Surprisingly this was the second hardest week I have had in this job and I really can’t tell you why. But God is good and services today were busy but encouraging. It is so easy in this job to get wrapped up in the technology and the issues and loose focus on what it is really about. I did a lot of work on technology this week, but none of that was very interesting or fulfilling. The trials of this week really help to bring focus to what I really enjoy: investing in people and being creative with in the limits that are in place.

We did make some technology changes this week:

Audio:

• Added a dual 18″ sub. Our 15″ drivers are still being re-coned. I was surprised on how hard this sub could kick. It was not enough for the big room, but it was better than nothing.
• We upgraded from revision one Avioms to the newer version two systems. Wow what an improvement in sound quality.

Lighting:

• Refocused all of the stage lighting for the minor stage reset that we did.
• Finally got the lamp for the OS 600 light.

This is a big Sunday for the tech ministry at Sugar Creek. We are going digital. The Digico is installed and this will be the first Sunday running it for the services.  All is tested and ready to go and John is charged with making sure all works correctly. Over the next few weeks we will train the volunteers on the job. I think that they will be back running the shows soon as they become comfortable.  We have had two rehearsal with the digital system and both were successful and the musician said they can hear a difference in the monitors.  We have not even installed the version 2 Avioms yet. More to come on that next week.

We have a new (at least new since I have been producing) CG operator for the Edge service…welcome Janet.  The Digico took up a lot of time this week, but I did get to add some curtian slashes behind the drums.  I’m really looking forward to hearing the difference in sound quality over the next few weeks as well as how the A1 take to the new system.

Video:

• Temporarily installed a 5000 lumen project on the ledge above door five.  This projector had a long throw lens and I focused it on the baptistry wall, just for some more stage color.  It looked pretty cool; I guess that it is called architectural projection.  Have a look at the pictures linked below.  I did get one complaint from the choir - that it shined in their eyes being that it was mounted right below the confidence monitor.

Audio:

• Installed the cable for the switch to the Digital console.  We planned on pulling it through the conduit under the floor but it was full of water.  Ended up bringing in Vincent and his crew to walk the iron.

Here is a link to this Sundays pictures

Over the next two weeks we are greatly reducing production at SCBC getting back to the basics of worship.  Because of that, I had time to focus on some office items I have neglected.  But here is the changes for this week:

Video:

• Updated to ProPresenter 3.3
• Installed Leopard on both of the CG machines.

Lighting

• Setup the Avolite software on my laptop and did a good part of the programming for this week at home.

Here is the list for this week…

Lighting:

• Moved the catwalk color scrollers to the down stage pipe adding a color wash to the stage extension.
• Hung the seventh scroller in the down pipe focused on the stage extension center.
• Moved the old back lighting back to the black curtains as architectural down light and gelled them blue.
• Started programming the Avolite Pearl using Theatre Stack mode and cues.
• Added new lighting in the drum shield.  Two par 38 did the trick and I hope will not add too much heat.

Video:

• Thanks to the help of facilities we moved camera 2 to just right of center aisle. This will get us a much better back drop for video when Pastor is near center stage.

Tomorrow is light programming day.

One of my goals as a technical producer is to make weekly improvements to my ministry. So I figured that I would keep a log of what is going on. These will be short posts of changes. Might be interesting to look back over the year and see how for we have come. Right now I have been really be focused on getting the lighting in a better place. Here are the improvements for this week.

Lighting:

• Added pipes going from down stage to upstage just behind the front truss and going just past the first cloud
• Hung six source fours on the new pipe as backlighting for the praise singers and pasto
• Refocused all of the front of house lecos cross lighting for better coverage for pastor and praise team.

Video:

• Brought in a video engineer to review the system and he did some quick tuning. All of the cameras are much better balanced.