Worship Media Arts

If you’d like to make this your theme for Christmas, check out the full resource here. On sale all this week!

Are you an early bird? Is your Christmas worship planning underway?

Christmas is one of our best opportunities of the year to add creative elements and raise the bar in worship. It’s also the highest attended service of the year.

The challenge worship planners face is, how do you tell the same Christmas story yet again in a creative, memorable way that will make your guests want to come back?

At Midnight Oil, we’ve thought a lot about that have have created 7 unique Christmas stories that you can share with your congregations. All of them come with a bunch of extras like radio and TV advertising, movie posters, invitation and bulletin art, and more.

To reward all of you early birds out there, we’re dropping all of the downloadable versions of our Christmas resources by 60% (now through Friday the 11th). This is the best deal we’ve ever offered on Christmas resources so don’t miss it!

Here are your choices:
Follow The Star (our best seller – the central image in this piece is the Bethlehem Star)
Rediscover Christmas (our second favorite – looking past the trappings of the season, we find the true meaning of the season)
Personal Connection (our favorite of the set – this piece uses the motif of the infinite Gog of the universe becoming a baby)
Humble Beginnings (created for a more traditional crowd – a pretty straightforward piece centered on the nativity scene)
Come Home For Christmas (an elegant invitation to Christmas – movement through layered photos invites the viewer home for Christmas)
Glimpse the Divine (our newest – based on the angel announcement)

If you’re looking for something a little less narrative, and want Christmas themed worship backgrounds, we’ve got you covered there too.

Check out:
Christmas Loops 1
Christmas Loops 2

We wish you the very best this Christmas!

Jason Moore
Midnight Oil

Does your worship begin with “popcorn time”?

What is “popcorn time” you ask? Good question.

Before 1955, there was a reoccurring problem at the beginning of feature films. Much like today, films began with credits introducing the cast and eventually the title of each film. The problem was that opening titles were basically devoid of creativity. In fact, audiences and projectionists resented them.

Film producers went so far as to imprint a note on film reels requesting that the projectionist “pull curtains before title”, as they’d often wait until the main title came up to open the curtains to reveal the screen.

As you can imagine, audiences would typically wait until the opening titles were over to pay attention to what was happening on the screen. It created an environment where moviegoers would spend the first several minutes of a film buying and munching away on popcorn, until a film’s title was revealed and the narrative began.

This all changed when “The Man With the Golden Arm” came out in 1955. It began in what was then an unconventional/paradigm-shifting way, where the titles were done not just with text, but with moving graphic elements. Graphic artist Saul Bass created for that film what is now know as “the title sequence”.  You can see it here:

Simple by today’s standards, this title sequence ushered in a whole new method of storytelling that has continued on into today’s summer blockbusters.

Saul believed that the opening titles could be used to set a mood that would invite viewers in to the underlying core of a film’s story.  He saw opening titles as a metaphorical extension of a film’s narrative.

Bass described title sequences like this: “I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it.”

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Mother’s day is almost upon us… Are you ready? Statistically the third most attended Sunday of the year, Mother’s day presents a great opportunity to reach those who might otherwise not be in worship.

Give your Mother’s day worship some visual appeal with our Mother’s Day bundle. It includes 3 sets of graphics, and 3 looping videos all for $20 (Regularly $30).

Happy Mother’s Day!
-Midnight Oil

Introducing our newest thematic Easter media set: Stained

This inspiring media collection tells the story of Jesus’ journey to the cross and ultimate resurrection through images of stained glass.

For centuries, broken pieces of colorful glass have been used to portray the stories of Jesus.
Yet for all of its familiarity, stained glass has much to teach us.

The beauty of stained glass is not in the individual pieces. When seen by themselves, these segments do nothing. But when seen as a complete image, with light shining through, they transform into something beautiful.

Check out the full resource here.

Read on for additional creative elements used in the service.
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