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Oct 28 2010
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Music, Reviews

A musical note

I haven’t put a music addition up here lately so here is what has been inspiring me musically lately.

I have had this album on repeat quite often the past couple weeks since it has been out and I haven’t gotten tired of it yet. I’ve been using it to tune systems, to gather my whits, to sing loudly in the car, to sketch some ideas or just plain relax. This would be my one must have I have probably bought in the last year or so and I can’t wait to go see her in concert

other mentionables to create to.

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Apr 11 2010
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Creative, Design, Stage, Tech

A Perfect Circle.

Alright so maybe it’s not a perfect circle but when the lights are out, and all you have is color you sure can’t tell!

So this next stage set was inspired by wind power (im trying to go green here). My personal goal for this set was to build something that could be generic and last through a couple of youth series. So after randomly being inspired by wind catchers and inset circles I decided to create my own moving piece of stage artwork. The only thing I had to purchase this time around was a router and bits to cut out some 4×4 sheets of corrugated plastic I had left over from a previous stage set (reuse and recycle, captain planet would be proud). photos here

I put the sheets of plastic on a piece of leftover board I had, found center, used a lawn steak as my arm, drilled through everything, inserted bolt. Ta-Da!! instant router guide to cut circles. I learned a few lessons along the way. A) make sure you’re also somehow bolted to the table your on, other wise it’s jump ‘n’ jive around the circle leaving you with a few bumps along the way. B) route multiple times BOTH directions to clear out the melted particle crud that the router forms. The blade is semi circular so it has an up path and a down path, and one way cuts smother than the other along the plastic. C) SOLIDLY fix your router to your guide whether it’s a lawn steak, 2×4 or whatever. I opted for the quick way out using a few zip ties so i could slide it around but that was a mistake. There should be a couple holes on your router for guide posts, use them. Also be ready to trim off any left over melted shavings, and if you stack multiples, rip them apart, wear gloves. Your hands will thank you later.

Stringing them together was a bit trick with waxy theatrical rope. It was a tad bit to thick, and kept getting bunched up inside. Make sure you experiment with a few things first. I tied knots after the top part of each section was threaded as my stop/pivot point. Then ran the string down through the center point on the bottom of each circle section. pictures here.

Then there is lighting and staging…and well you know how that goes. pictures

So there you have it, two stage posts in a week…pretty amazing if I say so myself…don’t expect it to keep coming.

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Nov 11 2009
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Creative, Design, Equipment, Stage, Tech

Shoestring Stage Design – Part 3

LIGHTS, action, camo.

You can do a lot of things on your stage to give it some presence but if you don’t have it lit right or well you can ruin the look. Light has multiple functions, first is to give light on the subject so that the audience can see what is going on. This is incredibly important if you’re doing IMAG (image magnification). You want your subject to be well lit, no shadows or hot spots, and you want them to pop off of the background, especially if you’re against a black or dark colored backdrop.

The next, and most important responsibility of light is to paint the canvas of the stage with color. Color evokes emotion and so you must pay particular attention to how you color your stage. Here is a link to a site discussing color and emotion please forgive the post modern spiritualism crap weaved in. I don’t want to get into art 101 here, and im pretty sure you can google what emotions are evoked with each different color, and what colors go together with other colors. Also, match your backgrounds. Either choose a complimentary of lighting with your slides/lyrics used in worship or a matching color. You don’t want to end up with a puce on stage (a visual equivalent to the color of puke…). You can cover your stage with objects meant to be lit but until you add those strokes of color your stage doesn’t really become engaging or active to the worshiper.

Creating action in your lighting doesn’t necessarily mean using moving lights or chases programmed to timing of the music. While you can create motion using these effects you can create motion on your stage using static lighting. What I mean is highlighting the action points on your stage. Use solo lights. Use back lighting to create shadows. If you’re not using IMAG you have potential to do some very cool lighting effects during worship by back lighting your entire band and dropping out the front light. These silhouettes can create some amazing action on your stage and you didn’t even spend any extra money to get it. Just a few dimmer channels.

The reason I said camo in the title is that camo has depth. In order to create a great stage look you need to create that depth look with your lighting. No one wants to be bored or disinterested with what they’re looking at and most artwork that is extremely flat is not any fun to look at. It doesn’t evoke anything and does not engage. I’m not saying you need to have 500 colors on your stage, but having multiple colors and depth of shapes helps create shading and dimension. Speaking of camo, have depth to what you light. Layer fabric and texture for a unique look. I found a roll of shrink wrap backstage the other day and the thought occurred to me, why not hang that, pull and stick it together and then light that for a multi dimensional stage look. It’s all about lighting, texture and using what is available. If you want to use literal camo, do that too. go to an army supply store and buy up some of the tent camo to light (the white stuff preferably, or paint the green/tan stuff white).

Lighting can add a lot to your stage design with out adding any or little cost but is definitely something you need to go into with planning and purpose. Things can of course be done on the fly as you’re putting it together. Most of my genius inspiration comes on the fly ;-) . But a game plan works wonders in saving time while you’re setting stuff up.

…still to come (being ported over from my previous blog)

  • Where do I find materials???
  • I need inspiration, HELP!
  • We’re a church not a night club.
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Oct 23 2009
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Creative, Design, Stage, Tech

Shoestring Stage Design – Part 2

2. Projection is your friend.

Something that is coming up into church production is projection. If you’ve got the equipment to do some cool projection in your environments you have an inexpensive way to add some engaging worship elements. Of course the cost here is time in producing unique elements but you’re able to taylor each piece custom to your need. There is a whole new market of creatives that have begun to open themselves up to the church world. Worship VJ, video jockey – yes this is a throw back term to radio days…a disk jockey. This person is one who creates visual worship environments using projection in a space.

“The visual image is a kind of tripwire for the emotions.” Diane Ackerman

One growing form of this is environmental projection. Taking projectors outside of the confines of the screen and projecting on walls, sides of buildings, on people, across platforms, etc. A couple of people who are doing this well are Cameron Ware check out his blog on visual worship at http://visualworshiper.com/blog/ or Greg Dolezal & Stephen Proctor over at http://worshipvj.com

VJ (short for) :: Video Jockey (meaning) :: One who creatively captures and effectively communicates a specific message using a wide range still and moving imagery.

If you’re worried about creating a variation of staging elements, cost of materials or lack of creativity on the stage, but you’re knocking it out of the park on the video elements why not consider taking your strong point fully into the room. Imagery can help engage and enhance worship, and it is also a good idea to have the input of your worship leader/pastor. You don’t want to do something that detracts from the spirit of the song or moment. At the same time you may run into some pastors who are either not entirely creative or what you are trying to accomplish goes over their heads. In that case take care not to offend, but also take care to mold and shape their suggestions into something they can own during the set. I have found myself sitting during many worship sets across quite a few different churches where I scratch my head at the background selection. I don’t think that was the intended reception for it, but that is certainly what came across.

This is something you can chance regularly without much effort or expense so get creative with how you project and what you’re projecting. http://www.renewedvision.com/ has a couple pieces of worship software for the mac that has many different applications for the worship environment including a way to split images across multiple screens. I am by far no expert in this area, but am continuing to explore new ways to engage the worshipers in new ways.

“Designers can create normalcy out of chaos; they can clearly communicate ideas through the organizing and manipulating of words and pictures.” Jeffery Veen

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Oct 20 2009
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Church, Creative, Design, Stage, Tech

Blog? What Blog?

I’m sorry that I’ve sucked at posting things lately… I either forget or don’t have anything to say.

We started a new series two weeks ago called Breaking My Chains. We’re identifying and helping students overcome obstacles/chains in their lives that keep them from being effective Christians.

With the new stage look I wanted something simple that looked cool, and could be a universal look beyond this series, to cover through the spotty Christmas schedule (we don’t have a ton of services planned through the holidays and it would be foolish to try and tear down and reset a ton during that time). So after having seen several stages effectively use wadded up aluminum screen door netting hung from the ceiling I figured I’d give it the old college try.

My efforts can be found here.

Personally I’m ecstatic with the way it turned out. There is so much texture and depth available with the lighting.

What else have I been up to? Well I took a Sunday off…GASP! During that weekend I went to Austin to just hang out, chill for a bit and I needed it. I also sprained my ankle pretty bad…how might you ask? I decided to NOT act my age and try riding a longboard . Yeah…how old am I again? 25? yeah…my body didn’t agree with what I was doing. So now I’ve got a little bit of a limp and a desire to command and conquer that longboard some day when I’m able to fully rotate my ankle.

I’ll throw some more of the shoe string stage design posts up here later.

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Oct 07 2009
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Creative, Design, Stage, Tech

Shoe String Stage Design: Part 1

-designing creative worship environments on a tight budget

(This series is re-posted from a previous blog site I had, I am at a lack for things to post on at the moment so I’m gonna filter these over)

I work for a youth ministry doing technical production and don’t always get the largest budget with which to be creative. I have to justify for every penny I spend because sometimes, the ideas I have are a little more harebrained than one might normally come up with. The designs have to be more engaging than it would be for an older demographic because kids are bombarded with incredulous stage designs and production values. You can’t one up music videos, MTV or VH1 music award shows, Miss America pageants, Good Morning America or American Idol. Thankfully you don’t have to. No one expects anything from the church which is a good thing…and an incredibly sad one. So the only limitations you have are set by yourself and whoever governs your stage design. Once you set a certain level of design you’re going to have to keep it up in one way or another.

The best way I can tell you to keep up your level of design, is surround yourself with creative people, resources, and when you buy materials buy multipurpose. Design stuff with a future use in mind because one day instead of going out to buy a gaggle of one thing or another you’ll already have something you can either use in lieu of, or along the same lines of what you’re initially thinking. Also if it’s a disposable material…try and get as many uses out of it as possible. Either incorporate it into your next design to keep costs down, or use it soon after. These are some ways to keep an air of consistency throughout your designs.

In these next couple of blogs I’ll talk about my design process and how to create some cool stuff with what you have and a little help from home depot.

1. Substance abuse or looking good?
The age old question, form (looking good) over function, or do you design for the series topic (the substance)? This is the first thing that I start throwing against the wall like cooked spaghetti and if it sticks I go with it. This is all dependent on what you’re asked for. Sometimes you can come up with some incredibly creative elements that fit your theme, and other times you can’t touch it with a ten foot pole. If you’ve got a series on relationships, there is a plethora of material you could use that would be either inexpensive, edgy or laying around your house that you could use to knock it home visually to your audience. If you’re allowed, a bed in the center of your stage could give a bit of the forbidden allure to the topic at hand. I’m pretty sure everybody has a spare bed somewhere in the church that you could manage to wrangle up there. One church in Ohio built a large heart-shaped bed in the center of their stage. Whimsical, edgy and communicative. What I decided to do was create four foot 3D hearts out of corrugated plastic, some lumber and our existing LED lighting fixtures which gave me any amount of color options I wanted on stage. A 4ft x 8ft sheet of this plastic was $10, it took two per heart and I created two. Lumber add another $25. So i created unique staging elements with a theme for around $70.

I’ve been amazed at how often those outside the discipline of design assume that what designers do is decoration. Good design is problem solving. — Jeffrey Veen

Not everything has to be with a theme though. Sometimes your creative layout can be with the way you stage your band, use your existing lighting, and maybe a few other pieces just to create a nice visual look. Ikea paper lanterns and bulb strands are an incredibly cheap, reusable and warm creative resource to give a homey, ‘cool’ look to your stage. You can vary your look too with different sized paper lanterns, and what I found is if you’ve got LED par cans just use the frame holder in the can, slip the paper lantern ring into it and viola you have a color changing paper lantern you can hang anywhere on your stage. I used these to create a homey ambience on the stage, but not necessarily adhering to a particular themed look.

Sit down with your team and decide if there is a particular creative element that will drive your series. It may be something small to accent your entire design that will make people stop and go wow. Sometimes even your theme or series can be lacking in the creative flow. This is a good time for you to make magic happen. Boost the creativity of the group by coming up with some crazy awesome stuff looks wise. Sure the theme may be lacking in creativity but that doesn’t mean you have to.

to come…

* Projection is your friend.

* LIGHTS, action, camo.

* Where do I find materials???

* I need inspiration, HELP!

* We’re a Church not a night club

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Sep 23 2009
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Church, Creative, Design, Stage, Tech

A rocky start

DSCN0518This stage set was a challenge because i was not totally sold on the idea. Idea after idea was passed around, and frankly to create a canyon on the stage was a bit out of my realm of experience. I love to try my hand at new things, but this was something that seemed a bit to big to tackle.

The first challenge was the series is about bridging relationships to your friends to lead them to Christ. What is the key word…bridge…and that is what illustration was needed on the stage, not just for someone to point and speak about because I could do that with projection, but a physical bridge to bring into a drama. It also needed to be built across the entire series (which is why you won’t see a totally completed picture up yet). Ok. So I needed to build a bridge on stage, first issue in my mind is safety. People are actually supposed to walk across that so I had to get my mind around how I was going to accomplish this without it falling apart, and doing it rather cheap. The bases had to be sturdy and not collapse inwards when weight was spanned between the two. We usually use Wanger riser platforms to start as a base for things, but I needed to be able to a) screw into it, and b) stabilize it well. The wangers didn’t fall under this category at all. So my mind went to these old camera stand platforms that were built and never used. They were built out of wood (so I could screw into them) and they were low to the ground and build solid. Low center of gravity and good construction = sturdy base that wouldn’t collapse. So I began to think about how the bridge would be pieced together.

Now came the next uh-oh. My task was to make the stage look like a canyon, but it couldn’t look cheesy (almost the exact words…that I was told). I’ve seen a number of ways to create rock looking facades but only a few of them looked half way decent, and I didn’t have the money to go out and buy spray foam and cover the structure with quickcrete. So after fighting logistics, I came to a plan to use chicken wire as my structure, and a dark brown “butcher paper” found out a local teacher supply store as my rock texture and surface. I glued in a little bit of moss from a craft supply store and viola instant rock surface.

<edit> One of the ideas was to take out the floor on the stage. It is built up computer floor pieces, so it comes out with a few screws. The only problem is it becomes an instant death trap…anyone accidentally falling in would end up impaled on the floor supports…yeah that’s not osha approved.</edit>

Take a look at the two albums to see what the rocks started as, and how I added to the stage to fill it out after the initial bridge base was constructed. I still included some projection to add a bit more depth, but it’s not shown in the pictures, (mainly because it’s a small, cheap projector and it doesn’t really look so good, it’s more to facilitate having lyrics on the stage for students who come to the front of the stage for worship).

Have questions? leave them…I’ll be glad to dive more into the process of the rocks and the bridge if you’d like.

The start

El Fin

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Sep 01 2009
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Music, Rants, Reviews, Tech

an aural report

Tpodcasthe big trend today is podcasting. Go out and download bytes of tutorials, sermons, training, seminars etc. and listen to them for hours on end. iTunes has a great interface for you to go out and collect all kinds of aural candy. There is an entire generation that is being brought up on this self serve bite sized informational media. I am part of this generation. It wasn’t available when i was a kid but I was around as an early adopter of this technology.

Now it’s time for a confession. I can’t handle podcasts. Go ahead, gasp, guffaw, point fingers and harass, I don’t even care. I have tried repeatedly to download interesting podcasts, and podcasts that other people claim to be great. To me it’s background noise and I get absolutely nothing out of them. Give me a written transcript of what that person said, and I will ingest and retain most of what is there. I just caught myself listening to a 20 minute podcast at the request of my boss and I could not repeat one single word of what was said.

Now, this doesn’t mean I can’t consume podcastable media, if there is a visual with the audio then I’m ok. If I’m watching some kind of tutorial then it’s fine. I just cannot be tasked with listening to someone talk while I’m doing something else. The comprehension part of my brain shuts off and I go on working on my task. It’s how I’m able to watch TV, listen to music and work on projects simultaneously.

I’m sure part of my abhorrence for this particular piece of media comes from editing podcasts for endless hours a day. I became so numb to listening to voice over work that I just learned to tune it out and focus on the task at hand, which was micromanaging a wave form and listening for vocal flubs. The other part comes out of growing up in church and listening to non-engaging sermons from bombastic orators and not being able to see over the pew.

Does any one else have this aural flippancy problem?

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Aug 03 2009
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Church, Creative, Tech

Your Call

I’m just gonn say sorry for any misspellings or awful sentence structure. It’s 1:30am and I can’t sleep so I thought i’d share instead

This week at camp we’re going through talking about the students call on their lives to not just change their own lives but to be a change agent in lives around them.

We are called to change culture in one way shape or form. Whether in the forground or background. I figured I would take a second to share a bit of my calling.

In college I wrestled with my faith. I was a Christian, I was involved in highschool but in college I got burned out. I just wanted to sit on the sidelines, I was goin to heaven that was good enough.

After I graduated I landed a good job at a Christian organization. By this time I wasn’t quite as apathetic but was still indifferent in my walk, until the church I was visiting’s worship pastor came to me and told me that I needed to start running sound for them at least at a saturday night service.

I was heasantent because I knew I had never done anything like that before. Little did I know my world was about to be rocked for the next two years. The worship pastor poured into our friendship. I became so involved I was basically working my full time job and volunteering full time at church simultaneously. I lived for it and something changed in me. I became uncomfortable at work (I already didn’t like it but this was different) I felt such a strong call on my life to go work in church tech ministry that I about up and quit right when it happened. I met with kent the worship pastor and wanted to work at my church. That never happened but God was growing me. He wanted to make sure I was committed regardless of a paycheck.

After the two years of my job in a Chrisitian ministry being completely miserable and not beig able to take any more I prayed hard about setting a date and moving forward that something would come open. I didn’t look back I set a date a month or so away and the day came and I didn’t have a new job yet but I gave my notice anyways. It was the most liberating feeling.

Within about two or three months I had several interviews with some church in Texas and already had a resturaunt job in Ohio. Before I knew it this “some church in Texas” hired me full time to do youth technical production. I can’t say there has been a day Ive regretted this move or leap. It is exactly where God wanted me and has created and called me for. I wouldn’t rather be doing any thing else.

What’s your call?

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Jul 28 2009
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Nonsense, Tech

Who says summer slows down?

I’ve been trying to think of something good to blog on but most of my creative thoughts and endeavors have been eaten by the monster of summer activities.

Sugar Creek’s youth ministry (lyf) just blew threw an awesome week of local missions but was met with the task of providing morning and evening worship sessions (you saw a bit of that in my last post). Three weeks out of Lead we hit camp.

That’s why I’ve disappeared. I’ve been gearing my brain for this week of camp prep and some how I think my week got short changed somewhere. I’m guessing by the end of the week I will be trying to figure out who jumped me and beat the snot out of me, but I’ll be loving every second of it. I’m the kind of person that thrives off of burning the candle at both ends trying to figure things out (albeit I have also learned how to squeeze in enough personal time to where I don’t blow a fuse).

So running up to the line here is where camp sits.

Monday just ended, it was my day off and I came in to finish basic editing on the camp rules video.

Thursday afternoon we’re pre-packing a twenty foot lift truck to go to camp

Friday morning I am driving up way north to pick up a 20ft screen that I’m using as my backdrop for camp and the truck is going to pick up the sound equipment and genie lifts to raise truss and lights in the air. Friday late afternoon is all set up at camp.
So, tuesday, wednesday and part of thursday I have to sound design for the camp rules video, finish designing and output some new motion backgrounds for camp. animate the camp logo. find backgrounds for the speaker/topic, put together a photo montage of all of the schools represented, maybe come up with team intros for the rec teams. tear out all eqipment from other rooms that I’m taking to camp and put it in a central location (12 movers, 10 LED cans, plus trussing, power cables and splitters, dmx cable, dmx splitter, hazer, aviom, sound console, lighting console, 2 graphics machines, wireless mics, projector and mount, tvs, aviom pieces, audio cabling)

I’m sure I’m forgetting something in there but I had to do a brain dump somewhere or I really would forget something. You just got to be the lucky recipients of that.

Chris Wilson is doing an awesome job putting together camp graphics and helped me shoot the stop motion camp rules video. As soon as it’s done and camp is el fin I’ll throw it up here for you to take a gander at.

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