Production Musings

Arts Party ’09

// September 17th, 2009 // 4 Comments » // Thoughts

Our annual Arts Party took place a few weeks ago.  It may have been the best one yet.  Each year we do an event in the summer and one in the fall for everyone involved in the arts at Blue Ridge.  The summer events are more relaxed.  People hang out.  They talk amongst themselves.  They play disc golf.  Whatever.  Fall events, while relaxed, have a more specific purpose.  We want to be reminded why we do what we do.  Why wake up at 5am on Sunday mornings?  Why park a quarter mile from the building and walk, while dodging deer, in the pre-dawn darkness?  Why sacrifice our Wednesday or Thursday evenings at home watching movies?  Because.  Because of what’s at stake for the hopeless and hurting.  Because of the life that Jesus offers.  We want to remember and refocus.

SO, here’s the scoop on what went down this year.  Dinner was prepared Alex Richardson of Robin Alexander American Bistro and served by Shea Foster and the events team at Blue Ridge.  Soooo Cheesy (made to order cheesecakes) provided some pretty unbelievable cheesecakes.  Mmm mmm mmmm.

After dinner and good conversation we migrated into the Sr. High auditorium for the evening festivities.  Todd Foster got us kicked off.  To his surprise I made a little welcome tag for him:

Todd’s Stage Welcome

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Todd made a few announcements and set up the next portion.  A major change took place this year within the Arts @_theridge.  Nan Torrence has led the Arts ministries for many, many years.  This year she passed the baton to Judson Lee.  In keeping with what we’re given in Romans 13, “⁷Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.”  We all wanted to give honor to her for her encouragement over the years and her example of servant leadership…

Nan was totally shocked.  In keeping with Nan’s famous double entendre tradition, we presented her a few little  awards to signify her new role as Director of Communications.  So, as we transitioned into what we endearingly have termed “The Nancy’s” we rolled this little clip.  It was hand crafted by Colin Harman:

The Nancy’s

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One of Nan’s famous lines when she’s recruiting for manual labor is, “I’m looking for a few big, strong, handsome men.”  It’s amazing how many old projects come to mind before answering this question.  The number of things that you remembered HAD TO BE done which is exactly why I don’t know of any big, strong, handsome men.  Reality sets in though and you offer your big, strong, handsome self to serve with joy.  None the less, we thought it would be fitting to provide her with her very own big, strong, handsome men.  This gives you an idea of the nature of the gifts…there were many more.

Following this, Peggy Schaub gave the keynote address.  Rather than write more about it, take a listen for yourself:

Peggy Schaub’s Talk: Or download it here

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ETC’s Ion Lighting Controller

// September 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // Stage Design, Thoughts

I know I know, if consistency is the key to keeping a successful blog then I fail.  It’s ok though, even though it may be a helpful thing to some, it falls behind my daily responsibilities here at Blue Ridge Community Church.  I have at least 3 big things to write about, including 2 new stage designs but today I’ll be writing about ETC’s Ion console.

For several years now we’ve been facing challenges within our lighting team.  Volunteer programmers would have trouble performing certain tasks with our old Leprecon LPX-48x controller. Basic tasks such as editing a cue live or moving cues around within the cue list were cumbersome for volunteers.  As I began moving towards these issues I realized that it wasn’t a people problem as much as it was a hardware problem.  Enter the ETC Ion.  It has replaced our Leprecon LPX48.  The Leprecon controller wasn’t a horrible controller and it does have it’s place in the industry, but it did use syntax and workflow that didn’t make it as easy for the weekend warrior volunteers who serve at Blue Ridge.  Simple changes of service became a big issue, no one could make a blind edit with confidence, and not to mention a mysterious problem with our house lights where we would lose control and have to manually reset the dimmers.

The Ion solved many problems for us.  Here’s a list:

1. Undo – my oh my, the simple pleasures.  One tiny mistake while editing can cost a programmer but this great feature has proven it’s worth.  It also keeps a history log of commands entered.  This is helpful from a directors stand point when a programmer says, “The console isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do!”  So, “Let’s see what we told it to do.”

2. On Board Learning – forgot what a command key does or how to use it?  The console will tell you!

3. Networkable – I can save tens of hours every stage change, hundreds of hours every year by controlling the console from my laptop from stage wirelessly.  It came with the network dongle allowing my laptop to become a Primary controller.  I still have a few issues to resolve with this feature…looks like Macs don’t play as friendly with ETC but I haven’t explored the latest firmware and editor updates…we’ll see!

4. iPhone – yes, you can control it via iPhone – iTunes App

5. Expandable – add multiple fader wings for up to 240 programmable faders.

I don’t know if the ‘perfect’ lighting console exists (some say it was the MicrovisionFX) but I can say with utter confidence that going with the Ion was a giant leap in the right direction for us.  Even our beginner volunteer programmer has picked it up and can edit with a level on confidence that comes more quickly than it ever has before!

Lover of Typeface

// April 16th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Thoughts

FINALLY!  Colin has a blog….and you should know about it.  He’s a lover of color, lover of typeface (exceptions: Comic Sans, Papyrus, CurlsMT, and probably also Viner Hand ITC), and generally the guy who keeps pushing me to be better.  His heart is for God, for people, and being ingeniously creative in every day life.  I introduce to you, Colin Harman:

AE Scripts – I love ‘em

// April 15th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Thoughts

It’s been too long since my last post.  We’ve been up to our neck over the past 3 or 4 weeks in video projects and the usual tasks.  I have much to get caught up on.  Until then, here’s the most recent project.  First, a note about After Effects scripts.  Up until this past month I’d never used them.  Uhm, hello?!  They make life easier.  We found one to help us with subtitles (which I’ll write more about later) and another to align objects to a grid.

For Easter, we were expecting above average attendance.  One of the things we wanted to communicate is the life that Jesus offers to all of us and the reality of that.  We wanted to share stories of people whose lives have been changed by Jesus since they’ve chosen to follow Him.  One of the elements we used to help support this message was a mixed media element.  The band performed Matthew West’s song “The Motions” to an animation we created.  It contained photographs from all of the baptisms from 2006-2009.  The question was, “How can we display this in an interesting, attractive manner and be impacting?”  Judson Lee created the performance click track on the Left and some synth/filler on the Right to be mixed in at front of house.

Of the hundreds of photos, we selected the top 80, cropped to 16×9 and resized to 800×450.  We ran the Layers2Grid script found at aescripts.com and it worked like a charm.  After wasting about 7 hours figuring out why nesting one comp into another creates blurry photos, I finally got it right.  Here’s what we came up with:

Ok ok, I apologize for the Mac look rip-off in advance…I couldn’t resist.  Here’s a version with no click, piano only.  I can’t post it with “The Motions” due to synchronization rights: