The Dirty Black Shirt, Part 2

OK, so I've established that I don't want my life to be a dirty black shirt, showing all of my shortcomings and sin for all to see.

But, I DO want my life to be a dirty black shirt.

Huh?

One of the things Jesus was criticized for was the fact that he hung around with tax collectors and sinners. One of the things present-day Christians are criticized for is "being too close to the world."

How do you:

Stay close to God while befriending the world?

Live in and not of the world?

Love the sinner, hate the sin?

I want my heart to be clean, but I also want to be involved in other people's dirt, so that God can use me to help them get rid of their own dirty shirts.

God, let me stay so close to you so that my shirts don't get dirty, but also let me stay so connected with humanity that I'm not afraid to get soiled now and then.

OK, So I'm Back (and hopefully with something to say).

My last post was from this past July 4th. It was about my dad (you can read it for yourself, it's right below this one), and after writing it, I really felt like there was nothing I could really say that would transition out of that post. I really wanted to honor my father.

I love you Dad.

Anyway, my wife and I did our little morning workout (a story in itself, I might add), and it involved a good bit of abs work. Why is this important? Hang on, I'll tell you...

This morning, I wore a black shirt. We have a white dog. Get the picture? After my sweaty body was on the floor, and the workout was finished, I noticed a lot of white dog hair, and other sundry floor items, on my shirt. It completely grossed me out.

But then, I got to thinking, "I'm no dirtier than when I wear a white shirt. It's just that the black shirt shows it up in more contrast."

And that's when this thought occurred to me: We can go through life not noticing (or not examining, or not paying attention to) our dirtiness, but then, something (or someone) comes along and it gets clearly pointed out to us.

You know, the issue that pushes you over the edge, the person that seems to have grace in every situation (and you really admire them for it), the Bible verse that pricks us as we read it, the Holy Spirit gently bidding us on to change. These are all ways God tries to speak to us, to show us our sinfulness, providing a way out, to be clean again.

God, I don't want to be a dirty shirt. Please make me clean again.

Stay tuned for more. While typing this, I had another "dirty black shirt" analogy thought.

Born on the Fourth of July

No, this post isn't about the Tom Cruise movie, nor is it about our American freedoms.

This post is about a man. A man, born July 4th, 1927, the youngest of many children, the son of a simple farmer. He grew up in Gueydan, LA, working in his father's sharecropper fields, and didn't get past the sixth grade.

He married the love of his life on November 7, 1946, a woman also of simple means. She was from Erath, LA, and they settled in the Vermilion Parish seat of Abbeville, LA.

They had five children, six including a miscarried child. Their children were quite spread out in age; their oldest was married and pregnant before their youngest was born.

This man was the hardest working man I ever met. I've seen pictures of him working in the southern Louisiana oilfields, with men who would just-as-soon rip you limb from limb as shake your hand. This man worked on the crew who cleared the way for I-10 between Lafayette and Baton Rouge (contracting Yellow Fever in the process).

This man was a business owner. He owned Ray's Auto Sales in Abbeville, a used auto parts and towing service. He was also an avid horseman and cattle farmer. Again, always working, always taking care of his business, always looking out for his animals.

This man was my father. Raymon Allen Gaspard, who died June 18, 1988, was a great man, only I didn't let him know that I thought he was. I wasn't the best son a guy could ask for. I was ungrateful, arrogant, cocky, and manipulative, and I'm so deeply sorry that I treated him with less than the absolute respect that was owed to him.

Today would be his 82nd birthday.

Dad, I miss you tremendously. I wish you were here, to see my beautiful wife, to see my wonderful girls, to know that you were a great influence on the man that I am today. Thank you for being such a great provider, example, and friend, although I would have never admitted those things to your face.

I can't wait to see you again, when we walk the streets of gold together. We have plenty of catching up to do. I just hope that I have made you half as proud as I am of you.

Happy birthday.

Flip-Flops, Part 4 of 4

OK, so this is our last installment of the Flip-Flops series' video openers. For this one, we decided to do something a little different from the others.

Here's the (rather boring) original:

And here is the final version:

A huge shout-out to Adam, our editor. He did a great job on all the videos. Also, a huge thanks to Mr. Dennis, the father of our graphic artist, for providing the setting. He lives right on the beach, and let us come over and invade his house for a couple of days for the shoot.

Friday Funny

OK, so this past week was Father's Day, and it's been stupid hot down here in Cajun country.

I know. What do these two have in common? Stay with me.

Both of these scenarios got me thinking of a piece we did five years ago. Our message series was called "The US Male." Get it? Anyway, the original idea was that all of our senior staff would come out dressed as postal workers and do a little stupid dance. Well, everyone backed out, and my pastor says, "Hey man, you're funny...you do it."

So I did it. Except I did it on video. It was, like, 167 degrees that day (evidenced by the huge amount of sweat seen in some of the shots).

A couple of funny things about this shoot, apart from the heat:

1. I had a guy was sitting in the middle of the road in his truck, playing this song over and over for me to dance to. I'm sure the neighbors were wondering what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks was going on! I literally had a piece of paper and a golf pencil in my pocket. As I would do one dance, we'd stop tape, I'd pull out the paper and pencil, and cross it off, then move on to the next dance. Efficiency, you know...

2. We saw an actual postal worker out there. Now, I know the USPS is a little weird about their stuff, and I was worried we'd (I'd) get in trouble, but he just looked at me, smiled and gave me the "what's up?" chin lift. All good in the hood.

Anyway, here's the vid. I've lost weight since then. Hope you enjoy it!

Flip-Flops, Part 3

OK, so this past weekend was Father's day, and the pastor's message was on fatherhood (naturally). We created a sermon opener to reflect the whole "following in his footsteps" kind of thing without being too obvious.

Here's the raw video. You'll notice a cut to black towards the end. That represents about a minute or so of locked-down footage, while we waited for the surf to come in, wiping away the footsteps.

So, here's the finished product. Notice the sound design (footsteps & surf), and the little bit of eye candy at the end. We got wooden letters, and punched them into the sand, shot that by itself, then composited that footage into the master shot. I LOVE making my own props, and finding new ways to do things.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the piece!

Happy Father's Day!

I found this little gem when I was searching for some files the other day. I had totally forgotten about it.

I did all of the gut-string acoustic parts on my 6-string bass, plus we added in a solo section, so I could show that I can play more than just root-fifth!

Anyway, hope you enjoy it. I've lost about 20 or so pounds since then (this was 2005), and we now record with audience mics (trust me...there was uproarious applause when I was done). Also, we now use in-ear monitors (I had forgotten how UGLY floor wedges are!).

I hope all you dads out there have a great Father's Day. Be good to your daughters!

Flip-Flops, Part 2

Here is the second-of-four sermon openers for our "Flip-Flops" series. Not much different from the original. A little color-correction and sound design. Enjoy!

Friday Funny

Now, there's some relevant church media for you...

Flip-Flops, Part 1 of 4

Our current series is called "Flip-Flops." We wanted to do a little summertime fun thing, so we decorated the auditorium with palm trees and made little tiki huts and so forth. Everyone on stage wore leis, and we even had a guy playing steel pan drums in the foyer.

So, what do you do for a sermon opener? Glad you asked. My idea was to do a little take-off on the Corona "Miles Away From Ordinary" TV campaign, making a pair of old flip-flops the hero, instead of the aforementioned Mexican beer. Our graphic artist has a relative who lives on Dauphin Island, AL, so we planned a little media dept. trip (I know, suffering for the cause...)

Since the videos would be relatively easy to shoot, we decided to do a custom sermon opener video for each week of the four-week series.

Here's Part 1's video, in its raw form, complete with my directions, bad grammar and all:

Of course, the Corona ads are all set in a tropical paradise, and the Gulf Coast of Alabama is hardly such, so, with a little post-production magic, and a whole lot of talent and patience from our editor, added in with a little bit of audio spotting from yours truly (actually none of the audio is real), we ended up with this:

Anyway, it was great fun to do these pieces. I'll post the rest of them (pre- and post-mojo) once they're done.

Crossroads Church 2009 Easter Production

OK, so it's been a while since I posted.  So sue me.

I've been wanting to post this video, but I couldn't get it down under Blogger's 100MB limit.  I had to take out the altar call to cut it down.

Our Easter series was called "Proof," and we did a really neat and SIMPLE production. We all thought is was very effective, which goes to show you that you don't always have to spend all kinds of crazy money and time creating that "wow factor." Sometimes the "wow factor" can be created in a simple, real, and effective way.

Here it is:

Friday Funny

OK, this video has nothing to do with the relevant use of media in church, but I wanted to post it anyway.  Special thanks goes out to my good friend, fellow musician and dog lover, Scottie V., for sending this to me.  Hilarious. I needed a good laugh this morning.

Have a great weekend everyone. Please keep your leg from stealing your bones!

New Youth Sermon Series

Our April 2009 youth sermon series is called "Justice" and it centers on injustices throughout the world ... poverty, human trafficking and the like.  Here's our sermon intro piece:

It's a little disturbing, but appropriate.

Busy Easter Weekend?...

Here's our promo for our 2009 Easter Production.  The series we'll be in is called "Proof," which actually starts the week before Easter.  Once that sermon intro is done, I'll put it up.

By the way, If you're in the area that weekend, I'd love to meet you in person!

Hot Topics

Here's a piece we did for our youth's current series, Hot Topics.

This was created by the very talent Sonny, who works over at Media Savant. They do all of our youth sermon openers. Great job Sonny. You hit the nail right on the head.

It'll be available soon on Crossroads Creative, as well as the resellers.

Friday Funny

The things we do for love...

This week's Friday Funny features none other than yours truly, otherwise known as "Beau" from The Bayou Belles and Their Beau, otherwise known as my wife's blog.

Anyway, go here to see the thing I have done because I love my wife.

Come back here to leave your comment for me, but vote on her blog.

All's Well That Ends Well

Our March 2009 series is entitled "All's Well That Ends Well." We decided to do something a little different for our sermon intro video. My favorite spot from Super Bowl XLIII was by careerbuilder.com, so we did our own little takeoff on that spot.

First, the original:

And our version:

We had a lot of fun with the piece, and it'll be on our site as well as the resellers soon. Hope you like it!

Vacation...

I may or may not be posting this week, because I'm on vacation. I woke up to this scene this morning...

We're in the Smoky Mountains this week. Gatlinburg, TN to be exact. Skiing, shopping, spending too much money, overeating. That's pretty much my M.O.

OK, so while I'm gone, I'm gonna do something special for all my readers. You can go to Crossroads Creative's site, and use this coupon code:

VACATION

It's good for 75% off any purchase, small or large.  It will expire when I'm back in the office, March 3rd, 2009.

Have a great week everyone!

Friday Funny

You provide the caption...

Just Between You and Me

This weekend, we're wrapping up a message series that our associate pastor is doing. It's called "Just Between You and Me." He has talked about things that come between us and our God, our spouse, our friends, and this weekend, us and our fellow man, which will be a message on racism.

So, what do you do for a sermon intro video? Well, I had the idea of how things we do begin to define us, and we carry them as labels. So, we did this...

And, as always, if you're interested in purchasing it, you can find it here.

Girls' Getaway

Here's a piece Crossroads Creative did to promote our women's ministry's fun trip a few months ago (which had a record attendance). BTW, our women's ministry director is none other than my incredibly talented and adept wife. You can check out her blog here.

Hope you like the piece. It's available for sale here.

Happy Valentine's Day

OK, so the Friday Funny has been usurped by a Valentine's Day post. Yes, there is still one more "Annual Church Business Meeting" spot to be shown, so if you're interested to see it, go here.

Anyway, here's a piece we created for a February series our youth did last year. the series was called "Lovers." After it was done, we decided to create a Valentine's Day spot with it.

Major props go out to three people:  Adam H., for his brilliant editing/compositing/animation skills (After Effects & Final Cut Pro), Chris D. for his colorizing (by hand, BTW, on a WACOM tablet, and I LOVE what he did with it), and he girl who actually did the hand-drawn illustrations (I don't even know her name. She was the girlfriend of the younger brother of our old TV audio guy).

What did I do?

I scanned the pictures, and helped cut the time down. Oh the glamourous life...

Hope you like it...

Video Announcements

My good friend, Brian Davis gave me an idea. He recently did a post about video announcements, and I've come to realize that Crossroads Church does things a little differently.

We don't do a spokesperson per se; we do an announcements package. Each week, we feature a different department head and his or her spouse doing a welcome video, which leads into our announcements (which are in commercial spot form), then back to our couple who then further welcome the visitors.

Once a month, we have a special newcomers welcome, and we have an ending video that speaks to our newcomers, and let's them know how to attend the reception. Perhaps, one day, I'll post how we use all of those couples videos (once we were done, there were 40 different versions in all - 8 couples with five different videos each. Yikes!).

Basically, our church is where we debut all Crossroads Creative pieces. They're our first audience!

Anyway, here's the announcement package from this past weekend, featuring our Accounting Director and her husband.

The Kaleo piece is from LifeChurch.tv. Our associate pastor is doing that series on Wednesday nights in February. A generic version of the baptism piece is available here, and the Annual Church Business Meeting spot is available here.

So what do you do at your church? How do you handle announcing all of your big events to your congregation?

New Products at Crossroads Creative

OK, first of all, let me say "thanks" to all of you who contacted me about the videos I've posted here. Your kind words are truly appreciated. So on my 100th post, I thought I'd give a little back...

Several of you have asked when some of these will be on our site. Well...now they are!

Here are a few links to new videos I just uploaded today:

Annual Church Business Meeting - The Board Member (four in all)

Girls' Getaway - Beverly (this one is pretty funny)

Just Between You and Me (hot off the presses)

Betrayal BUNDLE (a great Easter production on a budget!)

Muchas Gracias (a piece on thankfulness)

Planks and Specks (criticism, love, etc.)

There are about 19 new pieces in all, and we have around 135 total on the site. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy them. Please send all your pastor friends my way!

OK, about my 100th post. Any purchase on Crossroads Creative is 50% OFF with the following coupon code: POST100. This offer is good through March 1st, 2009.

Friday Funny

Here is the third installment of our Annual Church Business Meeting spots. This time, it features our editor, Adam. This one is my personal favorite.

Also, for those of you who have inquired about the availability of the pieces for sale:  I'm in the process of encoding an uploading, and I hope to have them on our site, as well as the resellers' sites within the next week or so.

Friday Funny

OK, here's the 2nd installment of the Annual Church Business Meeting campaign. This one features my good friend, Lee, as a...well, you'll just have to watch to find out.

By the way, it was determined that the audience had a hard time seeing the text for the first spot, so we just did plain text over black for this one and the others. The final versions for sale will all be like this one, unless we come up with a better solution.

You can view the first video here.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Best Seat in the House

Yesterday I got to do something I rarely do:  run sound at church. It's not that I can't, I'm just always doing something else [playing bass, singing, supervising our TV production crew, doing TV audio, MBWA (management by walking around)], etc.

Our PA engineer hasn't had a weekend off in a long time, and all of the other engineers we use were busy, so I got the call. Here are the pics:

From my vantage point to the stage: 

And a little lower so you can see the console:

Here's a shot of this past weekend's lighting operator, George. He's a smooth Romanian who just became an American by marrying into the fold. Great guy.

Here's Jeff.  This was his first weekend training on Presentation, and he nailed it on the first go-round. Welcome aboard Jeff!

On my other side was the other Jeff, my boss, the pastor of the church. He's a great singer, and big-time music lover, and he knows what sounds good. No pressure there!

By the way, he's playing shaker with a small tin of Altoids.

The Yamaha LS-9 is a GREAT little console. We just added some channels on the digital side with two Presonus DigiMax LTs (you can see them in the rack) running through an ADAT card. Our eight wireless mics sound amazing through the LTs, as do our eight tracks lines.

All in all, I thought things went pretty well. I got a few compliments, and no glaring looks.

That counts for something, right?

Friday Funny

OK, so earlier this week I said I had some really funny spots to post. Well, here's the first one.

A little explanation first...As you know, Crossroads Creative produces videos to sell on its and other sites. Crossroads Church is the main benefactor of our work. So, we're coming up on our Annual Church Business Meeting. We did a piece for it a couple of years ago, but it has grown a little long in the tooth, so it was time for a new one. You can view the first one here.

This time, however, we decided to do a whole campaign. We did four spots in all, and I'll post the rest on the next three subsequent Fridays. Gotta keep you coming back for more, eh?

Anyway, here's the first installment. The third board member is being portrayed by yours truly. Hope you enjoy it!

Oh, yeah, and if you're wondering...it'll be on our site (as well as the resellers') soon.

Lurkers Beware!

OK, so I check my blog every day, and I've noticed a lot of hits. As a matter of fact, every time I do a post, my blog shows up in the "Top Lafayette Blogs," usually in the top five (so does my wife's blog, for that matter).

But here's the deal:  not many comments! Hey, in the words of every kid who's been to a Mardi Gras parade, "Throw me something, mister!"

Leave a comment for me. Anything. You hate my work. You think my blog stinks. I don't care.

But just be nice.

Have a great day everyone! I've got some pretty funny videos coming up later this week or early next week. Stay tuned...

Celebration of Marriage Banquet

Obviously, if you've read any of my posts, you know that I'm the Media Director at Crossroads Church and we do lots of videos.  Well, this piece is for our upcoming Celebration of Marriage Banquet, which will be Friday, Feb. 13th at the church.  It's a pretty fun night. Our band plays loves songs, and it's a great meal. We even also have a comedian. Not too bad for $40/couple.

Anyway, here's the promo video we shot. There will a generic version of this on Crossroads Creative, Sermon Spice, and Worship House Media.  If you're looking to buy it, the official name is "Celebration of Marriage - Contemplate, Tolerate, Celebrate." Yeah, I know it's a mouthful. Hope you like it!

Busy Day

Yesterday was a really busy day for the Crossroads Media Dept. I got to work at 8:00 am, and began setting up for a shoot. We did a commercial for our Annual Church Business Meeting. We used a 1K in a light bank, two ARRI 300W Fresnels, and an ARRI 600W open face. We were lighting a conference table for the spot.

We began the shoot around 9:45 am and got done around 11:15. The spot will be around :60 long, but it will have four different endings, and I'll post them as they're done. We're using a different ending each weekend for four weekends. When we're completely done, we'll put three of them on Crossroads Creative, and possibly the other reseller sites (the fourth one won't be understood by anyone other then our own congregation).

After that shoot, my pastor and I drove over to a local park, where we shot a promo for his 5K jogging small group. We're doing a small groups expo the last weekend of the month, but he'll be on vacation, so he'll promote his group via video.

After that shoot, he and I headed back to his office to shoot opens and closes for our TV show, Crossroads. While we were on the 5K promo shoot, my assistant lit his office. We started around 1:00 pm, and we did opens and closes for four shows.

We got done about 1:45 pm or so, and we tore down and got ready for a meeting in his office for our 2009 Easter Production. The series we'll be in is called "Proof," and our production will center around a college professor who once was an atheist, but is now a Christ-follower.

OK, so the meeting was done around 3:30 pm or so, and I began capturing the opens & closes. I did a few file transfers, then called it quits at 4:45 pm.

Oh, yeah, and I didn't even stop to eat lunch. Some days are just that way.

What about you? do you have days that just move and move and move, with absolutely no dead time?

Friday Funny

This one is perhaps, more painful than funny. You supply the caption.

Inaugural Address

This past weekend, we started our new sermon series. Our pastor wanted to do a message series about vision and goal setting (which he does every January), so with the concurrence of a truly historic presidential inauguration, his idea was to do a series titled "Inaugural Address."

So...what do you do with that? Well, this is what we came up with...

All of the audio after the first shot was 100% post-production. None of it is real. Not even the footsteps. I'm the voice of the courier and the announcer at the end, our graphic artist is the voice of the lady, and our editor is the voice of the presidential aide/secret service guy.

I really hope you like it!

New Set at Crossroads

This past week, we put up a new set at Crossroads. New backdrop, new band setup, and new lighting setup. Pics will follow, but just in case you're wondering what our lighting gear is, here's a pretty comprehensive list:

Leprecon LP-X48 console

8 2K Fresnels (6 front, 2 rear)

10 PAR 64s (all front)

8 500W Fresnels (all rear)

5 Elation PowerSpot 575s (4 in front movable truss, 1 spare)

8 Elation PowerSpot 250s (4 on stage floor, 4 in various stages of malrepair)

DMX splitter

Elation UNI-BAR DMX switch/dimmer

Reel EFX DF-50 Hazer

OK, so that's how we achieve the "magic." Here are some pics taken yesterday morning. If they don't look great, blame the iPhone, not the lighting designer (me) or the photographer (me again).

We use a different light scheme/moving background video for each song. I try my best to make the two match, both in color and style. Here's the first worship song:

Second worship song:

Third worship song:

Fourth worship song:

 Special music (offertory, which we tape for the local TV broadcast as well as the website):

Finally, the sermon. We're in a series entitled "Inaugural Address," so I wanted to do a patriotic thing with the background.

I'll try to post the sermon intro for "Inaugural Address" sometime this week. Anyway, hope you like our new lighting. I got lots of great comments on it. A little inside story...I programmed all of these scenes Friday, while I was sick. I thought everything was great until I got a text from a friend, Preston Blair, who was sitting in the balcony during the 10:45 service. He told me that the red intels shining back into the crowd were blinding him and others in his section.

Sorry, Preston, a couple of burned retinas is a small price to pay.

(Actually, I moved the light immediately after that service).

Getting on Board

I'm kind of viewed by my co-workers at Crossroads as the resident computer/infotech know-it-all. I'm not sure why or how I got that distinction, but it's there nonetheless. It's been quite fun (and entertaining) helping others along their respective digital journeys (and I always lead them towards Mac-dome).

Which brings me to my point today. I've watched my pastor (and good friend) go from complete non-computer use (back in the day) to a proud iPod, MacBook Pro, and iPhone user. Now, he's entered a new chapter in his digital life:  blogging.

I'm proud of him, not only as a friend, mentor, boss, pastor, visionary, etc, but how he's embraced technology. He gets it, and as the resident computer/infotech know-it-all, it's good to have him aboard!

His name is Jeff Ables, and you can check out his blog here.