IMAG Style Part 2

Our style, well it's different.  I would like to say we developed it in an prefect environment and that we thought long and hard and made many difficult choices.  In reality that was about as far from the truth as it could be.  There are 3 things that have really influenced or dictated how our style works: Feel, Function, (looking for a another F) and Gear (heavy sigh: alteration fail)

We currently do more then just functional IMAG, the feel and pace of the worship really dictate how the IMAG will feel and look.  I strive to push my camera ops to look for the "not safe shots" and they produce things are truly sometimes nothing short of magic.

I would like to note here none of the current camera ops at my church have any previous experience whatsoever.  One of our guys is a professional photographer by trade, but is a close as it gets.  All of them have been trained in house, and as a result our style is what they know. 

When I started we used functional IMAG, and it was good, but in my opinion it didn't really fit.  To me it just felt wrong.  When I was hired one of the first things I did is I strove to get out SPS (shots-per-song) up.  At the time we were averaging maybe 15-20 shots over a 3 minute song.  That works out to about 1 shot every 15 seconds or so.  Which is great for a hymn, ballad or very introspective song.  Unfortunately no one remembers the last time we did a hymn.  I thought it was too slow for our fast style of worship.  So my first week I threw safe and slow out the window and I said we are shooting for 40 shots a song, easily doubling our speed.  Shot composition went from safe to desperate.  I was calling for cameras that were still looking for a subject, so the guys were making stuff up just to get me to the next shot.  It didn't happen week one, or even month one, but after 6-8 weeks we finally got up to 40.  In the mean time my camera ops were having  ALOT of fun. (which is also important to me, I love my job, I want them to enjoy what they do)

Wow still more to go, gunna have to be a 3 parter