Video Staging. Multiple screens. Environmental Projection. Edge Blending. Curating visual for small rooms in obscure places.

These are tools and methods that are becoming more and more consistent in my visual worship environments. Not because I need bigger, better and faster. Not because I want to give people their next “wow”. And not because “I have to have it” in order to tell the story of the Unseen.

But because it’s not about us. Because leading worship is less about who’s on stage and more about Who’s in the room. Because more and more, I’m realizing that context is just as important as content. Because giving something for people to look & at think “that’s pretty” isn’t good enough… I want to wrap them with images that reflect the glory of God.

I’m thankful that I am not alone in this way of thinking. For a tribe of visual worshipers has been supernaturally drawn together from the most random of places. A result of social media? Maybe…but I think there’s more to it than that.. I think it may have actually been the Holy Spirit. Some in this community are not just colleagues in the “industry”, but they have become my closest friends in real life… in the offline. One of those closest friends is a guy I met years ago, who was in my college guys small group at church. That friend is Luke McElroy of Orange Thread Media.

As a result of the relationships forged over countless nights of fire-pits, Mexican food, sweet potato pancakes, a few conferences and roundtable discussions, a few ideas were sparked and put into action. You might have heard of a few of them…. the Visual Worship Roundtable and the Playback Drive.

Today, we are launching our next and most daunting idea to date: TripleWideMedia.com

TripleWideMedia.com is a place for the community to connect and to find visual resources for multi-screen environments. And from what we can tell, this is the first ever website dedicated to media designed for this format. We wanted to create a place that can help pioneer this new frontier in live event visual production.

We are launching in “beta” mode (as all big launches should, in my opinion), whis means that we have readied this website as much as we can for public release. But now it’s your part. We can’t do this by ourselves…we want YOU, the community of visual artists, producers, and dreamers to come alongside us in this part of our journey and to help “TWM” live up to it’s full potential.

A few things to know before diving in:

- when you download a motion, still, footage or countdown, you will receive that media in three formats: triple-wide, double-wide and single-wide

- the ratio for each screen is 4:3 for now, including single-wide… don’t worry, HD & 16:9 is on the wish-list. :)

- short films are also available from our TripleWide Producers, however, you can only choose one format for these. We can’t wait to see what our producers come up with now that triple-wide short films are now an option!

- our content selection is small and humble today…however, we have partnered with a few producers who have already been creating multi-screen content…some of those are Igniter Media, Thr-ve, & Awake Images. Watch for lots of new content in the coming weeks.

- the pricing follows a credits-based structure, much like iStockPhoto. We do this to encourage organizations to budget for media. Credits do NOT expire…ever. So, when it comes to the close of your fiscal year and you’ve got a few bones you need to get rid of, spend it on your credits account at TWM and stock up for the Winter!

- when you sign up for a new account, you automatically receive 12 credits so that you can immediately start downloading content.

It has been a grueling process for about 6 months, and I’ve got to give a huge shout out to Luke & the guys at Orange Thread for all of their blood, sweat, tears, and emerging gray hairs that they’ve received during the development of this very exciting endeavor. It’s scary when you start working with your friends…and I’ve got to say, Luke has been an inspiration and a great leader in this process…he’s a great example of a servant-leader than many in the world need to pay more attention to. Thanks Luke, for not only your dreams, passion & vision, but for pushing me forward in my thinking…for leading me into this new frontier…and mostly, for your friendship.

So go knock yourself out! We’d love to know what you think.

Fueling the multi-screen movement,

proctor