Australian Competitions Club

http://www.crossoveronline.com.au/christmas-video




Christmas Video
This Christmas Crossover hopes to harness the power of viral digital content and unearth the latent creative talent that we have in our churches across the land through a competition to create the most effective video explanation of the Christmas Story in under 3 minutes. By stirring up the creative genius in our churches we hope the end result will be some excellent digital content that can be shared via e-mail, social media , blogs and website.
On a daily basis internet users are exposed to a range of viral and advertising messages as well as content which is shared by our friends and peers. By encouraging the creation of new digital media which is missional in nature, we seek to inject content with a difference that can spread far beyond the walls of church. There is every chance that some of the videos will become ‘viral’ and be seen by hundreds of thousands if not millions.

The Challenge
Here’s our challenge to you; make a video that explains the significance of Christmas to someone who doesn’t normally come to church or fully understand either the story or significance of the Christmas story.  You can aim it as a specific target audience or people in general.  You can use you imagination, creativity and sense of fun, or you can use your documentary skills and simply interview people who have had their lives changed through knowing and understanding the message of Christmas.

When you are done, upload it to our YouTube site. To do this post your video as a response to this video:


The Equipment
You can win this competition with a video shot on your smartphone, or you could win it with expensive gear.  What we are looking for is creativity and message.  Our panel will include missiologists, videographers, and communications professionals. Some of the most popular YouTube channels are run by people who use their their laptop camera along with some clever humor and video editing. The bottom line is that you don;t need to have a lot of expensive gear to make a great video these days.

The Prizes
The prizes have been put together with the aim of enhancing your video ministry.  (If a prize winner has this equipment already we can negotiate for in kind prizes to the same value)

First prize: consists of a Green Screen portable studio kit including 10ft X 15ft Chromakey Green Screen, portable frame, plus three 750watt continuous lights on stands for the complete green screen package to enhance your video production and stands, a set of video mics including boom, lapel and hand held plus a set of commercial green screen video backdrop images. First prize value is $1000.

Second prize: is a Green Screen portable studio kit including 10ft X 15ft Chromakey Green Screen, portable frame, plus three 750watt continuous lights on stands for the complete green screen package to enhance your video production. Total second prize worth is $600.

Third prize: is a Green Screen portable studio kit including 10ft X 15ft Chromakey Green Screen, portable frame, plus two 500watt continuous lights on stands for the complete green screen package to enhance your video production. Worth $350

Competition Rules
This video challenge is open to anyone in Australia.  (We encourage people outside Australia to enter but we can only award the top three prizes to Australian entrants).

We encourage youth groups, home groups, children’s groups, church media teams, individuals, etc to take this on as a challenge.  Submissions must be made as a reply to the Christmas Story YouTube Challenge video on our YouTube channel.

All entries are submitted under the Creative Commons 3.0 Licence (Attribution – Non-Commercial-Share-alike) For more information on creative commons licenses visit www.creativecommons.org.au

All entries can therefore be used by Crossover (with attribution) for non-commercial purposes and distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the submission (as outlined above).

The usual copyright laws in relation to others people’s material applies (in other words, you can’t use copyrighted material without permission).  All submissions need to comply with relevant copyright laws.

Examples

St Paul’s Anglican church in Auckland New Zealand are a very creative bunch (their creative ministry is called SPAM – St Paul’s Arts & Media) and they use video very well.  Here’s an example of videos they have made about Christmas and Fathers Day.


Easter at St Paul’s.
This is how St Paul’s set up their creative Easter project:

And here is the brilliant result:

Tips & Tricks
Sound quality - You can have bad vision but it can be saved by good sound.  Good vision is undone by bad sound.  If you can invest in a cheap lapel mike or RODE boom mic for video camera’s. Crossover bought its boom mic from here and lapel mic from here.

Stability – place your camera on a tripod, unless you specifically want footage that requires you to hold the camera.  Shaky video is hard on the eyes and won’t impress the panel.

Virility – the best videos on YouTube go viral.  In other words they spread like wildfire, either because they are funny, outrageous, creative, tear jerking, shocking, or unique. Try and find an angle for your video that gives it the best chance of going viral.  Our panel will be looking for this!

Creative – don’t make a video that is simply a filmed sermon.  We are looking for something a lot more creative than the standard monologue.  Remember that the audience is people who don’t normally come to church.  You need to hold their attention and make the message of Christmas understandable and attractive.

Great advice on video filming basics:

Technical Advice
Here’s a great article with everything you need to know about the resolution of your video for shooting and uploading.