Friday Funny

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

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.

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

OK, so if you've ever had a conversation with me, you probably know that I just got an iPhone, and you're wondering why I haven't posted about it yet. Well, the reason is that I've been too busy playing with my iPhone to post about it yet.

So, for now, a Friday Funny pic will have to do. Here it is:

You write the caption. I'll provide the first one:  brings new meaning to the term "going postal."

The Most Awesome Woman Ever

OK, so I played a little trick on my wife for her 30-something-th birthday. I had eight of her bloggy friends write something nice about her, and post videos of her singing or acting. Where they got those oh-so-professionally-made videos is anyone's guess...

You can go visit all of theses awesome ladies and see the vids at the following places...

Permission to Peruse

Moments and Memories

The Sky is Only Dark Between the Stars

Pianomomsicle

Life in the Parsonage

Musings of a Future Pastor's Wife

Blessed With Five

Everyday Miracles

BTW, we could all learn something about effective marketing by looking at the creativity with which each of these ladies goes about their own blog.

Oh yeah, if you want to see someone totally kicking her husband's booty at the blogging, go check her out here...

Happy Birthday Mama Belle! There's no other way to say it...you ROCK!

Friday Funny

I found this picture yesterday on a friend's facebook page.  You write the caption...

Fun With Photo Booth!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I use my Mac for serious stuff - editing, writing, audio, etc, etc.

But sometimes it's fun to mess with stuff. I just took these pics while trying to come up with something cool and different for my facebook page. Which one should make the cut?

1.  The cartoonish egghead?

2. The weird wide-headed alien?

3. The double-chinned cylops?

4. Just plain headless?

It's fun to have a cool computer.

Friday Funny

Okay, instead of the usual pic, I've posted a video of my youngest daughter. She and her mother were waiting in the car for my oldest daughter, and my wife wanted to capture some video of her singing while listening to some Aly & AJ on her sister's iPod Shuffle. What happened, however, was COMPLETELY unplanned!

It seems that she got a little mixed up between "cappuccino" and "Frappuccino!"

Any comments?

Friday Funny

Here's the next installment of the Friday Funny. You provide the caption...

I'm still waiting on all the blooper snoopers out there to tell me what's wrong with the "Ben and George" piece. C'mon, guys, you can find them, just look (and listen) carefully.

What's Wrong With Me?

OK, OK, for those of you who know me, you're already thinking, "Well, Rich, that's a loaded question!"

Seriously, I have four friends over right now at my house, and my wife is in the living room, with them, and they're playing the Wii. I, however, am at my computer, uploading Crossroads Creative videos. I'm done uploading to Catholic Media House (they're not up yet), and now I'm working on Worship House Media.  What's more, after I'm done with that, I plan to upload to The Shoutable Store, and if there's time, Graphics 4 Worship, and Sermon Spice.

Am I that much of a workaholic?

To be fair, I've been in the living room most of the time. I just came in here to check the status of the uploads, and this is something I planned to do long before my guests showed up, but shouldn't I be in there, and should I be in here blogging about it?

OK, now my wife is telling me that her team desperately needs me to help out playing Big Brain Academy. So, I guess I'll oblige and say, "Good night."

Good night.

Milestones

Well, the Relevant Church Media blog has hit a milestone: 1000 views.

Thanks to all who have visited my blog since its inception. Looking back through my archives, I'm noticing that I tend to stray a bit from he subject of "relevant church media," so future posts will undoubtedly include this subject more often.

OK, so I haven't really posted a lot lately. It's just been crazy-busy 'round here. Crossroads Creative is (still) in the process of its rebranding, and we're very close to choosing a logo design. The funny thing is, in test-marketing (thanks to all who responded), the overwhelming favorite (by a 2:1 margin over the next-highest scorer) is a design that I'm not too keen on.

This situation perplexes me, because I really want to love my new logo right out of the gate. I had convinced myself (with the help of an arm-wrangling ad agency) that our current logo would grow on me, but it hasn't. I actually find it repulsive. Maybe the aforementioned arm-wrangling had a negative effect, and I'm in secret rebellion. But that's another post...

So here's my question:  what would you do? Do you trust the opinions of those chosen at random who've given you their honest opinion, or do you just do what you want anyway, shirking their advice? If a brand resonates with consumers, do you go with them, or your own tastes?

The Night That Will Not be Discussed Again...

My church NEVER has technical issues. Our gear is great, our tech team operates like a well-oiled machine, and our services run flawlessly.

So, what the heck happened last night!?

During the 4 pm band rehearsal, none of our in-ears' mixes were right. Our console was accidentally reset (I guess), and all of the settings were lost. If this were the only issue of the night, it'd be no big deal, BUT...

This was only a foreshadowing of things to come.

We had guest speakers, who are missionaries to Africa (yeah, cliche, but true). I found out (at 3 pm) that the wife was going to sing, and we had to hook up floor wedges. Again, no big deal, except that she had a PowerPoint to show DURING her song(s). Also, NBD, except that they sorta got lost on the way to the church, and got there at about 10 minutes before service. We loaded the PowerPoint on our teleprompter, and were set. Obviously, she got no soundcheck, but our sound guy's pretty good (really good, in fact), so that didn't worry me.

But then, IT happened.

At right about service time (6 pm), I heard my name being paged. ProPresenter, our presentation software, wasn't playing audio. the computer had audio, but not the program. Weird. I restarted the program. No result. Restarted the computer. No result. Shut down the computer. No result. Downloaded update. No result. Reset program display preferences defaults. BINGO, we have sound. The audience actually applauded when the countdown started (probably the first time in history a church congregation has given an ovation to a countdown video!).

We could have started service without our two-minute video countdown, but we REALLY needed video for the service; it was Baby Dedication weekend (which are all on video). The band was ready to start without the countdown, but guess who the bass player was his weekend? Yep, you guessed it...me!

Okay, the two-minute countdown ended, and worship started. No problems. First song over, Baby Dedication video plays. Perfect. Second worship song. Fine. Then, the drummer was VERY late starting the click for the third song, so the worship leader decided to kill it (we started 15 min. late because of the aforementioned ProPresenter glitch) and just move forward with the service...as the drummer started clicking off the third song. It was as if the whole band (and most of the congregation) was yelling "Nooooooooo" in slow motion.

The worship pastor had the congregation sit down, as our presentation operator rolled our announcements video. No sound. I actually heard people sigh and "ohhh" in disappointment.

So we skipped the announcements and proceeded with verbal announcements and offering message. When we went to start the special song (Natalie Grant's "I Will Not Be Moved," which is a bit of a rocker) the drummer rolled the click for the not-played third worship song, a COMPLETE ballad! The look on his face was priceless. Better still was the sound of the supposed electric guitar volume swell that lasted about 15 seconds longer than it should have. The swell started, crested and faded out BEFORE the click even started!

So, we got through that, all of us wondering "What could go wrong next?" I don't know why people have to ask that, because about 5 minutes later, our accountant's husband (who's also a board member, and Saturday night service's head usher) tripped the alarm in the accounting office! The best part about that is that he didn't know the code (to his wife's own department), so he had to call her. Obviously, that took longer than the grace period afforded once you trip the alarm. So...WAAWAAWAAWAAWAAWAAWAAWAAWAA!!!!!! the alarm went off.

Oh yeah, our lighting board we have temp-ed in because ours is not functioning correctly, is not functioning correctly. A couple of the lighting scenes mysteriously went dark WHILE THE PREACHER WAS ONSTAGE!

Several of us tried to explain to our ministry guests that this stuff never happens. We may have over-compensated, because I'm not sure they bought it, although, the missionary's wife did make a comment like "the devil really hates us."

After service, I got ProPresenter to work. It turns out that there is a bug in their program. I notified them, and a fix is on the way.

Has this absolute craziness ever happended to any of you? Please say yes!