Quick quiz: name the first host of 71o1.
That would be me.
Sometime very late in February 2011 – unfortunately, I don’t remember exactly what day – I set out to shoot the very first test episode for 71o1. To this point I hadn’t discussed my ideas with anyone, and I wanted to see what my ideas would look like before I went public with it. I also wanted to see what the technical challenges really were.
To make the editing quick and simple I was going to use the handheld camcorder to film. (I say film and will continue to say film, even though that’s anachronistic. I think most people understand what I mean when I say, “I’m going to film this,” that wouldn’t understand if I said, “I’m going to digitize this.”)
Another issue I hadn’t resolved was where I would film. I chose our church’s youth room for it’s openness and lighting. The LED lighting system seemed like it would provide a clean, even light for filming. The room is out of the way and seemed to be a good place for future filming.
The reality was that the youth room’s lighting was only somewhat adequate. The sound of the room turned out to be a problem because of the high volume of the room’s air conditioning. Another problem was finding a specific spot to shoot from that would provide a good background.
Two test shoots were done. The first was posted on March 1, 2011 and was the same basic form as most of our first 400 shows have been – 1, give the date and name of the show, 2, short video bumper with show logo, 3, short bits of the news ending with “this is 71o1.” The very first test also included something that is a regular feature of 71o1 and actually predates the show – the Faith Builder.
The second test shoot was made and posted nine days later. It was the second test that included the very first “outtake”. It wasn’t really an outtake, but rather a silly pre-planned tag. However, it reinforced to me that these videos would need something funny to draw some interest.
The test shoots revealed several important things. First, the youth room wasn’t going to work as a studio. Even if I figured out the lighting system, the room’s air conditioning system was too loud. Secondly, the camcorder wasn’t going to work either. It just wasn’t that good of a camera and almost gave a fish-eye view. It also didn’t have XLR inputs that would allow us to use good microphones.
I knew we could work these issues out. It would just take time.
71o1 went on the back burner and would stay there for over a year. The reason it would take so long wasn’t the technical issues, monetary issues, or even time issues. It was simply that I hadn’t told anyone about this and had not fully committed to doing it.
In early 2012, my senior pastor, Phil Goss, began pushing the idea of having video announcements in our services. There is a group of people that meet weekly to bring brainstorm with Pastor Goss about the services and sermons. During our discussions the video announcement idea was mentioned and the others talked about who might be the hosts for such a thing. Their idea was that it be younger people, to give a younger identity to the church. I didn’t enter any of the discussion, because I knew what I wanted to do, but I wasn’t ready to commit to it yet. I also wasn’t crazy about the idea of having younger people be the hosts – I wanted to host!
Over the next few months, however, I reluctantly came to agree with the thinking of using people younger than myself as hosts. I also internally committed to producing the show as I had been envisioning it. And I decided that rather than shooting in HD, as I had intended doing since the beginning, I would shoot in SD. This would allow me to use the bigger JVC camera and output directly to my computer using the Firewire connection on the camera. It would also reduce video rendering times.
I had purchased a small Chroma Pop background from Digital Juice to use as a green screen. I also had acquired a number of Digital Juice backgrounds over the last few years. I decided to use our former sanctuary, now known as the Chapel, as our studio. For the very first official shoot, I would use the stage lighting in the chapel.
I had previously used the Chapel as a studio for filming an anniversary video for the church in 2008 and for small groups videos in 2011 and 2012.
The last piece of the puzzle was figuring out who would serve as host for 71o1. Or hosts.
[Next: We begin]