After nearly a year of schedule juggling and mid-stream retooling, I finally finished editing the video from the 2013 Benefit Dinner and Silent Auction.
The annual event was held on 27 April 2013, at Grace Church in Eden Prairie, MN. This year’s gathering featured the return of international award-winning illusionist Adrian Van Vactor (Web site), and was hosted by emcee Dr. Irv Woolf, director of the National Coalition for Purity (Web site).
In my role as communications director, I have the opportunity to use my diverse experience (from journalism, television, photography, project management, system administration, etc.) to make projects like this possible. The challenge of being a small ministry necessitates invention and creativity to accomplish the important work of ministry with a minimum (or even no) budget. There is always more than enough to do, while seemingly never enough time to accomplish it.
This project was no exception. We captured the event on three different cameras (two locked down, one following action) each with a different lens, a different aspect ratio, a different resolution, and a different color temperature; we recorded much of the audio on a yet another device, which had to be manually syncronized during editing. And speaking of editing…
After a fitful false start, I was pulled away from editing to attend to other more-urgent tasks. When I began, I had been using Adobe Premiere Pro, part of the Creative Suite, version 5 (CS5). When I returned to editing, I had upgraded to the new version, CS6; most of what I had done needed to be redone. Once again, there were other demands to take me away from editing. In the intervening time, Apple upgraded the Macintosh operating system to version 10.9, “Mavericks.” When I again returned to editing, I discovered that some critical features of CS6 did not function–at all–in Mavericks. Using CS6, I would not be able to create a DVD for delivery to donors who had been promised a copy.
This necessitated retooling completely, to FinalCut Pro X (FCPX) Apple’s high-end editing program, which is widely used for feature films. The workflow is significantly different from Premiere, which I had used for years. As I become more familiar with FCPX, I am convinced it will prove to be a vast improvement; after a difficult learning period, I was able to complete the editing, even more efficiently than I had been using Premiere.
Such are the foibles of keeping up with constantly changing communications technology. It’s a good thing the message we entrust to these media tools, by contrast, never changes. Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” However we package and deliver it, we are determined to proclaim timeless truth, with the apostle Paul, “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). Such we do.
