When putting together a video that powerfully moves people the most important element to that video is a great audio track. The following church easter video project demonstrates this principal with a simple looping background product available here combined with the “Sirius” track by Allan Parsons Project (avaialable from itunes) and a message on the Victory of the Cross of Christ by David Wilkerson. The result was this:
We wanted our Easter Service to focus on what happened as a result of the cross rather than focussing on only the cross.
So How Was it Put Together
The Video was made all in adobe Premier. So if you don’t have after effects, you can still put together something like this using just video editing software such as Vegas, Final Cut, Premiere or even Imovie or Windows Movie Maker. The basic steps were as follows:
1) Downloaded the Easter Background Video and Imported it into Premiere and placed it on the timeline repeatedly
2) Imported the sermon by David Wilkerson. Cut out the parts I wanted from it and placed it under the easter background video on the timeline. Added a reverb effect to it.
3) Imported the song “Sirius” which I had downloaded from Itunes and layed that on a second audio track under the sermon. Cutting it precisely so I could repeat the intro a second time to build anticipation and so the song built at the time I wanted it to
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4) Added a crowd cheering sound effect to a third audio track (I got mine from the loops library on my computer but sound effects like this are usually available for free online). The crowd does cheer in David Wilkerson’s Sermon but it doesn’t come through very loudly. Adding this sound effect gave me some room to control the level of the crowd cheering and increase drama.
5) Add in the text titles and overlay them above the background video track. With the Audio in place I am now able to place text in where it fits with the audio to add emphasis. The font used was Century Gothic Bold – A perfect font to use with video because of it’s clarity and contemporary feel.
6) And that was about it! Just added in fade in and fade out effects to the video and audio. (the fade out was cut out on the example video above but on the original was there).
I had just a few hours to put the video together so naturally wasn’t really able to build an video animation for it. These backgrounds and countdowns now available at churchmediaresource.com are ideal kickstarters to your next video project.
Finally here is the reverb set up in Premiere for David Wilkersons Sermon:
That’s a great track by Alan Parson’s Project. What are your thoughts re copyright?
Yeah its always good to consider copyright issues with these things. I don’t really know what’s fully required but my thoughts are: Firstly a legitimate copy of the audio is a must (ie one you have purchased) and secondly an acknowledgement of the song and the artist somewhere on the video (which i didn’t really do in the above video itself but in the write up above it). A couple years ago I noticed network ads in Australia started acknowledging the songs they were using in their ads and promos so I guess using a song in a church ad would be a similar situation with maybe a little lower third with the song name and artist.
For our last easter production service we used massive screens to project some easter images and videos. We found it such an effective way of impacting people with the message of easter. Thanks for the article.
Love the audio sound track… its true, it makes simple video look great
Thanks for taking the time to show this. The video is very impacting
I am not able to see the video on YouTube. It says it was blocked in my country. Is there somewhere else I can see it?