Located across two campuses in Atlanta, Georgia, Turning Point Church is a multi-cultural, multi-generational house of worship. With a busy calendar of regular church services, conferences, and live music recordings for Unity House Worship, the church’s primary campus in McDonough relies on an expert team of production specialists to support its 1,000-seat auditorium. Communication, therefore, is an essential part of production, leading the church to recently upgrade its systems with a practical PunQtum solution for greater reliability and functionality across the venue.
“We strive to achieve the very best in our production standards, but can only work with what our budget allows,” says Nathaniel Smith, Production Director at Turning Point Church. “Unfortunately, this restriction had resulted in a complicated communication workaround that relies on a hodgepodge system of different products and processes that weren’t designed to be used as one cohesive solution.”
Hosting a combination of traditional Sunday services, weekly student services, conferences, outdoor events, and live original music recordings, the behind-the-scenes production team includes service producers, audio teams, lighting operators, camera operators, and technical coordinators. In addition to preparing in-house production, the McDonough campus broadcasts services to the church’s secondary campus in Stockbridge, requiring additional video directors, switchers and camera operators.
“Our team is spread out throughout the church, so if we can’t communicate, we can’t win,” explains Smith. “We previously worked with an older analogue system that had four channels available to the service producer, but only single-channel beltpacks for operators. If somebody from the audio team needed to reach the video team, they would first have to contact the service operator, who would then connect them together.”
Not only did the single-channel beltpacks create difficulties in team communication, but they also meant each person received every incoming conversation through their headset. “If someone was being trained on lighting, this would be heard by the entire team, creating unwanted distraction and confusion,” Smith says. “As a service producer, I was wearing an intercom headset, in-ears so I could hear sound from talkback microphones on stage, and I had a mic of my own for when I needed to respond. There are times when we have guest service producers for events, and they had no idea how to use our system.”
The problems came to a head when the system began to fail completely. Humming noises were heard over the channels and users were unable to hear clearly when someone was speaking. “We reached the decision that in order to operate efficiently and effectively, a new communications solution was required.”
When attending FILO Conference in Chicago a few of years ago, Nathaniel Smith and other members of Turning Point Church’s production team had the opportunity to meet with Riedel Communications. “We connected with Josh Weot, Riedel’s Vertical Account Manager, who introduced us to PunQtum,” Smith reveals. “I attended a class while at FILO that broke down what the PunQtum system is and why it’s important to houses of worship. After this, we decided PunQtum was the route we wanted to take.”
In February, Turning Point Church integrated a PunQtum communications solution into its production workflow, featuring a Q210 speaker station and nine Q110 beltpacks. “The key feature that we needed from a new comms system was the ability to provide each of our operators with multiple channels without overloading them with conversations from every crew member,” continues Smith. “PunQtum beltpacks and speaker station allow us to communicate across multiple channels at once, while muting the ones we don’t need.” By assigning multiple channels to different stations, operators are able to separate general production communication from department-specific traffic. This has made communication clearer, faster and less distracting during live services.
A major benefit has been the ability to bring program audio and other external audio feeds directly into the headset system. Previously, operators often had to keep one ear uncovered so they could hear the room, the pastor, or what was happening in the auditorium. With PunQtum, that external audio can be routed into the headset, giving operators better awareness while allowing them to control how much of that feed they want to hear.
For the service producer, PunQtum has also made it possible to create a more effective workstation with a dedicated mix that includes program audio, talkback microphones and MD/stage microphones. This gives the producer a clearer picture of what is happening across the service without needing to rely on ambient sound in the room.
“Our old system had limited functionality. Now with PunQtum, we benefit from both input and output features at the click of a button,” says Smith. “I can reach down and press a button that allows me to speak directly to the team on stage without having to pick up an extra mic. Even smaller features, such as the ability to replay messages, or a working call function, have made a noticeable difference to our own ability to work more efficiently.”
Before even purchasing the system, the team was able to use Q-Tool Config Software to design and test their ideal setup in advance, making deployment straightforward once the equipment arrived. Devices could be connected, routed through the network switch and configured quickly, with the software pushed directly to the system for a near plug-and-play installation.
Since going live, the system has proved highly user-friendly and easy for the production team to understand, particularly for those already familiar with live production workflows. “The system was easy to configure ourselves, and any queries we had were picked up by PunQtum’s support team immediately,” Smith states. “The team has found the system simple to use and we’ve seen a significant increase in the quality of our comms experience. PunQtum knocked it out of the park – the system feels premium without the heavy price tag typically associated with intercom systems. For smaller venues, and particularly houses of worship, it’s a solution that feels like it’s been designed with our needs in mind.”
