We have received our Certificate of Occupancy from local county and city officials, and have taken possession of the new space. As an addition to the project, an updated curbside sign for the Church was installed and new lettering placed above the lobby entrance.

We are now moving our existing TV studio equipment over to the new studio and finalizing equipment lists for new cameras, lights, cabling and set pieces. Our old studio has been out of commission since June. We are mostly running re-runs at present and need to get new programming going as soon as we can after the Feast.

On-Camera Set Design

Negotiations have been finalized with a set building company for construction of our new on-camera set. We looked at five different companies over the course of the past six months, and narrowed it down to three of them. We finally settled on a company out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They service nationwide, but in particular the New York City and east coast video markets, and have some major clients.

The set will be built off-site and will be installed on Oct.8-9. Our production team at the home office gave detailed input along the way. It was a challenge to include all the aspects everyone wanted, and yet keep it all within budget!

The design covers over 50 linear feet of set, 10 to 11 feet high—with three different areas to use for stand up, sit down and dailies, plus room for a studio audience of 40-50 people. The design is very pleasing to the eye and quite expansive. It also includes a professional video wall.

In addition to the formal set, a large “soundstage” area is adjacent. This flexible space will be used for many types of video recordings, “reenactments” and photo shoots. The new building also includes two equipment storage rooms, a radio studio, the video studio control room, a green room and restrooms.

Our crew is very excited about how this will look on camera, and how flexible it will be for many years to come. We are currently finalizing and selecting wall coverings, textures and colors from swatches and samples sent to us.

Funding the Project

Construction of the building itself was fully funded by generous donations, at about $750,000, and our anticipated costs for the set, lighting, cameras and audio equipment will be about $200,000. This totals $950,000 and our special fund for this whole project now totals just over $890,000. So, we are just $60,000 from the entire job being fully funded.

Donations are still coming in each week, and we certainly appreciate the faithful and generous offerings made by our brethren in this regard. Anyone who still would like to help us reach our goal of being fully funded is welcome to send in a donation marked for the “Video Recording Studio” fund.

Thank you very much for your prayers and support of our Media and Communications Services department and staff, as we work diligently to effectively preach the good news of God’s Kingdom across the country and around the world.