sure that they get on video all the parts of the story that are needed for the video. It is easy for someone to tell you their testimony while you setup your camera and accidentally forget to repeat important parts while the tape is rolling.
Cut away shots serve two purposes. First they help tell the story of the testimony in a visual way. Second they give you a way to cover edits in the interview so everything flows smoothly.
It is probably easier to shoot the cut away shots after you've started editing the interview, but most of the time you won't have that luxury. You need to listen for key parts of the testimony that could be captured on tape. This can be as simple as asking to film some daily activity or as complicated as re-enacting a situation or experience.
Here are a few ideas of "generic" cut away shots that may be useful depending on the testimony. Shots of the husband and wife coming into church on Sunday morning. Shots of the family setting the table. Shots of the husband or wife getting in their car to go to work. Shots of the family eating dinner.
The best shots of course are the ones that are part of the story, but generic shots gives you something to work with in the editing process.
Generally for a 3 minute video you will probably need to shoot about 30 minutes to 2 hours worth of footage. As your skills increase in knowing exactly what you want, you may be able to trim this down, but it is far better to have extra footage than not enough. The cutaway shots will vary depending on the situation, but it is unlikely that you will start editing and decide that you have too many cutaway shots.
It is important to remember that just because someone gave their testimony in a certain order, that doesn't mean that that's the best order to present it on video. Obviously you don't want to change the meaning of what they are sharing, but don't worry about jumping around on your tape to arrange things in a way that will make the most sense to your audience.
In my experience there is a three step process to creating testimony videos that works very effectively:
A. Concentrate on creating an audio track that tells the story. Don't worry about what is going on visually, just make sure that you can listen to the testimony with your eyes closed and understand what happened. Make sure that the sound flows smoothly. Sometimes you'll need to go back and forth in aligning two clips, so what is said sounds natural.
B. Use cutaway shots and transitions to smooth out the cuts on the interviews. If you made the audio sound natural in the previous step, you may have some sections where the edits cause the subjects head to jump or where it is visually obvious that you made a cut. Switching to a cutaway shot will keep the transition natural and retain the flow of what is being said. Add other cutaway shots as appropriate to illustrate the story.
C. Add music to key areas and to help bring closure to the end of the testimony.
There are other methods, but this gives you a good starting point that helps make sure you end up with a coherent story. Once you get the audio track in place, be sure to have someone else listen to it to make sure it makes sense. It is easy to get wrapped up in the story and forget that your viewers won't know everything you do about the testimony.