Kingdomcity is a global organisation led by Mark Varughese. It was founded in April 2006 in Kuala Lumpur and is now in over 30 locations worldwide with a congregation of more than 30,000 people.
Kingdomcity’s vision is to connect, equip and empower people to bring the reality of God to their world. One way of transmitting the message is to produce videos that engage and revitalise their congregation. When COVID-19 hit, it became apparent that more needed to be done as physical interactions were limited. The media team highlights, “During COVID, we started to shoot more content for our Kids’ curriculum, Online services and special items. As a thriving church that aims to push the boundaries of visual storytelling, we decided to go with RED digital cameras because of the image quality and how easy it was to work with the codec. We do minimal colouring and processing on our footage. Most times, what the audience sees is what we air out of the camera in Rec709, due to our quick turnaround for our projects. The sensor simply delivers amazing imagery.”
Kingdomcity purchased eight units of RED Gemini and six units of RED Komodos for their set-up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Perth, Australia. The units were purchased from distributor AV8 Media Pte Ltd in Singapore and the corresponding RED distributor in Australia. “We wanted to match the quality that we were producing in both our studios in Malaysia and Perth, and thus the decision to equip both with the same units and models from RED after researching for months.”
The media team is very pleased with its decision to purchase the RED digital cameras. “For the Gemini(s), the lowlight sensor has been great for our live-stream events. And the RED Komodo(s) are brilliant cameras for handheld due to their small form factor. The camera’s dynamic range and colour science is the main reason we use REDs. The big resolution also helps us capture quality content for our big LEDs installed in our sanctuaries.”
The media team further elaborates, “RED digital cameras are workhorses. We have run our cameras with full-day shoots and have had no issues with cameras going down in our studio environment. One would think R3D Raw footages are big files, but it’s relatively smaller than ProRess. The only reason it would seem bigger would be the higher resolution we tend to shoot with the cameras – 5k HD or 6k HD in R3D Raw.”
The final video’s high quality, resolution and colour brilliance is undeniable. But more than that, the RED digital cameras offer ease of use, reliability and quick turnarounds that has helped Kingdomcity produce more visual stories to maintain engagement and spread its message.
