VISUAL PRESENTATIONS
(Contemporary SERVICE)
7/2/2019
Early in 2018, Planning Center Online (PCO) announced that they were discontinuing support for the PCO Projector app for Apple devices, which is what the Praise Band was using to present in the Contemporary service. We searched, and found that FaithLife Proclaim supported PCO imports, and appeared to work similarly to PowerPoint as far as actually running the presentations. Generating the presentations is a bit different, but Proclaim has some enhanced features such as inserting videos, etc. that are much easier than running videos in PowerPoint.
Proclaim works on either a PC or a Mac, and our license allows us to install it on as many computers as we need to, as long as only one is used for presenting at any given time. This means that many people can work on the presentation if necessary regardless of their computer type.
Proclaim has built-in pre-service and post-service announcement loops, which can be built much like we have done for PowerPoint.
Another feature is that you can set the service start time, and at that time the loop stops, and the first service slide is displayed. You then step through the slides just like PPT, with the right arrow.
If we have a video, it is easy to upload the video and insert it into the service wherever it is needed. When you advance to that slide, the movie starts. You can upload sound tracks and have them cued and played by advancing to the slide.
In most cases, you can add a "song" element, and start typing the title, and a list from CCLI pops up. You can select the song (if *the song text* is in CCLI) and the words automatically populate the slide. Sometimes the verse numbers and such are different than the Baptist Hymnal, but you can edit the verse numbers to make it match. It is useful to have one of our hymnals handy to verify the verses and versions.
If you are running a presentation and notice a problem on an upcoming slide, you can stay live while editing the slide in the background, and no one will notice that there was a problem. It has some quick screens that you can go to if you want to edit the screen you are projecting. You can even jump to a quick scripture if the preacher springs one on you without notice - just type in the reference and it goes there.
Formatting the appearance is different than in PPT, but it becomes second nature fairly quickly with a little practice.
Here is a link to training: https://support.proclaimonline.com/hc/en-us
Here are my initial notes as to how to generate the Proclaim presentation. These may change as we learn more about the program.
PRE-SERVICE (Announcement) LOOP: The Team Lead will normally produce this element for the Traditional Service. It can be copied directly from that service, or may be generated from the UBC Life announcements.
*The easiest way to get the announcement loops into the Contemporary service is to use Add Item - Reuse Item and search for Slide Group. Select the slide group from the early service for the correct date, and move it to the pre-service loop. Collapse it to a single line, duplicate it, and move the duplicate to the post-service loop and you are done.*
Note that the items below show how to generate the slides "from scratch." If the slides have been generated previously, they can be re-used by selecting Add Item - Reuse Item, then typing in the first few letters of the slide title, and selecting one from the previous versions that are displayed.
Start with the logo slide (we may have different logo slides based on what sermon series is in use): Add Item - Content | Background - Browse Media - (choose the current logo background from our Group Upload). If the slide shows up in the service section, drag it to the PRE-SERVICE LOOP section. If you click on that title, any items you add while that title is highlighted will be added in the same section.
Announcement slides have preset places to put in the location, contact person, date & time. You do not have to use all of the items if they do not make sense or are redundant to the announcement text: Add Item - Announcement | Background - Browse Media (choose the current dark background from our Group Upload); copy and paste the announcement into the proper places in the text area, and then view the results in the image area (to the right) to see if adjustments to the text box size or font size are needed. I like to use some drop shadow on the text (click into the text box, then select Effects - Drop Shadow) particularly if the background has lighter areas in it that might make it more difficult to distinguish the text.
You may either generate the next announcement slide as above, or you may prefer to right-click the announcement slide label in the left column and select Duplicate, and then paste in the appropriate text for the next slide replacing the original text. This keeps the background, text effects, etc. from the original slide so that you do not have to do those changes over again on every slide.
When you finish generating the Pre-Service loop, you may *collapse the group to a single line, select the GROUP, right-click and duplicate it, collapse the new group to a single line* and drag it down into the POST-SERVICE LOOP. Any slides that are no longer appropriate after the service, such as the cell phone slide can be deleted from the Post-service loop.*
WARM-UP: This is used in some churches to get the congregation fired up in anticipation of the service, and can have a countdown clock. So far, we have not used this feature
SERVICE: This is where the slides announcing each section of the service, the songs and the scriptures go.
I like to start with a logo slide. This can be a copy of the logo slide in the Pre-Service Loop. At the time the service is scheduled to start (11:05, for example) the Pre-Service Loop will stop and the first slide of the service will be displayed.
Add the next slide (typically WELCOME). If there is no slide to re-use, select Add Item - Content | Background - Browse Media (choose the current dark background from our Group Upload). Copy/Paste the slide title into the text area, and adjust the font size as necessary. I prefer large, generally 100 point for titles. If you need an additional text of different size, add a text box, paste in the text, then move the box borders around until the position is where you want it to be. Set the font size. Note that if you set the size such that the text will not fit in the text box, the text size will automatically be as large as possible given the box size. If you try to increase the text size, you will notice that it does not increase.
You may duplicate the slide above and paste text from the next section into the text area to make the next slide (or re-use a slide from a previous presentation, if available).
SONGS - At this time, Canaan Crane is inserting the songs, since he will know how the songs are to be formatted, which verses are to be included, etc. It may be appropriate to adjust the song text size and vertical spacing for ease or reading once he has them in the presentation.
Otherwise, if you are to do the songs, one of the nice features in Proclaim is that you can insert a song element (Add Item - Song. Note that you must be an active CCLI User for this feature to work. You may then activate this feature in Proclaim). If you begin typing the title of the song into the title block, a list of possible songs from CCLI or FaithLife may be generated, and you can select the appropriate one from the list, which populates the title, lyrics and copyright sections automatically. You will have to compare the lyrics with the band's version to make sure they are the same, or at least the verses we want to sing are included, and that the attribution (copyright) information is correct. There is a command line above the lyrics box. If you check to activate it, you can specify what order the verses and or choruses are sung, so that they match what we want to do in the service - without having to cut/paste or delete extra verses.
Some concerns:
The good thing about Proclaim is that it automatically links to our CCLI account and lets us load song texts directly from CCLI to Proclaim.
However, not every song text is in CCLI, and Proclaim will load song texts from outside of CCLI. These songs may or may not be covered by CCLI.
If the song is in Public Domain, we can use it. If not, we need to search CCLI to see if it is a covered song for which they do not supply the text. To do this, go to www.ccli.com and use the "What We Provide" drop-down menu, and select "Song Search." Type in the song title in the search box, and see if a song with the same publisher and copyright year is in CCLI. If so, we can use the song. Add the CCLI song number to the slide, and also the CCLI license number 952559.
Another wrinkle is that the songs that load directly from Proclaim may not have the same verses or number of verses, or may have different wording than the version the band is using. It is best to go through each song word-for-word and compare to the band's version.
If a song text is not covered by CCLI and is not in Public Domain, we are not allowed to project the words unless we get written permission from the publisher in advance.
SCRIPTURES - These can either be from the Bible or the On-Screen Bible. The On-Screen Bible is animated, and the scriptures "fly in" from some direction, depending on which option you choose: Add Item - On-Screen Bible, highlight color/style choice, type in the scripture reference, and click on the → arrow at the end of the box. *Unless otherwise specified, we use the NIV.*
SERMON - Justin will often have a scripture reference (or two) in his sermon. One way to handle this is to make a sermon title slide, then duplicate it, and insert the scripture reference between the two Sermon slides. Sometimes he may want three sermon slides with two different scriptures.
There are other features, such as adding a video or having an audio clip play during a slide, but these are not common in either service at this time. We will train as necessary.