Kids In Videos

Recently we did a Facebook promo for our Mother’s Day service, the video featured one of our Pastors’ kids saying a short message to his mom. The video itself was around a minute long but it took ten takes before getting it right. This got me thinking of how can I successfully create a video using children without having to take up half of my day recording. First, I thought maybe it was because he was put in front of green screen and studio lights and was distracted. Maybe, it was the people in the room that distracted him or the concept of the video was too difficult for him to grasp. These are all legitimate factors that can come into play when working with kids in a video production setting. In taking all these factors into consideration I thought I would try making a video using our preschool class as the subject. I thought it would be a cute idea to have the graduating Pre-K class make a video for their graduation program. I had two kids sit at a table playing with Play-Doh and ask each other two questions and it worked! I was able to record 16 kids in less than ten minutes, which was faster than the Mother’s Day session. 

I learned that kids have to be eased into a video production setting, especially if they have never done it before. Staying away from fancy equipment like the green screen the first couple of times and keeping it simple helps them get comfortable being in front of the camera. Originally, I wanted to use the green screen for the preschool video but after seeing the frustration of my cameraman who did the Mother’s Day session I quickly had to rethink my strategy for the video. Keeping the kids in their own environment made it comfortable for them and less stressful on myself, and it made the video fun. 

Here are some tips when filming short videos with kids:

1.     Keep the environment simple and fun. Have them play with toys or games or have those items in the background.

2.     Keep the script short and conversational for the kids. This makes it less stressful on the child and it brings a really fun element into the video.

3.     Keep it fun and be flexible. Kids respond better to you if you are not frustrated or yelling at them. When you’re having fun so are they. Kids can be a bit unpredictable so having flexibility comes in handy. 

Where are the Volunteers?

In the nine years I have been involved in media ministry I have noticed how hard it is to find people to help out. I began as a volunteer for close to six years before moving into a staff position and during those volunteer times I remember thinking that I wish there was more help. Of course now as a member of the church staff it is imperative that I find those who are willing to help us out with every aspect of the media ministry. 

Back in October of last year we did a recognition service for our volunteers as a way to kick off our quarterly volunteer appreciation meetings. All of our volunteers except in the critical areas like children’s church were asked to take the weekend off and everything was ran by the ten staff members of the church as a dramatic way of saying that the church needs volunteers. At the end of service we had an appeal to those who would like to serve to put their names in the desired ministry’s bucket. Later in the week I looked at my list of those who said that they would like to volunteer in the media ministry and began calling them to set up training, not one person responded to my calls and emails.  I began to ask myself why is it so hard to find people to volunteer in media at churches. The one reason people do not want to volunteer in the media ministry is fear.

People are afraid to volunteer because of the fear of complicated technology and the fear of messing up because a lot hinges on the media aspect running smoothly. So, how do you get people past the fear? Being relational with them. I found that when I gave ownership to my main volunteer in our live streaming area he immediately went out and started recruiting people. Although, some volunteers didn’t work out there are many that have and we are currently training new individuals every month. What if you don’t have a very outgoing volunteer that won’t take ownership? This is a question that I am asking myself right now. I have another volunteer in a different area of the media ministry who is willing to train but not willing to help find people, so how do I add volunteers to this area? I read in a non-profit blog, called Notes for Non-Profits, about how to find and engage volunteers through social media, which I think is a good idea. We have used Facebook on some occasions to solicit help for events and it has yielded some good results. This is an idea that I am planning on using this month as I begin to build a reserve of volunteers for the summer months.

There are many methods out there to help gain volunteers the trick is developing an arsenal that can be used to target volunteers for your specific need. Good luck in volunteer hunting.