I’ve been a huge fan of Igniter Media’s work for a long time. The worship slides, mini movies, and bumpers they create are typically gorgeous and the price is decent. They also seem to have specials quite often on their products where you can pick up new media of theirs for a great discount. You would want to sign up for their email-list to get notifications of those products. They can also be found on Twitter @IgniterMedia.
I realize this may sound a bit like a shill post but I promise it’s not. I wanted to let you all know about a great product they started doing called easySlides. If you’re familiar with Igniter Tracks, their worship videos are filled with beautiful graphics and contain the audio of the songs (for churches without a worship leader) as well as the ability to do click tracks (audio in only one channel so band can follow along). The easySlides are similiar, except their built from the ground up to provide those same gorgeous visuals with the ability to move fluidly through verses and stanzas at your own pace. This give’s a vj the ability to use their media without restricting your worship band to playing at a certain tempo and verse/stanza structure. It also gives your worship leader the freedom to move through the song as the spirit leads them and you can follow along with ease.
This is the type of product I’ve been waiting a long time for. I’m not the greatest at After Affects (yet!) and a lot of times I just don’t have the time to create these types of compelling visuals. This is a shortcut that offers both convenience without adding restrictions to your worship style. There are 7 songs out right now including “Here I Am To Worship” and “Happy Day” and you can purchase the package of all 7 for only $49.98 or individually songs for $14.98 a piece. Give them a try and let me know how you’re using them in your worship set!
The other day I stumbled across a new blog titled Ex Nihilo created by a designer I admire named Dave Shea. He is teaching himself Processing, an open-source programming language built specifically for artists and designers. I have to admit I had heard about Processing before but never really considered the possibilities of it until now. As you can see below some of the graphics than can be rendered using just a few lines of code are amazing!
As I mentioned before, Processing is open-source, cross-platform, and completely free to use. Their website has a lot of good documentation to get you started. I’m very interested in learning more about it. The ability to do very high quality, dynamic visuals through code is certainly a plus for VJ’s like me that would rather spend my time focusing on the blending of content rather than the creation of individual slides. Has anyone out there been experimenting with this kind of thing?
Hillsong has released their latest album entitled Faith+Hope+Love and I cannot recommend it enough if you are a fan of their stuff. Faith+Hope+Love is a live album recorded to both DVD and CD and features 13 songs of FAITH in the midst of personal circumstances, HOPE in Jesus for the future, and LOVE – one for another. Here is one of the tracks off the new album
“We’ve had a lot of things not work, and that’s OK too. If it’s a good idea and it gets you excited, try it, and if it bursts into flames, that’s going to be exciting too. People always ask, “What is your greatest failure?” I always have the same answer – We’re working on it right now, it’s gonna be awesome!”
I realize this may sound a bit like a shill post but I promise it’s not. I wanted to let you all know about a great product they started doing called easySlides. If you’re familiar with Igniter Tracks, their worship videos are filled with beautiful graphics and contain the audio of the songs (for churches without a worship leader) as well as the ability to do click tracks (audio in only one channel so band can follow along). The easySlides are similiar, except their built from the ground up to provide those same gorgeous visuals with the ability to move fluidly through verses and stanzas at your own pace. This give’s a vj the ability to use their media without restricting your worship band to playing at a certain tempo and verse/stanza structure. It also gives your worship leader the freedom to move through the song as the spirit leads them and you can follow along with ease.
