[Magdalen] Streaming Services

[Suzie Buchanan]

I'm using a program - HD Movie Maker Pro.  There's a free version, but I
paid the $10 for the "Pro" version - I figured my learning curve was going
to challenge me enough that I wanted all the options I might want already
available, instead of finding myself frustrated along the way.  I was
feeling frustrated enough about other things!

I make short videos with it of each part of the service as I get things in
hand - such as when someone sends me their recording of themself reading
one of the lessons.  I tend to use a static picture for background for the
audio (you can make the picture last as many seconds as the audio file is
long) and place the text in as captions (that's the slow part - matching
the amount of text I can put up with the audio, and having caption and
audio move to the next paragraph/sentence/prayer petition at the same
time).  Then there are other short videos - such as for the sermon, or for
the music.  The organist goes in once a week and records video of the
pieces I ask for.  He sets him phone on top of the organ, looking away from
himself, but it gets good audio.

Once I have all the parts of a service in hand, the program makes it very
easy to load one in after the other, and make one long video of it.  Even
with rolling "credits" at the end!  (Name of church and participants).

For most I had been using free stock pictures from pexels.com  - they have
a wide variety of free, good, photos - as background for audio, but
yesterday I went looking around our church building for our own spaces that
could work.  Such as - our reredos is hand carved by a former rector in the
1870s, and one of the angels on the top has hands folded in prayer.  I was
able to get a picture of the angel and a lot of the blank wall next to him
that I'll use as background for the text of the prayers of the people this
Sunday.  The people loved seeing the pictures of the Easter flowers in our
church from last year, that I used in this year's video.  But the pictures
behind text need to be pretty plain - not a lot of image that can interfere
with reading the text.  The parish has liked the recorded with text on
screen much better than the live stream with downloadable bulletin that we
did on Lent 4 (before my quarantine). Each time I've done one, I've learned
something new.  I might have it all figured out by the time we're back in
church together!  I used still pictures of me from Easter last year for all
except the sermon, and people have said that although they loved seeing the
church from last Easter, going forward they want more "live" me in the
recordings.

For the vigil I did manage to record the Exultet from inside the church (I
love the cavern feeling to the sound) - did it weeks before - on the day
that Rick had called me and said he wasn't feeling well.  I had that gut
feeling that I wouldn't be back in the church again before Easter to do
it!  I had wanted to light the new fire in our backyard, but the winds were
howling the two days before . . . so instead I flipped the switch and lit
our gas fireplace!  I couldn't find a stock image/video of a burning candle
that I liked for the visual with the audio for exultet . . . so I filmed 6
minutes of a burning candle in the dark myself.  It was labor intensive and
I spent a LOT of time getting Holy Week and Easter services pulled
together!  I am glad to only have one to do this week.

Our YouTube channel is at
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_gTwusmLpO3uwBi_Q6994Q
It gets very little traffic - under 40 views of the Easter service, while
our Facebook page has gotten over 400 views of the same service.  But I'll
keep putting things up on both.

Suzie

On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 3:18 PM Grace Cangialosi <gracecan at gmail.com> wrote:

> Suzie,
> I’d love to know how to “stitch” pieces of the service together. One of
> our bishops is making a sermon available for this coming Sunday for those
> of us who might want to use it, and they’re going to do more of that, but I
> don’t know how to insert it. Our former listsib Georgia DuBose partnered
> with two other churches for Palm Sunday and Easter, each doing part of the
> liturgy from their church with their organist, small choir, etc. then some
> tech guru put it all together for them. It was really fun to see the
> service move from one venue to another. Now, of course, there’s no more
> possibility for that.
>
> > On Apr 16, 2020, at 1:21 PM, Suzie Buchanan <buchanan.suzie at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > As a priest, I found it odd and even a little, to use M’s word, creepy
> to do any part of the liturgy alone in the church.  Even the one we did
> where there were two other people in the building.  I didn’t like it and it
> didn’t do much for me spiritually.
> >
> > We suspected my husband had a mild symptom case of COVID-19, so I lived
> isolated in my home from him and quarantined from the outside world for
> over 2 weeks. That meant that I couldn’t go to the church to do the
> solo-(or semisolo) liturgy bit anyway.  Instead I’ve had people record
> reading from home and email them to me and I’ve stitched all the pieces
> together into a video that was scheduled for online worship on both
> Facebook and YouTube.  I came out of that situation (quarantine) on Holy
> Saturday. Had a conversation with the vestry at our brief weekly zoom
> check-in this week, and they want us to keep doing it that way. They love
> hearing all the different voices (including some of our more elderly
> readers and some of the children), they like the pieces that show me in my
> home just like they are in theirs, and they like that this allows me to
> also put most of the words on the screen for them as well. Ease of use.
> Solidarity of place.
> >
> > But I absolutely LOVE the idea of a zoom coffee hour just before. I
> don’t do the Eucharistic prayer - just the Liturgy of the Word - and
> schedule ours at 10 so that people can go on to the Washington Cathedral
> service afterwards if they want the spiritual communion offering. But I’m
> going to add coffee hour before the service. That’s a great way to “gather”
> and know yourself to “be” with others from the church for worship.
> >
> > Suz
> >
> > Sent from my iPhone
> >
> >> On Apr 16, 2020, at 12:43 PM, ME Michaud <michaudme at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> I want to add:
> >>
> >> seeing a priest alone in an empty church is NOT something I find
> helpful.
> >> In fact, it's downright creepy.
> >> Even pornographic.
> >> -M, a member of the "liturgy is participatory" party
>