Video is one of the most unforgiving and unpredictable technologies. I can remember the first year or two after my church gained the ability to play clips of movies in service. Our pastor was forever trying to find a clip to punctuate his sermons…until he accidentally included that a clip that swore.
Oops!
Showing videos can be tricky enough in churches, but what happens when churches create those videos?
Behold—Bad Church Video
What is “Bad Church Video?” It’s exactly what it sounds like: a collection of church-made videos so bad that they’re good.
Actually, that’s not true. They’re just bad.
One of my first posts for ChurchMag was about how terrible the church announcement time is. I then opined that maybe video announcements were the way to go. Maybe I was wrong?
Before you head there yourself, here are a few of my least favorites:
The Not-a-Thriller
[via YouTube]
The Consummate Professionals
[via YouTube]
The Stuff of Nightmares
[via YouTube]
Sadie says
Wow. Just WOW.
The membership INTRO class is from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.? Good grief! I wonder how many credit hours you have to log in confirmation. 🙂
Phil Schneider says
No one ever said assimilating was easy. 🙂
Eric Dye says
Oh. My.
Phil Schneider says
Right?
David says
Thriller isn’t all that bad. They tried.
But the others. If you can’t be bothered to say it live, you shouldn’t say it recorded.
Phil Schneider says
No, it’s not badly done, but isn’t it in bad taste? I mean, my grandparents would be furious to see something like this in church. Now, granted, I don’t usually do things in my church based upon what my grandparents would LIKE, but I do try to consider what would OFFEND them.
Justin says
The third one isn’t my style, but it isn’t horrible. We shoot for a 2 or 2 and a half minute video of announcements. For us, it saves time in the service because there aren’t 75 um let’s see’s in the middle of it.
Phil Schneider says
You’re right. It’s not horrible; it’s just awkward. Really, a lot of these on the site aren’t *terrible*—it’s the lack of context that makes them bad.
Chip Dizard says
Funny Phil, I’m the media director at my new church and I’m starting to roll out church announcements. I’ll be sure not to have mine look like anything like these!
haha
Phil Schneider says
Chip, with your rep for fantastic videos, I wouldn’t worry about it!
Timothy Sills says
I really liked the thriller one until they started talking about the church announcements, it was a horrible transition!
And yeah everything else was just bad.
Phil Schneider says
Yeah, some of these videos get so big in their opening and then crumbles in the transition.
TrisTara Diaz says
On a related note, how do you do displays of your announcements throughout the church building?
Phil Schneider says
Around the building? We use TV’s that play a Flickr slideshow (via Apple TV) of custom designed announcement slides. Incidentally, we just started doing video announcements in service. Needless to say, I’ve got an eye on quality control.
TrisTara Diaz says
What size tv did you choose? Also, we’ve been having issues with appleTV interfering with our GarageBand recording of the service….any clues on that?
Phil Schneider says
Size? I think we went with 46″ or 52″? I can’t remember. Sorry. I didn’t purchase them. As far as GarageBand, I don’t know how that’s possible? Our Apple TV connects directly into an HD TV, and there’s no interaction with our recording computer. How have you guys set your recording up?
TrisTara Diaz says
Thanks. There are 2 apple tvs, one in the prayer room and another in the children’s checkin. They’re both connected there to tvs, but for some reason when they’re plugged in, they try to communicate with the Apple computer in the soundbooth that’s running the garageband.
Phil Schneider says
That’s very odd. I wonder if the recording computer’s iTunes library is being shared? That could be the point of connection.