in His technical service

How Willow Creekers Propose

Oh by the way...

Have you ever noticed that events, especially the smaller ones seem to grow, and develop a life of their own as you get closer to the day of the event?  After years of handling production for weddings, funerals, and other events, I don't know why this still surprises and frustrates me.

Here is a hypothetical description of how an event grows...

First Contact - THEM:"We'd like you to handle a wedding for us, really small, simple, just a couple of songs on CD and a microphone for the preacher".  ME: "OK, are there any other specific needs?  Will anyone be singing to an accompaniment track?  Will there be any musicians, such as a piano player, or acoustic guitar?  Do you plan to show a powerpoint or dvd of 'memories'?  Do you require recording, either audio or video?".  THEM: "no, this is a small event, and will be very simple"

Week of the event (Monday) - I get a call... "we'd like to show a powerpoint slideshow with 'butterfly kisses' playing in the background".

Tuesday - The family has a friend that plays acoustic guitar, and has written a song for the couple.

Wednesday - The guitar player has a friend that wants to sing, and they found a piano player as well.

Thursday - We've decided we will have a 10 piece ensemble singing the song, with acoustic guitar, piano, electric guitar, bass guitar, a keyboard player, drummer, a hornline, and a string section.

Friday - We'd like to have a team of camera operators to capture the service, and we'd like a laser light and pyrotechnic display as well.

Saturday (Morning before the event) - We'd like the bride and groom to fly in on zip lines, while Bob Carlisle and his full band are there singing "butterfly kisses".

Before...

 

After

 OK, so you've been on the phone with the family all week, you've reset your stage 6 times, and you've successfully ticked of your team, by contacting them repeatedly searching for additional volunteers to cover each of the needs as they arrise.  I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, I don't have any sweet "moral of the story" to share, I'm just a little frustrated right now.

Basically, if you are planning an event, do us all a favor, and nail down the details before you call the church.  If you need to reach me, I'll be in the back setting up the pyrotechnics and laser lights for our next wedding.

Environmental Projection / Integrity S4W

Last week, Woodland hosted Integrity Music's Seminars 4 Worship.  The seminar included two concerts.  The first concert on Thursday night was "songs and stories" featuring 3 integrity songwriters, telling stories about their writing process, then performing the songs.  The concert was only for concert conference goers, and was a smaller, intimate affair, maybe 300 folks in attendance.  Integrity used three 16x9 screens on vertical truss to create a video wall to backdrop the artists.  It was very cool, and very effective. 

Stephen Proctor VJ'd the event, and splashed the screens with beautiful imagery using Renewed Vision's ProPresenter and ProVideoPlayer.  It was a great event.  Above is a snap of Stephen Proctor of GI-Inc (right) and his Friend Colt Sammon's from Bayside Community Church here in Bradenton.  Both are using 15 inch Mac book pro's, and Mercury drives.

Stephen has an excellent description of the evening, and the equipment used at his blog Worship VJ

Stephen decided to try and outdo himself the following evening.  He was talking about trying out "environmental projection" filling the entire room with image, rather than just hitting the screens.  Cameron Ware over at Visual Worshipper is a big proponent of this production technique.  check out his photos, they are eye-popping!

So Friday Morning, the video wall was lowered (still needed to hide our stage, and their road cases), and the projectors were moved to the back of the worship center, and balanced on a ledge, increasing the throw distance to over 100 feet, creating huge images that spanned the entire worship center, wall-to-wall, and floor-to-ceiling.  Our house projectors were used to project  white lyrics on a black background, cutting through the environmental projection.  It was a very cool effect.

Greg Moore from Pro Gear Warehouse designed and ran lights for the seminar.  He added to the effect by placing color changing light fixtures on the floor, aimed up the walls, and matching the color and emotion of the music.  We were completely enveloped in image and color.  It was a very immersive experience.

Here are a few of the photos from the evening.  I'll put all of them in an album in the sidebar.

 

moving

This blog is on the move!

I've secured www.inhistechnicalservice.com  and am in the process of moving the blog to that domain.  Not sure how long it will take, I'm at the mercy of the GoDaddy and TypePad servers right now.

If you are following via RSS, please re-subscribe once inHistechnicalservice.com goes active.

UPDATE

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An unexpected perk of continuing to use TypePad as my blog editor at the new domain means that the blog will continue to appear at dhfriss.typepad.com so all the RSS feeds will continue to work.  I may eventually find hosting, and switch to wordpress, however there are no immediate plans to make this change.
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Thanks,

~Dave