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Advice on free PC software, multimedia and web design for individuals and churches

Below are personal recommendations on programs and techniques for your consideration. (The adverts on the left will offer alternative commercial products and services)

Multimedia Presentation

The church has always been multimedia: speech, music, singing responses, icons, visual aids, procession, even dance and incense. The powerpoint presentation is just the new flannelgraph. (For younger readers flannelgraph was felt cutout figures on a cloth background for acting out bible scenes etc). Powerpoint means that you can use a series of headings, text, images and video to illustrate a sermon. There is an alternative to Microsoft's Powerpoint in the free program Openoffice.org - see my "office" page for details. I will post material on buying laptops and projectors on my hardware page.

There are a few notes of caution though, firstly it is just a high tech lantern slide it is not a magical device which will enable you to communicate with young people, or make your messages much more exciting. Indeed there is a very good argument that to communicate with the post modern generation we should make much more use of low tech, candles, incense, responses, discussion, Taize chants (- read up on the emerging church). Pictures and headings will not save a badly thought out message. You still need good content.

Secondly, there is a "groan factor", some of our people will have seen all too many presentations at work or at school. So don't use the supplied powerpoint templates. they will have been seen a hundred times before. Either create your own template, or else just use a plain white background on black text. Similarly don't bother with lots of transitions - it will be seen as naff, either don't use them or use one simple effect all the time.

Thirdly you can induce image fatique - you don't need dozens of slides for a 15 minute talk, 6 would be enough. You don't need a picture of a cat every time you say cat - people know what a cat is (its a creature that treats people as warm blooded furniture). Keep the slides simple - your headings, a relevant or impactful image or cartoon or picture - don't distract from your message.

Songs

If you usings songs on powerpoint then make a prenentation called songs and paste every song you use into it in alphabetical order. (You can have two presentations open and once and copy and paste whole slides using the left hand column. In view choose slide sorter over time it will build into a very useful library. Generally a verse and a chorus or about 14 lines is the most that you can have on one slide (see below on text). You do need a CCL licence and you should put the copyright information and your license number onto every page.

Text

Don't put too many words on a slide remember that the people with bad eyesight always sit in the second back row - (it leaves the back row for the people who have bad hearing). The more text that you put up the longer people will take to tead it. Keep it simple. You are not going to save electronic paper so if you are displaying readings don't have more that about 6 verses on one slide. Its hard to give general rules for text sizes as it will depend on the length of your church or hall, the size of your screen and the resolution and power of your projector. Put some text up on your screen in different sizes, go to the back what can you read comfortably with one eye shut well one size bigger than that is the absolute smallest.

You can get The Text from biblegateway.com its available in 12 different versions and 20 different languages but perhaps the most useful will be NIV, the Message and King James (No RSV or Good News)

Images

If you are going to use images in talks then get out your digital camera. Almost any digital camera will do. Its not a bad idea for a church to have a cheap digital camera ( 2 million pixels is fine for snaps) that can be given to anyone to take some snaps. If you take the picture then you own the copyright on that picture.

Sadly, in this age, you have to think very carefully about taking and using pictures of children - always ask parents permission particularly if the pictures are going to be published in any form.

Pictures of the sky, or local landscapes make effective backgrounds for slides. Pictures of objects can work well, a picture of bread and wine on a wooden table or a white table cloth.

It is very easy to search for images using Google but the copyright position is not so clear. You may take the position that you are not depriving the author of income by using an image. You can find sites where permission is given to use their images for non profit purposes:

ChristiansUnite free Christian Clipart. Images here are free for your use on web sites, newsletters, church bulletins or anywhere else you can find them useful.

John Bell's Christian Art Galley images that can be freely used for personal, evangelistic, church and other non-commercial uses.

Mayang's Free Textures - collection of images and backgrounds - free to use

Alien Song Excellently funny animation

For other sites you have to subscribe or play, one which I use is worship house media:

Video

Microsoft XP came with a fairly basic video editor but this was upgraded in service pack 2. Windows Movie Maker 2.1 is quite useful. I have a TV card on my computer which can record onto the hard drive so I can capture bits of the TV if I know in advance what might be useful! I have been known to record hours of ITV to catch one advert. It can also capture video from my VHS recorder (remember those), so I can record bits off films which I have on video. DVD is more problematic, there are programs called DVD rippers out there which will let you copy off DVD's but the legal situation is dubious. An alternative may be to have DVD player cued up at the point you want connected to the projectors video inputs, switch the input source on the projector to video, play the excerpt then switch back to the computer. More to go wrong of course!

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