Your Church Wants To Do What?

Courtesy of hcc3d.com

The last Sunday in September our church is having a worship night with our worship band, which sounds great and many will enjoy it. But towards the end of August our Pastor told us that he wants us to make a live audio and video recording that we will sell and immediately we were scrambling to figure out what we needed to do to pull this off and make it look professional. We had so many decisions to make in less than four weeks on how we're going to do this. The first question we had was are we going to attempt to record and mix the CD ourselves or are we going to have a professional come in and do it for us? We decided that the equipment we have right now wouldn't cut it if we wanted a good quality product so we opted to hire someone from our network of friends that could do the job for a decent price. The second question was do we make and distribute the final product ourselves? We decided that we did have the means to develop and distribute the CD. 

Since the audio was being recorded and mixed professionally we would have to make sure that the quality extended out to the packaging of the CD. How can I design and print out the liner and label without spending a lot of money and it not look "do-it-yourself"? In searching for companies that specialized in CD duplication I found one that I thought was reasonable and allowed me to customize the label and album artwork, and will print blank CDs so we can do the duplication ourselves. Websites like Mixonic.com are good sites to check out when you are looking to produce and distribute your own music or films without a record label or distribution company. For the video side of things, since we have the capabilities to produce the DVD in house, we will be shooting and editing the video ourselves for the DVD. But just like the CD we will order the printed blank DVDs with jackets and assemble the DVDs ourselves. 

When considering whether to go "DIY" or professional for a project like a CD or DVD recording there are a few key factors to evaluate. One factor of course is cost, what are the costs of doing it yourself versus having a professional do it for you. Another factor is time, how much time are you going to put into the project. Is it better for you to spend the time to produce yourself or hand it off to someone else. Finally, satisfaction, are you going to be satisfied with the final outcome of your project if you do it yourself or if a professional did it. How much control are willing to give up or want to be satisfied with your final project? Taking all these factors in consideration will help you make the right decision on which way to go.