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?

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).

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!

2009's Coming...

...And today we plan for it. We'll be in meetings all day, discussing our goals and dreaming together for what God has in store for Crossroads Church in 2009. We'll also do our calendar-clearing marathon, which is always...ahem...interesting. It usually involves our incredibly busy youth department vying for spots against our even-more-incredibly busy children's department. I am more than content to just sit back and watch the carnage!

Crossroads Creative/Crossroads Church Media Dept. 2009 Goals:

- Finish addition of 2 cameras (5 total)

- Better local marketing (TV/radio/print)

- Continued Crossroads Creative distribution

- New Crossroads Church website

- Train and utilize more production & presentation personnel

- More involvement in staff's & volunteers' lives

- Continue streamlining of policies & procedures

- Expand/create relationships in local arts community

- Use majority of equipment budget towards gear in new building

The last one is a direct result of us possibly not having enough money to do everything we want to do technology-wise, so I'm taking most of my equipment budget for 2009 and 2010 and, instead of using it on our current facility, putting it towards new gear in the new building.

Pray for us as we go about our 2009 planning.

One thing I am totally looking forward to is seeing my wife give her premier goals as our new women's ministry director. I'm totally proud of her.

Oh, yeah, by the way, we'll cap off the day with a trip to Baton Rouge to eat at the most beloved P.F. Chang's. It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it!

More Accidental Progress...

OK, since our service from Hades last Friday, a couple of things have happened:

1. ProPresenter's update is out, with the fix for the problem we had with the videos.  Great job, guys!

2. We have a new lighting console on the way. We decided to get a new one after the following occurred:

The console that was (and still is) wigging out is actually a rental for our regular console that was having the same issues. During our staff meeting Tuesday, my pastor asked when I was taking the console out to be repaired, and when I informed him that it was out, and that the faulty one was actually the rental, he gave me a funny look. I then explained that I had just got the info for the return authorization, and that it should be all good once we had the board repaired. At that point, our youth pastor spoke up and said that even thought they had theirs repaired, it was still giving them issues (the same ones, BTW). With that bit of info out there, my pastor looked at me and simply said, "Let's just get a new one."

Fine with me, but here's the kicker:  he then says, "Turn something in for my board meeting tomorrow night."

OK, so, to say that I know nothing about lighting consoles is giving me too much credit! So, I sent out text messages, emails, and made some calls. I was surprised to get so many replies, but in a way, it made matters worse, since NO TWO PEOPLE had the same suggestion. The guy from whom we buy almost all of our gear gave me some suggestions, and I finally settled on a Lecprecon LP-X48. It's more than enough for what we need, and it'll be here soon.

BTW, the three wiggy consoles were all Zero88 FROG consoles. Ours are both FAT FROGs, and the rental is a Leap FROG (pictured).

0 for 3 from Zero88, which is a shame, because I've really enjoyed programming on our FAT FROG. It's kind of a sentimental thing, I guess. It's the first (and only) console I've ever done ANYTHING on. Hopefully whoever buys mine after it's repaired will have better luck, and I hope my Leprecon does the same for me (pun fully intended!).

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!

I Hate Sprint

Okay, so last night, I get a text message from my boss. It was regarding a meeting I had with our worship pastor and our lead PA engineer at Crossroads Church. He simply wanted to know how the meeting went.  I sent a reply, but I got the ever-so-increasingly-familiar "The network is not responding now" message after I hit SEND. That was around 8:30 last night.

This is me at 9:00 pm, a half-hour after the first message...

...and this is me at 10:35 pm, two hours after the failed text chat...

...and this is me this morning at 9:59 am, 13 1/2 hours after my boss should have had contact from me, answering his simple question...

The culprit? My house's metal roof. It's aluminum, made to look like cedar shakes. Five years ago, during Hurricane Lili, other roofs in the neighborhood were pretty badly damaged, but not mine. Here's a pic of the roof right above my front door. Pay close attention to the white stucco wall just to the left of the doorstep area. I'll get to that in a minute...

Here is the only place in my house that my phone works.  When I get a call, I have to go sit in my kitchen. We have this little solarium area that overlooks my goldfish pond. Notice the wall and overhang on the left side of the pic? That's my front door area...

OK, so you might be saying, "Well, doesn't your metal roof kill all cell phones, regardless of the carrier?" and "once you try to send a text, if it doesn't go through, it's too late. Try re-sending it." I'm glad you asked, and I know that already. Here's a pic of me with my wife's phone. She has AT&T. Go back and look at the lack of bars on my phone then notice all those bars on hers...

So, where am I going with this, and what does it have to do with the relevant use of media in a church setting? I've been desperately trying to get my boss/pastor to switch us to AT&T. I successfully got him and our executive pastor to switch to Mac, so why not AT&T and the iPhone? And, if we're going to be relevant, shouldn't we have stuff that works?

I'll keep you updated. What about you? Which carrier are you on, and how's your service? Am I alone in this? Where are the devoted Sprint-ers?

Praying Over Your Tech Team

My good friend, Jim Walton, has an excellent post on his blog Church Tech Matters. It's about praying over your team and gear. I couldn't agree more.

BTW, this guy has it going on. He has really turned things around at the church he attends. His blog totally worth bookmarking. He talks a lot about IT stuff, which is not in my sphere (usually), but the ministry principles he discusses are great.

Great job, Jim.