Write 31 Days- Day 9 Doing more with less...if you're lucky

Creativity finds the oddest places and times to demand attention.

In my Sunday morning activities I normally have two cameras in the sanctuary manned by camera operators, two point-of-view POV cameras set on the stage (usually one on the keyboard and one on a guitar player) and a GoPro mounted within the drum set. The main cameras are on comms with me directing "go here" or "pan across to position 5",  stuff like that. It can make for a pretty dynamic visual experience when everything is firing on all cylinders.

And then there's a day like today. One of our brand new cameras decided it would go out of focus and stop responding no matter what we did, but it could "hobble along" if we cycled the power and left it alone at one certain focal length setting. Because of a change in our output settings for the new cameras we couldn't use the GoPro. And one of the POV cameras was not useful because of a change in the stage setup due to a last-minute personnel change. So we went from a nice 5-camera setup to a marginal 2-1/2 camera situation. Oh, and I have a new camera guy who hasn't worked with this camera before. He's on the broken camera.

2 cams down, 1 won't zoom....creative problem solving
at it's finest early on a Sunday morning

So the "creative" in myself and the team has to figure out how to make the best of what we have. How do we give the visual support to the performers and speakers that we normally do? I leaned heavily on the experienced camera guy and had the Technical Director help disguise the quick camera movements by the good camera swinging across the stage in quick cuts to/from the static cams. It's teamwork. I don't know that it would be considered artwork and I'm pretty sure no one is getting an Emmy, but I hope that to the casual observer it was a normal Sunday at church......even if I was grinding my teeth flat at the time.