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.