During the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, churches were unable to hold services and groups of more than six people were unable to meet. Against that backdrop, for what at the time seemed quite a length period, many churches uploaded religious content with some taking an extra step to upload a complete service.
The Salvation Army corps at Southport, with which the OMF team are heavily connected, were one of those churches, uploading a virtual worship service each week to go live on Sunday mornings at the exact time that a real service would have commenced.
The Salvation Army corps at Southport, with which the OMF team are heavily connected, were one of those churches, uploading a virtual worship service each week to go live on Sunday mornings at the exact time that a real service would have commenced.
OMF were, of course, involved with that initiative, creating broadcast style interviews, sermons, bible readings and, in the sunup to Christmas, a series of six music video's. Aimed specifically at the forthcoming virtual carol service, those six music shorts posed several problems due to the legal situation put in place by the government to control spread of the pandemic.
Under normal circumstances OMF would film such project with a crew of five employing three cameras and multiple audio recorders but the legal restriction at the time was a total of six persons as a maximum.
To get around that restriction, OMF employed as many as seven cameras and three recorders to film the small group of bandsmen. By default, all were operated by one cameraman so most were static.
Southport corps was not unique in creating content at that time and in any case, filling a complete service each
To get around that restriction, OMF employed as many as seven cameras and three recorders to film the small group of bandsmen. By default, all were operated by one cameraman so most were static.
Southport corps was not unique in creating content at that time and in any case, filling a complete service each
week was more than could be achieved by the small unit so other content had to be included. That content was mainly in the form of hymns and songs and as time went on, a vast amount of new material was uploaded to streaming platforms.
Unfortunately, much of that content was either a low standard equal only to home video or available in just a limited number of options - usually just with or without lyrics captions.
And that's when the Ssounds initiative was conceived.
Unfortunately, much of that content was either a low standard equal only to home video or available in just a limited number of options - usually just with or without lyrics captions.
And that's when the Ssounds initiative was conceived.
Having run its own film school to train a crew and then produced more than 25 films of varying runtimes with three award winning features still streaming on the Prime Video (Amazon) broadcast platform, OMF was in an ideal position to create broadcast style content. At the outset the role model used as a target concept were the inserts featured in the BBC Songs of Praise programme and that remains.
With the ever popular Graham Kendrick song Knowing You, Jesus produced as a pilot, a target of seven songs in the first year was set. The seven included a Christmas carol, the Irving Berlin classic and a special song led by young musicians and vocalists. That proved to be rather over ambitious and although by early December 2023 three more songs were in the final stages of post-production, none were absolutely complete. By the end of the year however, all four songs - the pilot plus the three new ones - would be complete albums.
With the ever popular Graham Kendrick song Knowing You, Jesus produced as a pilot, a target of seven songs in the first year was set. The seven included a Christmas carol, the Irving Berlin classic and a special song led by young musicians and vocalists. That proved to be rather over ambitious and although by early December 2023 three more songs were in the final stages of post-production, none were absolutely complete. By the end of the year however, all four songs - the pilot plus the three new ones - would be complete albums.