Present in the building.
Invisible in the service.
A crew nobody notices, for a congregation that cannot be there.
Live streaming and multi-camera production for cathedrals, churches, denominational conferences and special services. Handled with the discretion the occasion needs.
The people who most
need to be there
often cannot be.
Illness, age, distance, a care home, a hospital bed, a family scattered across three countries. Congregations have always had members who could not physically get to the building, and for most of history that meant they simply missed it.
Streaming is the least complicated good a camera has ever done. It puts someone housebound back in the service.
But it has to be done in a way that does not change the service for everyone else. A crew in high-vis wandering the chancel during a communion, or a camera in someone’s eyeline at a funeral, is worse than no stream at all.
Streaming for cathedrals, churches and denominational events.
dwmedia works with faith organisations across the UK on live streaming and multi-camera production. That includes cathedral services and civic occasions, denominational conferences and synods, ordinations and installations, festival and seasonal services, memorial and thanksgiving services, and special one-off events that a regular in-house setup is not built for.
Many churches already stream their weekly services perfectly well on their own equipment, and we would not suggest replacing that. Where we get called in is for the occasions that sit outside the normal rhythm: the Christmas service with a full congregation and a choir, the ordination with a bishop and a national audience, the conference across three days in a venue nobody has streamed from before, the funeral of someone whose family is in Australia. Those are jobs where a single fixed camera and the building’s WiFi is not enough, and where there is no possibility of a second attempt.
Working in a listed building
Historic churches and cathedrals bring real constraints. Rigging points are limited or forbidden, faculty permissions govern what can be attached to anything, cable runs have to avoid processional routes, and the acoustics that make a building beautiful to sing in make it difficult to record. Add thick stone walls that block cellular signal and a broadband line installed for the parish office, and connectivity becomes the largest technical risk in the job. We recce properly, work within whatever the venue and the diocese permit, and bring our own bonded connectivity with satellite where the cellular signal will not survive the walls.
Discretion, and knowing when not to shoot
The judgement that matters most here is not technical. It is knowing that you do not cut to a close-up of a grieving widow, that the camera comes off the congregation during private prayer, and that operators stay still and out of sight during the moments that matter. We brief crew on the order of service beforehand and agree with the minister or precentor what is filmed and what is not. Where a service needs accessibility support, our captions and BSL work applies. See also church streaming and funeral streaming. dwmedia works UK-wide from Ashington, Northumberland.
Quietly,
and properly.
Built around
the order of service.
We plan the production from the liturgy rather than from where the cameras would ideally go.
Common questions.
A service or occasion
to stream?
Tell us the building, the date and the order of service. We will come back with a plan and a quote.