As part of our Cameras Project, we’ll be getting some new bits of equipment which we need somewhere to put. As well as the equipment itself, the person who is looking after the technology during a service needs somewhere to sit and stand as well, plus somewhere to keep orders of service and hymn books.
During the first period of streaming services, this began with a temporary arrangement balanced in a pew. The downside was that this took an entire pew out of action and meant that there was always a tech team member who sat wearing headphones at the front of the church. At best, this looked far from the professional image we try to project, and at worst, it would actively distract other worshippers.
We’re great believers in making small improvements when we can, rather than putting them off in the hopes that we will eventually come up with something that solves all our problems at once. The next iteration of our setup moved the operator to the back of the church (underneath the organ loft), extending the video signal so that they no longer had to be physically close to the camera. This also meant they had more room to comfortably operate equipment and could also reach the audio mixer, allowing us finer control over the sounds which made it into a stream. It also meant that the operator was physically separate from the congregation, reducing transmission risk.
At this point, though, the equipment was balanced on the top of a cupboard which wasn’t really designed to handle it. Along with this the operator was forced to stand for the whole service, and they had to keep moving between two different spots to switch between adjusting audio and switching video. There was also no space left for any of the new equipment which would be arriving, and the whole collection of cables and boxes was not only unsightly but also took up a good chunk of a choir stall.
So we decided to fix a whole bunch of problems in one go, and build a purpose-designed ‘tech desk’ which would let us centralise everything we already did, and give us space to put our new video equipment when it turned up.
Continue reading “Building a new tech desk”