We have been asked a lot recently about where and how we choose music for Highlands News, so I wanted to write a blog post about it! One of the biggest resources for background music for our news has been Hillsong. We play their music all time time in church services, and it also feels really great in the background of our news! On their website, you can buy instrumental versions for most every album they have. Buy the "MP3 Trax" version, and it comes with instrumentals. Here's a couple that we pull from:

I've also really loved using two songs off of Taylor Swift's album, Red. There's a legit instrumental version here.

Also, if there's a song that you really think would work well in your news, chances are there is a decent karaoke version on iTunes. Type in the name of the song you are looking for and put the word "karaoke" on the end of your search and start previewing away! We have done this a couple of times with good results.

For more info about music for video, check out this blog post.

Hope this helps you and your church! Feel free to ask any questions in the comments section below!

Every year we do a series called "At The Movies." And it's huge and epic and crazy and everyone loves it and lots of other churches do it and it's just really fun. That being said we thought we would give away some of the shots we used to make the opener. Specifically the projector and its sfx. We got a 16mm Eiki projector that looks like its from the 70s, brought it in the studio, and shot some nice broll of it. Hazed it up, and used a sock with baby powder in it to create those particles. Just smack it a few times before a shot, the sock that is...not the projector.

We took the Broll of that projector and cut it up with reverse shots of actual movies being projected on the wall (2013) or in an actual movie theater (2014). We can't give those to you for obvious reasons, but basically what we did was get a bunch of clips from famous movies, put a lot of noise on them to look old and then projected them using a much more modern and HD projector. Then we took a slider and some handheld shots of them. In 2013 we shot it in our little studio and to get the feel that it was in a theater we just grabbed a few office chairs because their silhouettes are close enough. Then in 2014 we actually got into a local theater and that was awesome too.

Take a look at the openers below and download the footage below that. It's a bit big(1.6gb) but its 15 decently long clips. And if you use it then send us a link!

Here is 2013. Pretty small shoot for one of my favorite openers.

Here is 2014. It was hard to haze a whole theater haha

You don't need to credit us with these shots, but please don't sell them anywhere. Also if you do use them somewhere we would love to see it! Feel free to post a link of your work in the comments below.

Music for Highlands News

Friday Freebie - Free projector Broll