Transitioning from video to live

I recently had an email question about how we transition from video back to live at the end of our messages in Seacoast’s 13 campuses.

The transition from video teaching back to live elements is one of the most important transitions that we make in our service.

Because people have commented that in our services they “forget” that they are watching video, we want to do everything we can to make sure this transition continues to be as little distraction as possible. We also believe that the campus Pastor’s engagement and interaction as the Pastor of the campus is a huge role so we want to set him up for success in this areas.

As a general rule. The recording pastor always ends in prayer. This is the cue at the campuses for the worship teams to get into place, the campus Pastor to get on stage and the tech team will also raise the middle screen (if applicable at campuses). While people’s eyes are shut for prayer we also switch the video feed from the recorded message to the moving background that will be used for worship, but keep the audio running from the recording. On “amen” the sound is cross-faded from the video to the live campus pastor who will set up our response time. This time is margin in our service where we have three songs (typically low, medium, high) that gives some room for people to respond to God. The campus Pastors take about 2 minutes to set that time up with call to actions from the message. After the three songs (about 12 minutes) the campus pastor will come back on stage, make a few announcements, mention a thanks to guests and then dismiss with a closing scripture (Ephesians 3:19-20) that we do at all of our campuses.

This transition can be done without the aid of a response time, but boy does it make it a better one!