The Process of Producing a Sermon Bumper
At 12:30, we’ve produced hundreds of Sermon Bumpers and Series Trailers over the last few years.
You can View our Sample Library of some of the Bumpers we’ve produced here.
You can View our Sample Library of some of the Series Trailers we’ve produced here.
I’m going to give you our process of creating a Sermon Bumper and some tips for Enhancing the Sermon Bumpers you might produce for your church.
The Length
- We know before production on a bumper how long it its going to be.
- We’ve made bumpers at :15, :30, :45 & :60, even 2-3 minutes and longer in length.
- The best length we’ve found for a bumper is between :30-:60. This gives enough time to make your stage transition happen and enough time in the video to get enough content to set up the message. :15 is a little too short for both of those things to happen. :90 or over can be a little too overwhelming to digest.
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The script always comes first in the production stage of the bumper. Our team usually writes the scripts ourselves based on any creative or sermon notes from the church or pastor of the church.
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The script usually comes directly from the pastor’s overview of the series.
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We write out the script and condense it several times to make short, direct statements (usually no more than 7-10 words per text block).
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Keep your scripts as short and succinct as possible. Bumpers should be a tease of the message content and should not preach the message before your pastor does.
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Is this a footage based video?
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Is it a motion graphics piece?
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Is it fast-paced and energetic? Slow and thought-provoking?
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Is it quirky?
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Best places to get music for your bumpers:
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Most of these sources have pre-cut tracks at :15, :30, :60 and full lengths.
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Gather any assets that would be personal and branded to your church. Always use your church if you can.
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Some great places to get stock photos, templates, backgrounds, images, footage, voiceovers:
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Are we shooting our own footage for this piece?
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Are we recording any special audio for this piece?
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This is the actual Editing of the Video in Premiere Pro and Adobe AfterEffects.
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We deliver the Video to the church. I suggest using Dropbox or some type of organized service to deliver your bumpers to your live production team or your various campuses.
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We offer one free round of revisions for all bumpers.
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If you can, respectively attach a dollar amount to the time it takes to continue to go round and round tweaking a video.
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Usually, when a dollar amount is attached, the edits get less important.
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Any audio-mastering usually happens here.
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Delivery of final files.
This is the process we follow in producing a Sermon Bumper or any video for churches, ministries and artists. You might use this approach when producing videos for you church. You might put your process down on paper to show your pastor or other ministry leaders the steps it takes to produce video content. Showing them the process might help you communicate information that you need and show when you need it in the process.
If you need a Sermon Bumper or Series Trailer produced from scratch for your church, we would love to help. Check out our Custom Media Plans and Pricing here.
