With so many motion backgrounds to choose from, it can be a little intimidating when you’re first learning to pair them with each song in your worship services. While all of our backgrounds are designed to look great in nearly every worship setting, it’s important to remember that every motion does not fit every moment. To create the most impactful visual experience in your time of worship, you must be intentional when assigning backgrounds.
Here are four factors to consider when choosing motions for each song in your service:
1. Style
The first thing to consider when choosing backgrounds for your service is the overall visual style. What is happening at your church today? What season of the year are you in? Is your pastor preaching a certain series or a topical message? It’s best to pair the style of your motions not only with the individual songs, but with these external factors to create a cohesive look. For example, in summertime, you may choose to use ocean backgrounds. Or when your pastor is speaking on God’s creation, you might use motions that have a spacey feel.
Three methods we would recommend for choosing which motions you will use each worship are:-
Choose From One Pack: Since we are producing new packs routinely, many churches choose to use one pack exclusively for an entire service, month, or message series. This is the simplest way to ensure that you backgrounds match properly and stick to the same visual theme.
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Mix and Match From Different Packs: As your media library grows, you may decide to pull motions from multiple Packs that work well together. We’ve seen many churches build a folder of their favorites from each month and use this as their condensed, on-the-fly collection. This method works particularly well when you have our Premium subscription that gives you access to the entire library of over 1000 backgrounds. As you mix and match from different packs, you may choose to use all random motions in a service or simply use a new pack every Sunday.
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Adjust Preferences To Create A New Pack: If you’re looking to get really creative with your motion selection, one option is to choose some of your favorite motions and give them a visual remix. By using your presentation software’s media controls, you can adjust things like hue and brightness or apply filters like blurs and vignettes. With these simple tools, you can make several motions that normally wouldn’t be paired into a new set that works great together. Using this method, you can choose motions from nearly any Pack to make up the visuals for your service.
2. Color
The color of a motion background plays a major role in the feeling of a worship song. Bright colors such as orange, pink, green, cyan and yellow can convey excitement, action, fun and growth. On the other hand, darker colors such as blue, purple and red convey calmness, peace, intimacy and love. When choosing a background, listen to the song and ask yourself what feelings it naturally produces. Then, match your color to this mood. If you’re using color lighting in your services, you’ll want to match these same colors with your LED lights, as well.
3. Speed
The speed of a motion background is one of the most critical aspects that can make or break a moment. A fast, busy motion used during a slow, intimate song can be a total distraction. It’s important to assess the speed of your song and choose a background that matches its tempo. In a best case scenario, the motion should seem as though it was created to be paired with that exact worship song. Keep in mind that most church presentation software comes with tools to adjust the speed of motions. But, to make choosing the perfect speed easier than ever, we created TempoMatch.
See how to use TempoMatch for your services.
4. Animation
The most pro-level factor to consider when choosing a motion background involves an element that is so subtle that most people don’t even catch it. Once you’ve covered all of your bases with the other important details mentioned, take note of the animation used in the motions. When listening to the lyrics of the song, pay attention to phrases that could be paired with the motion happening in the background. For example, if a song mentions moving forward, you could choose a background with animation that is pressing in. Or if a song mentions lifting up praises to God, you could use a motion where the particles are moving in an upward motion. It’s not likely that you can pull this off with every song, but when you can, it creates a memorable visual experience.
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