Today I was able to visit a friend’s church. I went to Bent Tree Bible Fellowship, where my friend Greg Atkinson is the Creative Parts Director (Yes, it’s a typo - see comments). It’s so good for me to step out of what we do every week and get some fresh perspective from others. My goal is to do this quarterly. I saw some fresh backgrounds that I’ll definitely be purchasing this week. Here’s a few links . . .

http://www.sermonvideos.com/FileCloseup.html?&ID=26170

http://www.sermonvideos.com/FileCloseup.html?&ID=25974

http://www.sermonvideos.com/FileCloseup.html?&ID=26144

http://www.sermonvideos.com/FileCloseup.html?&ID=26147

http://www.sermonvideos.com/FileCloseup.html?&ID=26045

http://www.sermonvideos.com/FileCloseup.html?&ID=25874

In a week and a half I will be going to Mexico to install some multimedia gear in a church. We’re putting in a motorized screen, data projector, and a laptop with Easy Worship. Then we’re putting in an indoor/outdoor paging system for an orphanage that the church supports.

This will be basically a “missional” vacation. It’s an English speaking congregation, and they’re flying us down there, and paying for the equipment. So we’ll be there to install and train, then also hang out when we’re not busy with the church and orphanage. My wife is going with me, and we’re joining two other couples - we’re really looking forward to it.

Here’s a list of what we’re taking . . .

Da-lite slimline motorized screen

Sharp 3,000 lumen data projector

Cat 5 VGA baluns (kramer pico series)

Laptop with Easy Worship pre-installed.

Outdoor paging horns, paging mic, speaker cable, TOA paging amplifier

Have you ever heard the terms “Lazy Bones”, or ‘Flashmatic” in reference to remote controls?  If you haven’t (I hadn’t) you really need to read the histroy of remote controls.  We just lost a projector remote and so I went to remotes.com for a replacement.

Now I’m looking for a good system for securing our remotes, while also allowing them to be used - some sort of tethering system.  Anyone got any ideas?

I’ve heard my friends talking about Skype, and I’ve really just blown it off because I never had much of a need for it.  I recently signed up for an account because I needed a cheap way to talk with my wife while on a mission trip to Germany.  Here are some of the things that really turned me on about Skype:

1.  I was able to call home, church, or my wife’s cell for just .02 cents per minute.  Before I left I put $10.00 on my account, and returned with about $7.50.  If my wife was at home, then she’d go to her computer, and we’d switch to her Skype account. That way we could talk for free.

2.  After I had been in Germany for about a week, I had lots of video footage captured.  So while talking with my family, I switched my video input from my Macbook Pro’s built in isight camera to an external firewire input.  Then I put my camera in VTR mode and shuttled through the tape and described what they were looking at in real time.

3.  While editing some of the videos with German nationals, there were three of us sitting around a table, all with our Skype accounts active, and we were able to pass files around to each other so easily.  Much easier, in fact, than using USB flash drives

My wife has been out in Lubbock, Texas a lot lately, taking care of her mother who has brain cancer.  It’s been really great for us to be able to connect.  She can see me, and as soon as we get her webcam for her PC working, it will be both ways.

About a year ago, I shot a concert for The Levee Singers.  It’s a group of men who have been singing together since the 60’s.  We did it with 5 cameras, and Rolled tape continuously on each camera.  So now the audio has been mixed (we multi-tracked it) and I’m about to edit the concert Using the MultiCam edit feature of Final Cut.  Never done it.  Any advice?

One of my lighting volunteers dreamed this up and I spent half a day buying parts (four Home Depots and one Lowes). The parts are PVC, Coroplast panels, and some greenhouse roofing materials. Then we spent one day putting it up and lighting it.

I returned from Germany yesterday and am at church today.  We had a great trip.  My oldest son went with me and we spent time with to new churches in Muenster and Munich.  I shot and edited a couple of pieces for the churches to use on their websites.  I’ll post those videos later.

While I was gone I missed two services (which I had planned on) and also a memorial service for a staff member who passed away the day before we left.  One of our team members worked particularly close with that staff member and stayed in Dallas.

A GREAT BIG THANK YOU to my crew.  I love being gone and knowing things are taken care of.

Thanks, guys.

Brian

A while back I was visiting with the vice president of a very successful audio/video/lighting design/build firm. He was telling me how they had their employees working at levels that were simply not sustainable. They were getting a lot of work done, but when something came up requiring more than they were already producing, they could not meet the challenge. Or maybe they could meet the challenge, but at a great personal cost. I’m talking about personal margin, or emotional and physical capital.

When they realized what they were doing to their employees, they made some changes. Now they have a saying - “No one gets to were a cape around here”. Now they have employees who enjoy their work more and do a better job. As my friend explained to me, “Now when we really need for someone to put the cape on, we let them, but we make sure it goes right back into the closet”.

My friend told me that now they actually turn down work if they don’t think they can do it without totally stressing out their staff.

This story is especially poignant for us in the worship technology field. usually there is on-one around to tell us to go home. Couple that with the fact that most of us really love what we do, and you have the makings of a superhero mentality - Here we are to save the day! But we need to hang up our capes. Recently I was at a gathering of technical directors, and some brought up the question -”What do you do when you’re being overworked and no-one sees it? How do you make it know if they’re not hearing you?”. For me it has been a matter of letting people live with disappointment. Obviously, I have to carefully weigh who I’m disappointing and how often, but the fact is I can’t do everything. I wasn’t designed by God to do everything. I have had to prioritize my job, and do my core job first, then when I can I get around to to some of the other projects that aren’t mission critical.

I also have to recognize that a lot of my dilemma has been self inflicted. Most of the time I stay late, it’s not because I have to. it’s usually because I’m not at a stopping point, and I don’t want to leave something unfinished. As I get older, I have to look at this as a matter of maturity, and be willing to walk away, and come back to it the next day or the next week.

Hanging up the cape is not easy. But if you do I really think you’ll like your job more, be more productive, less stressed, and happier. I know your family will be.

This Friday I depart with a team from Fellowship (including my 16 year old son) for Muenster and Munich, Germany. We will be helping two local churches establish relations with their surrounding communities and also help develop a children’s program at each church. I will be shooting two videos that will be used by these local churches for promotional purposes. Additionally, I’ll be shooting footage for some videos we’ll be doing at our church when we return. There are 6 of us going, and we’d appreciate your prayers.

TECH: I’ll be taking a Canon XL2, a Vinten tripod, a pepper 100 watt light with stand, and misc. accessories - warms cards, on camera light, mics, my Macbook Pro, etc.

We got our mixer delivered last week, and my audio volunteer took some time off work, configured the console, and together we got it installed. It was a literally just a drop in from our old mixer (Allen and Heath ML5000). It was also good to get a lot of old cables stowed away that seem to accumulate after time. We got rid of our effects rack and freed up a lot of space in the booth.

Our audio mixing duties are shared between me and one other person. (When I was originally hired at Fellowship it was to mix FOH). Our other mixer, Russ, was on deck last Sunday and mixed our first service with the new console. So here’s a couple of observations . . .

1. The ability to add compression to any input is great. The ability to add compression to any outout is WONDERFUL. We set up a couple of our our matrixes for audio for video with a stereo feed, then added more of the spoken word sources at a higher level to reduce the dynamic range. Then to be able to insert compression right in the matrix output allowed us to achieve more dynamic control than before.

2. It would be nice to be able to recall just an aux buss, and leave the main mix alone. Maybe it is possible. I haven’t read completely through the manual yet.