Creating Media: Best Practices // Jeff Petersen, Director of Media and Production at Granger Community Church.
1. Always try to do the best with what we have in the time we have.
2. Start simple and finish it
3. Shorter is better. “No one will enjoy and appreciate a video as much as the people who made it.” Our goal is from 30 seconds to an absolute 5 minutes. Even in a teaching piece with Pastor Rob, we try to trim short of 10 minutes.
4. Building a Team. You can’t do it alone. It’s worth the extra time to develop a team and train as you go.
5. Never ever put up unflattering or joking pictures. Inside references and practical jokes destroy your credibility with outsiders., “They just publicly embarrassed that person, maybe they’ll do that to me someday.” And then no one wants to play with you anymore. Be vigilant.
6. Bad video is better than bad audio. Bad audio is irritating and makes people say, “please make it stop!” Good tools, Good locations, low ambient noise, no interference, etc.”
7. Be prepared. Check all gear carefully before the shoot. Do it the night before. Batteries, tape, tripod plate!
8. Pre-production. Storyboards. SO THAT YOU KNOW TO GET EVERYTHING YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO GET. Write down the idea. Write down the picture you see in your head. Write down something!!! Even stick figure drawings with directions like “push in” or whatever is great.
9. There’s almost nothing we do any more that isn;t touched by multiple people. HONOR VOLUNTEERS. tip: tell people, “It’s going to be a morning” or “It’s going to be an afternoon”, DON’T LOCK YOURSELF IN TO A SPECIFIC TIME FRAME. You don’t ever get into trouble by telling people to go home early. I almost NEVER let people leave before we’ve gotten everything we’re there to get. Too many bad things can happen. I will push it as hard as I can to make sure people can stay until we’re finished. But I don’t ask volunteers to stay and help me clean up. And I set up earlier. I try to maximize the time they’re here.
10. Deliver the goods! You’re never done editing – you just run out of time. You have to make calls along the way for time vs. production. (ie: don’t start a Motion project, if you know you don’t have 30 hours to let it render!) GCC’s delivery date is Wednesday. it is shown to people. Deliver the 80%. Then you’ve got time to Deliver the 100% IF YOU HAVE TIME.
11. We TEST EVERYTHING. We want to see it as it will be shown to make sure everything is right. We test click tracks, we test looks on the projectors. Sometimes there are computer errors – sometimes there are problems you can;t predict.
12. Always have ONE Director. There’s 1 person in charge. It’s their responsibility to make sure this thing happens – they see it all the way through.
SOFTWARE: Adobe Suites, After Effects, Motion, FCP. There’s one guy that uses Vegas though.
Jermination 
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