Video production has come a long way in the last decade. What used to be the domain of an expert few with very expensive tools has become widely accessible and affordable to the masses. From start to finish, learning a nonlinear process for creating video will be the most effective means of putting today's hardware and software to work creatively on the wide screen.

From a ministry standpoint, the nonlinear process for editing can give the church a powerful way to draw their message out of footage when it is also applied to the production itself. It can also be enormously liberating to the entire creative video process.

The brainstorming, creating and producing of video traditionally followed a linear approach. Storyboarding, or scripting, had been a baseline for video production since its inception. In North America, television grew directly out of existing radio broadcasters, and so the birth of our present-day video process actually has its roots in radio. Unfortunately, radio is a word-based medium--scripting is a matter of painting pictures with words.

Translating this process to television in the early days made the result heavy on exposition, with less emphasis on using images to their maximum effect. To some degree as the process matured some of this "voice-centered" philosophy has stayed with us even to this day. You'll see much more "talking head"-type video production in North America than just about anywhere else in the world.

Video to this point had also been a logical process, from beginning to end, because tape-based editing really required heavy pre-planning. Editing on tape was essentially assembling the video from start to finish. It required knowing all points in between prior to final editing. Major changes were difficult.

Freedom comes. Non-linear editing opened a new world of possibilities. Using Apple Final Cut Pro, Avid or Adobe Premier, the structure of a video can now be laid out and changed at will. There is no need to edit from the beginning. You can start at the end, or in the middle. Major edit changes are a mere click of the mouse to adjust timing, transition points, overall length or audio. Exploring more than one option for a video sequence is as quick as clicking copy and paste. The freedom available in a nonlinear environment allows the image to finally become the focal point of the process. You can begin with key images and build a video around it. It's total freedom for the video producer.

This begs the question, if editing is no longer tied to tape, why do we still apply a tape-based process to production? Can we rethink brainstorming, storyboarding, scripting and shooting to take advantage of a nonlinear process?

Brainstorming. When we brainstorm for a nonlinear video, the crucial question to answer is “What do we want the video to say?” In other words, what’s the message that the video needs to clearly articulate? Defining the purpose is also the first step in a linear production, but is less crucial because the purpose can be refined in the rigid scripting process. In nonlinear production, the purpose must be solid from the very beginning or the editing can get bogged down in shifting priorities.

The “takeaway,” or central theme of the video remains the driving force in ministry video production. A video may share a story of how God is working, or promote an upcoming event, or give an overview of a ministry. In a nonlinear process the only crucial element to begin with is what the video needs to say in the broadest sense. A clearly defined concept of what the video is designed to communicate is the only element now essential to begin production.

Scripting. In a linear process, a script is a key element in planning the production. In a non-linear process, however, a script may not even be necessary. Instead, a shot list or interview questions are used to determine the video material to be gathered. Remember, we can also script later on in the process--during the editing--as we bring the footage together. The footage itself can help us determine the script. We aren’t locked in to a pre-planned sequence of shots, but instead are free to let the strongest material shine as the script is adjusted during the production. In the linear process, everything was driven by the script. In the nonlinear process, everything is driven by the concept and the script is, if anything, just a helpful framework.

Shooting. In the pre-digital world, shooting video was also an expensive process. The quality of the finished product was largely wrapped up in the quality of the taping. Good cameras and tapes were expensive--editing caused generational loss and the quality of the original had to make up for that. You wanted the highest quality originally produced on very expensive equipment to compensate for the loss of quality through the editing process.

The digital process is again just the opposite. There is no generational loss with digital tape. Today's $2,500 pro-sumer camcorder has the quality of a $25,000 camera in the late-1990s. Properly lit, it may not even be possible for the average viewer to tell the difference between a pro-sumer format like mini-DV and a pro-level format like DVCPRO. I'm sure many video pros will argue this point, but if I can get 80% of the quality for 20% of the total cost, I have to wonder just how important that other 20% in quality is. Ministry dollars being what they are, I go for the most bang for the buck. Right now, that's in the pro-sumer realm.

Digital tape can also be re-recorded without signal degredation, and blank tapes are cheap. All this adds up to a shooting process where tape quality and equipment quality is not as important as capturing useful content. In short, get a relatively good but inexpensive digital video camera, forget about signal quality and generational loss, and concentrate on shooting. In fact, shoot more than you'll need--much more than you'll need. Grab anything that looks interesting, because you can always tape over it later if you don't like it.

Why not forgo tape altogether? That's possible and not all that expensive with today's hard-drive video storage systems. But safety does count for something in the production business--and it bears mentioning that tape is a good backup in case something goes wrong with the hard drive. Tape, too, has a pretty good shelf-life--much more than a recordable CD or DVD.

Editing. Here's where the fun really begins in the non-linear process--and where the biggest change and benefit can be found versus traditional video production. A fast, video-capable 1TB hard disk is about $350. It can hold hours of broadcast-quality HD footage that can be random-accessed. If you are editing as well as producing, you can skip the cataloging process entirely and go directly to editing--just dump everything to the computer. You can bounce through your video on the hard drive, selecting and grabbing clip segments as will and placing them into your timeline. You can experiment with different sequences of clips at will--the equivalent of writing and re-writing the script throughout the editing process.

Tomorrow's ministry videos will not be made via a ridig scripting and shooting process. They'll be made primarily in the editing room. I'm not a big fan of George Lucas' latest movie offerings, but he's a great example of someone who understands this principle. He refers to shooting as "gathering material" and works on the sequences and story in the editing phase. The last Star Wars folks could have been a better movies, but the framework for making them is going to be duplicated by every major production from now on. All digitial features that focus on editing content until it is "just right" will become the norm.

This is great news for ministry, because our desire is to focus on what God wants to communicate through the medium. There's no better way to do this than to have the freedom during shooting to "follow God's lead," then to use the editing phase to draw out the best presentation possible. The digital process is not only more liberating in a creative sense, but it's significantly less expensive.

Digital video and non-linear editing is not about Hollywood-style effects on a computer desktop. It's about making stronger, more content-focused video. If you are unwilling to explore the "what if" options available in a non-linear world, you've missed a great opening to a more effective video ministry.

About the Author. Eugene L. Mason has more than two decades of experience in ministry communications and technologies. More...