Streaming our weekly worship services to Facebook Live used to be an easy operation.  We would just turn the camera on during our live worship service.  No more.  COVID-19 has seen to that.  Protecting the health of our staff and other worship participants has become a priority that has necessitated implementing special measures to produce a recording of our weekly worship services.  

 

Here's how it is done.  

 

Worship is now recorded in advance in separate segments on Wednesdays and Thursdays.  The music pieces are recorded separately from the other elements of worship.  This procedure is based on the objective of minimizing the number of people in the chapel at any given time and always maintaining social distancing and wearing masks when those present are not speaking.  To film the main elements of worship, Randy Phillips controls the camera from the back of the chapel.  He uses an iPad to pan the camera and adjust the sound as necessary.  The soloist arrives later and uses earbuds to hear the music that Edwin recorded earlier.  The soloist is alone in the chapel when singing, with Ralph directing from the hallway and operating the camera.  

 

It's now time to edit and assemble the pieces.  The award for Best Film Editing goes to--Ralph Stannard.  It usually takes Ralph about 4-5 hours to assemble the different pieces of the worship service into a single video.  On Fridays, Ralph delivers to Rosy a USB stick with the worship video.  Rosy uploads the video and schedules it to be "premiered" on Facebook at 10:30 AM on Sunday mornings.  During the "Premiere," Jessie and Rosy respond (as "FPCR") to some of the Facebook comments offered. That's a wrap.