Production Musings

What’s the Point?

// January 20th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Thoughts

The Ragamuffin Gospel – (n)  a book I’ve had on my shelf for years and never read.

I recently picked it back up, dusted it off, and began reading.  I shared some of the following thoughts with the team this past Sunday about why we do what we do.  Since I’ve been a part of Blue Ridge, technical production technology has changed drastically.  I’m often challenged within myself by the question, “Does God really ‘need’ lights that move and change color, large format audio consoles, or sweet graphic designs and text animations that consume large amounts of time in order to communicate to the hearts of people?”

Brennan Manning writes:

“Any church that will not accept that it consists of sinful men and women, and exists for them, implicitly rejects the gospel of grace.”  And he later writes, “Often hobbling through our church doors on Sunday morning comes grace on crutches – sinners still unable to throw away their false supports and stand upright in the freedom of the children of God.  Yet, their mere presence in the church on Sunday morning is a flickering candle representing a desire to maintain contact with God.  To douse the flame is to plunge them into a world of spiritual darkness.”

It made me think of the large number of people who show up at our building on Sunday mornings, many of whom are turned off to God.  Many have church baggage.  Many have God baggage.  We don’t always get it right technically, this I know, but I hear over and over again from many of these folks that their experience here is atypical from the church experiences they’ve known in the past.  They might say, “This doesn’t look like anything like the church I knew!”  There’s no real truth, no real power, in a moving light or an audio console.  But I would argue that when technology is used well it can serve to break down some of the walls that people walk in with.  Required?  Nah.  Useful?  Yes.

2009 Stage Design #1

// January 15th, 2009 // 6 Comments » // Stage Design

Series :: Christianity Undressed
“Many people say religion is one of the primary problems with the world. We agree. Over the years, religion has been clothed in many different ways: the elegant robes of priests, conservative habits of nuns, suits & ties, sin management, rules, and expectations. What’s being covered up? Does Christianity have anything to hide? If all the trappings were stripped away, what would be left?

The purpose behind this series is to expose these questions and many more in an attempt to find the bare truth that may have been covered up by good intentions and lost in the attire of rituals and traditions.” – Series Blurb

It’s our first series of 2009! Dressing rooms constructed of wood. 10′ sections of truss borrowed from my friend Lester Hamrick. 4 30w pinspots were used to light interior of truss. 2 Color Splits and 2 Par 64 fixtures hung from truss. Studio Beam fixtures on back row. One of the significant changes we made recently was to move the studio beams to the back row. They are working out very nicely back there for back lighting and color changes, especially when haze is used. Feel free to critique the color palette of this design. We typically aim for about 2, maybe 3 colors for use but in this design there are at least 4 or 5 colors going on and therefore may be a bit too busy.  BTW, when we took these photos, the room wasn’t hazed well enough.

2008 – A Year in Stage Design and Lighting

// January 12th, 2009 // 4 Comments » // Stage Design

2008 was a year of many things for us at Blue Ridge and it was also a year of intentional stage designs.  Todd Foster and I spent a large portion of time tweaking the process of taking a series topic to a concept for stage and lighting design.  The process isn’t finished.  We still have places to improve.  Currently the process is as follows:  Teaching Team gives us the direction for the series – Todd, Colin Harman and myself brainstorm design concepts – Stage Design team begins work once design is finalized – Once the design is together, the Lighting Team brings the design to life.

Our lighting system comprises approximately 102 fixtures (ETC Source Fours, Source Four Jrs, Par64 cans, High End Studio Beams, and AC Lighting Color Split LEDs)  Here are a few photos from 2008 Stage Designs (minus the last series…Christmas was busy and I forgot to document the design!  I’ll try to lift it off the video perhaps!):

Series: Origins :: A look at creation. Created w/ a team of 7. Leaves are wooden cutouts suspended by wooden dowels, painted by hand by artist and lit w/ single Source 4 Jr. Zoom and a homemade gobo from pie pan. 2 Jr Zooms used for blue back ground of ORIGINS and a custom Apollo gel for the word itself. We used hay bales stacked and burlap to build the dirt pile. For the dirt we used peat moss.

Series:  Text :: On Scripture. Details: 13 36″ fluorescent work lights, 2 24″ fluorescent work lights mounted behind cutouts. Each letter was made from a translucent material I’ve forgotten the name of. All color was from front lighting from 2 Color Split LED fixtures and 2 High End Studio Beam fixtures. We controlled the fluorescents with a dimming channel from our lighting console and discovered that we could take them down to about 60% before they began to flicker. (We always had to start from 100%) Also, at 70% the cameras began to pick up several lights cycling between white and yellow – not noticeable to our eyes.

Series: Pure :: A series on Galatians. Spandex lit by the Studio Beams.  Stage Design team painted the stage to spice it up!

And another look:

Series: The “S Word” :: A series on serving or “Schwords for 1,000 Alex.” Color Splits used to wash spandex on back, Rosco cityscape gobos, faux brick finish.  Todd Foster, Steve Jordan, Laura Eagle, Daniel Cyrus, Janelle Glover, Steve Mesanko, Colin Harman, Jeremy Wilkinson, Andrew Hunt

Series:  Happily Ever After ::  One of the early 2008 designs!  Giant silhouette cutout, poor planning: our rigging to hold silhouette looked more like a noose after lighting…ouch.  We learned from this!

So we begin

// January 10th, 2009 // No Comments » // Thoughts

After some degree of patient encouragement from a few close friends, I’ve made it my goal to begin writing about my life as a Christ follower.  The things learned, problems solved, successes and failures are largely related to my occupation as a technical director at Blue Ridge Community Church in Forest, VA.

It’s difficult for me to consider myself a “real” technical director because I lack formal training, except that of a BA in Business Marketing.  After high school I attended a small community college in North Carolina to study Electronics but lost interest while taking the ‘Art of Soldering’ with a wildly eccentric professor who shattered my concept of what it meant to be excited about making electrical connections.  I then went on to work under an electrician and there learned that I would rather not crawl into the places required of me.  After failed attempts at performing classical guitar, then electric and acoustic guitar, and most recently the mandolin, I feel that God has stumbled me upon the perfect intersection of my failures…if we can consider them failures at all.

I don’t consider myself extremely technical but I do enjoy solving problems, helping make things less stressful and more enjoyable for technical volunteers, and most enjoyably, watching God work in and through the service of each person on the team!  I look forward to seeing where this new blog adventure takes us!