The Media Director Has No Clothes

OK, interesting thing about me...

I'm used to working on good gear. When I was at Oral Roberts TV, I had great consoles with awesome monitors. At Crossroads, I've got some great cameras, editing gear, and some pretty decent audio tools (not to be confused with ProTools - ecch. I'm a Logic user).

So, what does a guy who has access to all this great stuff have as his personal gear? When I was at ORU, when people would come over to my house, they were surprised to see how low-end my home stereo was, and invariably, the conversation went somewhat like this...

"Dude, you're the Chief Audio Engineer at Oral Roberts Television.  That's your stereo!?"

"Yes. If I wanted to listen to CDs on $750K worth of gear, I would just drive to the studio."

Which brings me to my point...I just bought my first camcorder. What is it? Here it is...

It's a Crayola camcorder that records to SD card. It's the crappiest/cutest thing I've ever seen. It's for my youngest daughter, and we bought it yesterday with her $30 Wal-Mart gift card.

This thing is LITTLE ya'll. The photos don't do it justice. The camera is half the distance from the iSight camera than we are.

For a sample, visit my wife's blog. By broadcast standards, it's crappy indeed (the camera quality, not the blog), but not too bad considering how much compression goes into a typical Bloggger video. The real deal is this:  I get the pleasure of helping the Katie Mac launch her film career. Once she masters the Crayola, an ARRIFLEX D-21 will be no big deal!

Christmas is Over...

...and I'm back to business-as-usual. This week, we finish up our new sermon intro for our new series "Inaugural Address." I may post it once it's done.

We are also working on a new set design that will incorporate some other textures than the normal white-spandex-over-shapes. We'll have some corrugated semi-transparent plastic and some perforated metal panels. I should be able to light behind the plastic, and create some interesting effects. Maybe I'll put up some pics of that too.

Anyway, hope everyone has a great 2009!

2008 Crossroads Christmas Production

This was performed the weekend of December 13 & 14.  We had over 4000 in attendance. Obviously, this was a team effort, and we couldn't have pulled it off without the tireless work that everyone put into it.  Great job guys!

As for my contributions...I directed and shot the video pieces, and did all the post-mixing (on both the pieces and the live performances), plus I married it all back to video. Oh yeah, and I'm also the dopey-sounding puppet voice in the children's song.

BTW, my wife pretty much wrote the whole script, except for the last video scene, which our pastor wrote.

Hope you like it!

Christmas Stories

OK, so before I start with what's new, let me apologize for not posting in a while...

I apologize.

OK, with that done...we just had our Christmas production this past weekend. It was a banner weekend for us, shattering our attendance record. The old record was 3500, and that weekend, we had over 4000. I'm gong to convert the video to Flash, and upload it some time this week.

Other things that have happened:  we remodeled our tech booth in the main auditorium. Here's a pic:

I don't have a pic of the finished product, but it really looks great. We turned it around in just four days. With this remodel, we also added in another 16 channels, bringing the total to 48. We added an ADAT card to our LS9, and I got two Presonus DIGIMAX LT units. I also got 3 Focusrite OctoPres for the TV audio room. For Christmas, we were able to do a 46-track session. Pretty cool for a 24-Bus console!

Anyway, once I have the video encoded, I'll put it up.

Friday Funny

This pic truly needs no comments, but if you want to share one, feel free.