Live streaming from Central Church, Augusta
USA - Executive pastor Josh Parker and his team at Central Church in Augusta, Maine, have started livestreaming their Saturday evening and Sunday services.
Streamed on Facebook and YouTube, the services are providing the church’s community with an enriched and engaging worship experience, complete with production-level audio, graphics, and lighting. Still, as Easter approached, pastor Parker and his team were seeking to add an extra, and even more immersive element to their online services. This ultimately led them to journey 147 miles south to the Events United’s Studio Lab in Derry, New Hampshire.
“During Easter we always look for creative ways to reach more people by expanding production,” said Parker. “Once it became clear we would not be able to hold our usual Easter services, we started searching for innovative ways to improve our online production level. We had great experiences working with Events United before on our arena services, and most recently, I’ve been impressed by how quickly Tim Messina and his team have worked to provide a very generous and affordable online recording option for churches and events at their space in Studio Lab. It became clear to us that this was our Easter service solution.”
On Sunday 29 March, pastor Parker, along with a group of associate pastors and musicians, took to the Virtual Event Stage set up at the Events United Studio Lab to record a special service that will be shared on Facebook and YouTube on Easter Sunday. “The majority of our services, including the worship and sermon, were recorded at their studio,” he said. “We will also be incorporating some additional pre-produced welcome, invitation, and music videos that will be done in-house, but the impactful moments were created at Events United.”
Adding to the impact of those moments was Events United’s collection of over 100 Chauvet Professional fixtures that included Maverick MK2 Spot, Ovation ellipsoidals, and Ovation CYC I FC units as well as F2 video panels. Positioned on eight vertical uprights located four apiece on each side of the stage as well as on two overhead rows of truss, the fixtures enveloped the stage in light for the more intense moments of the service, while also providing specials for individual performers and soft washes for more reflective periods.
“The rig gives us a great deal of flexibility to create a variety of looks in a relatively small space,” said Jon Martell, production design manager at Events United. “We have been using variations of this rig for videoing church services since the pandemic started. “In this case, we added four STRIKE 4s to deliver extra punch. These fixtures had a big impact on the look we created by washing everything with a glorious tungsten shade that looked excellent on camera.”
(Jim Evans)

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