The team in the background
Seth Hilliard, Contributing Writer
The auditorium is filled with a bubbling excitement, as friends meet friends, and the weekly chapel session comes to a start. To the students, it’s merely a ritual, a class they must attend. To the team in the background, this is like a rocket ship, with minutes ticking away until the start of the service.
The director of the team counts down the seconds, the person at projection is poised and ready. The director pulls down their headset microphone. “5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Ready bumper.” The projectionist’s finger flinches. “Take bumper.” With a click, the projectors begin the intro video, and the audience settles down for the weekly chapel service.
There are many different people who gather together to set up an event in Turner Chapel. One group, whose job is at the core of the event, is the Media Team. The team runs a variety of jobs, ranging from lights to cameras, from video switcher to audio. And for a single chapel service there can be up to 19 people working, or as few as two people working. But their job is more than just controlling audio and cameras.
Chad Stratton, a Senior Digital Media major, has been with the team since Fall 2022. His job as Video Coordinator puts him in charge of several positions: operating a camera, training new coworkers, and helping create videos for the university. However, he explained that the Media Team is much more than a job. “Yes, it’s a place to get money,” he said, “but it’s more about working with people and getting lifetime companions.” He went on and said that in the future, when he looks back at North Greenville University, Media Team would be a core memory of his time at the university. In fact, Life in Progress writes in their article that a sense of community is only the start to something greater. They said, “When we feel committed to a cause or organization, we take action to continue that work”. And they write that people tend to be more productive and accountable when their workplace is built on a firm community.
Cooper Benjamin, a Freshman Strategic Communication major, said that he joined Media Team “so that I could have a group to bond with and grow close to”. He said that he really appreciated how much trust the leaders on Media Team put in students.
Because, while the Media Team bond is quite strong, they all have their own separate jobs they must attend to.
One job the team puts dozens of hours into is editing videos. Any event they hold; chapel, Fount, or PALS, must be run through an audio editor and a video editor before it can be officially published on YouTube and Boxcast. The team has to figure out how to fix a variety
of issues, including audio cutting in and out, a green screen flashing, or even putting lyrics over the video.
The Media Team works hard for many hours to perfect a show, and even then, the show can contain countless errors and leave many people feeling frustrated. Despite how the event was run, from the worst of the shows to the best of the shows, you can always find the Media Team standing together. At the end of the day, they circle up on the stage.
“So, what did we think?” Is usually how the sessions start.
Stratton explained that there have been a couple times when there had been mistakes in a show. During the session at the end, they discuss what went wrong, and how to fix it in the future. “We learn from that,” Stratton said, “we learn, and we grow. It’s part of our slogan. Nobody’s perfect.”
The slogan of Media Team is how they close out every session. In unison they chant:
“Minimum wage/maximum fun/blood, sweat and tears/but we got the job done/we learn/we grow/and we go/and we don’t forget to clock out.”
As the team disperses and go their own ways, or as they carpool to the nearest Chili’s, they remember that Media Team is built on the word ‘team’. Benjamin said that he believes ‘team’ is the most important part of the group. Stratton explained that some key memories of Media Team are found when the team hangs out in MTAC, the Media Team office, after any show. Because community, as Life in Progress put it, is the foundation for a productive workplace.
The students file out of Turner Chapel. The lights shut off. The room goes quiet. And the team in the background gets ready for the next production, learning and growing together.
