Here it comes. Seems like no matter how much we plan or try to remind ourselves, Christmas sneaks up on us every year. And I’m not talking about racing to buy gifts for the family over the last couple of days before Christmas. I’m talking about being prepared for Christmas services. For most churches, Christmas and Easter are invariably our biggest and most sophisticated productions, and they both require a lot of preparation — possibly the acquisition of new technology, and maybe even additional human beings. Let’s sort out how to tackle this thing.
Planning is Everything
Planning is incredibly important. I’d even say it’s the most important factor of all. Okay, I can hear you saying “thanks, Captain Obvious,” but I’ll never cease to be amazed how many churches not only fail to plan sufficiently for large special events like Christmas and Easter. And indeed, the big events call for big planning. And not just weeks in advance, but months in advance. Many months in advance, in fact.
We’ve got to sort out what the production is going to look like, first of all. Are we going to do exactly the same thing as last Christmas, or will it be similar but not quite the same, or will it be completely different this time around? If we’re doing the exact same thing, hopefully we kept track of how we did it last time — unless it went poorly, in which case we need to sort out how to fix the problems. In either case we’ll want to have a clear-eyed look back at what we did and how we did it. This is true even if this year’s production is similar but still different — we can build on last year’s successes. And while the decision to pursue a completely new production this year may seem daunting, at least it amounts to a fresh, clean slate. Sometimes traditions can be an albatross around the neck, and a completely new production lets us plan carefully and get it right from the very beginning.
So, what does this planning look like? Are we just doing something as simple as traditional worship with some additional Christmas music? Or are we going all-out, with a full-on journey-to-Bethlehem and manger scene, complete with live animals in the sanctuary? The latter would entail technical challenges that we never see for the rest of the year. Any dramatic element will require additional headset or lav mics for our actors, and additional pressure on available RF bandwidth. One other thing to consider here: we’ve got our standard weekly blocking of the platform bolted down for our worship musicians and pastor. It’s time-tested and just works Sunday after Sunday. But there’s a fair chance that dramatic elements will physically expand outside our normal comfort zone — maybe out a little closer to the coverage pattern of our front of house system. The likelihood of feedback will be higher under these circumstances, so take greater care in terms of mic choice, placement and other feedback management strategies.
Curveballs
Also, with our normal worship setup, it’s unlikely we ever have to deal with the rustle of microphones rubbing against costumes or just plain clothing. And think about the experience level of the performers. With our usual worship rotation, our “usual suspects” will understand and properly execute good mic technique, for example. Actors in a Christmas production are rarely seasoned pros with microphones, even if they’ve had stage experience. As we see, dramatic elements in a holiday production may require a dramatic uptick in planning and preparation.
With a Christmas production, another curveball we may face is the use of backing tracks. Church leaders are more likely to ask for additional production value for special productions like this, and adding tracks might be a thing they request. On first blush, we might conclude that it’s simply a matter of just “adding tracks” to our current level of production, but we’d be very wrong. Among the things that can really throw people off is the notion of a click track. Lots of people think they can easily play along with a metronome or click track, but as it turns out, it’s a skill that can take some time to learn. It’s not quite as hard to get accustomed to the guide track, but at the same time, if it’s completely new to some people, it might take a minute for them to get comfortable with it. One other consideration here: if we don’t have a dedicated monitor desk, and if our FOH mixer is too overwhelmed to handle a bunch of monitor mixes on top of regular duties, we’ll need to have our musicians and vocalists handle their own mixes, and there’s a learning curve in this process as well.
If our musicians have never used in-ear monitors, we have a little taller mountain to climb. As I’ve said before in these pages, we’ve got to take great care to ensure that the introduction of IEMs is executed well. By this, I mean that we cannot cheap out on technology, nor can we set it up in a slipshod way. We may have traditionalists on our team who will intently search for any foul-up or shortcoming they can find as an excuse to throw cold water on the process. “See? I told you these in-ear monitors are hard to use, and they don’t work right!” they’ll say, and soon it’s much more difficult to make the move to IEMs as team members are now less confident in the process. We’ve got to set it up correctly, test it to confirm perfect operation, and develop a comprehensive yet easily understood training process so our players can quickly and easily get up to speed with them. And this is probably not something to undertake in November — nor even October. Plan well ahead so whatever you need to implement will have become the standard way of doing things well in advance of the Christmas production.
We get lulled into a false sense of security by our outstanding worship team. They show up week in and week out, well-trained and well-seasoned, and we can rest easy knowing that they know their job and will confidently step up and execute it, right in alignment with the culture of our church. We know they won’t place things on the platform in such a way as to create cable swag over which people might trip. We know they’ve been trained to avoid getting microphones near speakers to prevent feedback. They are trained and experienced with IEMs and receiver packs. This list could go on for quite a while.
On the other side of the coin, there’s a fair chance our Christmas production might feature people who do not know of our culture and our guidelines for safe and proper execution of our productions. As a result, we will almost certainly need to conduct some training well in advance of the production itself to ensure that our “temps” have a grasp on at least the important stuff. We can’t replace years of experience with days of training, but at least we can help them understand the basics so we can stay safe and make the production look and sound good.
It’s clear that advance planning is king for any kind of major church production. Budgeting is another consideration, but that’s a broad topic and a conversation for another day. Decide what you want your production to look like, determine the requirements in terms of technical and human resources, then carefully plan out what needs to happen — and do so months and months in advance of the production dates. It will look better, sound better and, if you do it right, go off without a hitch.
John McJunkin is the chief engineer and staff producer in the studio at Grand Canyon University.
