You have an interest in creating videos but might not know where to start. One of the first steps is to obtain some equipment, but there’s so much to choose from and such varied price ranges that it can be overwhelming. I can remember being there, starting out with no equipment whatsoever, at a church that had never done videos before. We didn’t even have a photo camera at the time.

The church was graciously willing to buy some equipment for me to get started, but they couldn’t afford to invest a lot of money into everything I wanted to get. With a very limited budget, I really had to drill down to what would be the most important equipment that I needed in order to create the best results for the price. I spent hours, and I mean LOTS of hours, researching equipment, watching review videos and training videos, and experimenting myself with different gear setups.

I focused on trying to find the best equipment for the best price. So I didn’t necessarily always go with the cheapest equipment. Early on, I tried some of those super cheap kits that you see on Amazon. Trust me, they are a waste of money. My goal was to find the best pieces of equipment that would produce the best quality results at the best price point.

From all of my research and experience, it helped me to discover what is most important in creating quality videos. The essentials of what you need to get started breaks down into these three categories:

• Video equipment
• Audio equipment
• Lighting equipment

In my opinion, you need to have all three of these to get started. When they start, many people believe that just getting a camera to capture video is good enough, but in actuality, audio and lighting are just as, if not more, important than video. Did you know that there are several Hollywood films that were shot on an iPhone? The reason they could do that is because of good audio and good lighting. People can excuse lower quality video, but if your videos don’t sound good, people won’t be able to engage or take it as seriously, and if it’s not lit well, then it looks like a home video. When you have good quality audio and lighting, your videos will look good, feel professional, and be taken more seriously.

Let me illustrate. In this video, I show you the difference between good video with poor audio and lighting vs. poor video with good audio and lighting.

Now, all that being said, it isn’t as important to have the best equipment as it is to know how to utilize the equipment that you have. You don’t need expensive equipment to get started in capturing good quality audio or lighting your videos well. There are a number of inexpensive options that you can get. In the next article, I will show you how you can capture great audio on a budget by using simple principles, which will make your videos instantly feel more professional. I’ll show you the differences between different types of microphones and share some personal recommendations of budget options that will still get you quality sound.

Check out our resources page for a thorough breakdown of all the equipment, software, and services that we use and have had great success with. We hope that it will help you in your journey and save you a lot of time.

We’ve also put together a toolkit of helpful resources to jump-start your church media. It contains several tools and strategies that we have developed to create effective and excellent media. We’ve included a video shot list, which is the number one most important tool that I use on every shoot I do! Click below to download the Toolkit for absolutely free! If you’re unsure of how to develop a shot list, I will be demonstrating my process in detail in later articles, so keep an eye out for that!

Hit subscribe so you never miss a post and submit any questions that you have about creating church media and we’d be happy to answer them for you!