Category Archives: Technical Production

The Digital Shift

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Over the past few months at Sugar Creek we have been in the process of evaluating digital audio consoles.  Our current analog consoles are Soundcraft Vienna 2 consoles with a total of 80 inputs.  They are around 12 years old and are getting a little worse for ware.  About a month ago we turned in a report to the finance committee recommending replacing the current consoles with a digital solution.  Today I got the call from the committee chairman letting me know that they approved the budget and to get the project started….thank you!  WE ARE MAKING THE DIGITAL SHIFT!!!!

In the report, we had four console options two of which really didn’t fit our long term requirements.  One option has all of our needs today and the fourth is a nice cosole with a road map of new features that meets the requirements by the end of the summer.  Now we have to choose, that is the hard part.  So what will it be Digico CS-D5 or the Soundcraft Vi6?  Your suggestions are welcome and I can’t fully answer that question right now.

Some other parts of the system are going to need to be upgraded as part of the process.  Starting next week, we will be having a vendor work on getting the stage cabling ready for the switch to preamps on stage.  We also will be ordering a new Aviom II system in the near future to replace our version one system that is not compatible with either of the consoles.  Be looking for more information to come soon.

Changes 3/2/08

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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.

Changes 2/24/2008

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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.

Adapting to the new job and fear

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Today I was working in the lift as I have been doing often these days and realized that I might just be too comfortable. Some know that I’m not a big fan of heights. My friend Eric knows this two well. A number of years ago Eric and I were in Prescott, Arizona and Eric decided that he wanted to bungee jump. Now doing this didn’t interest me at all, but Eric talked me into riding up in the crane to about 75′ or 100′ feet above the ground. I was scared out of my mind and I was not even jumping. Eric looked over at me and I was clinging to the sides of the basked and was white as a sheet. He didn’t even get to see the worst of it. When Eric jumped the entire basket was shaking all over the place. I almost needed to clean out my shorts after that.

We currently have three on the technical production team and each of us maintains different areas of the campus. My area is the worship center. Just to give you some perspective, the floor of the worship center to the front of house trusses is about 35 to 40 feet. Needless to say I was wondering if I would be able to handle this part of the job. It has taken until recently, but now I don’t think twice about going up and fixing things. Now I question that maybe I might just be too comfortable. Since I started working in the air I wished that my fear would subside. But now I realize that a little fear is a good thing to keep us in the safe places. Just like the fear we should have in the Lord.

Sunday 2/3/2008

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Stage shotLast Sunday was again a great day of worship.  The choir was again sounding better than before the EQ change we made last week.  Today we moved some of the worship to the end of the service and the songs were an extension of the message.  It was an awesome change.  I had spent most of my week in the lift working on refocusing some of the lighting.  We also hung some new source four pars for color wash.  My goal was to get even video lighting for Pastor Mark and really improve on the praise team lighting.  The praise team wash was a big improvement.  I don’t know if I will ever get it “perfect,” but it was much improved.  Our pastor wash was not awful, but over all was a little dim and had a few dark spots on the edges of the lighting.  When I was up in the air, I found that we had a mix of 19 degree and 26 degree ellipsoidal fixtures in the lighting for the pastor.  This was leading to some hot spots.  I was able to replace all of the tubes to 19 degree but two.  This left me 2 spots on the stage that were only covered by 26 degree fixtures and gave us big dark spots.  You can guess where Pastor wanted to stand…  Yup in the dark spots.  My video directors, Tim and Jason had their hands full shading the cameras.  19 degree tubes replacing the 26 degrees are on my list for this week to fix.On Wednesday, Tim and I decided to move one of our cameras to a new position.  This camera’s previous position was only really useful for shooting up stage and was very limited during the message.  We moved the camera back about 15 feet and over toward the center about 25 feet.  We can now take down stage shots until about the center of the stage. Still not great, but a much better position.I would love to know how many church technical production teams are using light meters to set wash lighting for video….

1200 Watt Mover

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1200 Fixture BurnedLast Wednesday, I moved the lift to the front of house and started working on refocusing the lights on the FOH trusses. While I had it out, I was planning on replacing the burned out lamp in our 12oo watt mover. After replacing the lamp, the fixture would still not strike. Not good! Well, that means that it is time to take it down and see what it wrong with it. Taking it down is not that fun being that the fixture is about 35 feet in the air on a truss that we can’t lower. Yes I would love to have chain motors. Got to give thanks to one of our lighting volunteers, Greg, for taking it down. Let me tell you that is a very heavy light. When Greg got the instrument on the ground he started taking it apart for cleaning. After removing a panel on the side of the head, Greg found some burned leads and what we think is a temperature sensor that was also burned out. Could it be a symptom of a bad part, or is this just a sign of a bigger issue with the instrument? More to come later.

Sunday 1/27/2008

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Wow what a day. Since the day that I started working in the production department our worship leader has been expressing his discontent about the choir sound.  We have tried hanging the mics, putting them on stands, and moving them to many positions.  Never have we been able to get the sound that we are looking for.  I had resigned to start looking for other mic options.We are currently using six AKG C3ooo mics in two rows of three.  The first row of mics is in front of the choir about 1 foot above the head of the second row and about 2 feet in front of the first row.   The second row of mics are in the same configuration.  At rehearsal on Wednesday I decided to try a few other mics that we had lying around.  In the process of doing this, I started enabling and disabling the EQ on the channel strip.  Come to find out the process our audio guys were using to ring out the mics was really choking the sound.  For the rest of that rehearsal we flatted the EQ and did just some very minor changes to clean up and take out some ringing frequencies.  We also found that the overhead choir monitors had many of the wrong instruments and that was being picked up by the mics.I couldn’t tell that the change we made really helped that night because we discovered the issue late in the rehearsal.  So I was excited to see what the effect would be today.  Let me just say that the choir sounded much better and we were finally able to balance the praise team and the choir.  It was great to finally start making some headway in this area.As happy I was with the choir mic changes, I was even more surprised at how awesome the worship was in our Mosaic service.  Currently most Sundays, I’m filling the role of producer.  In that role I’m always looking ahead to make sure that the team hits the next cue, but today I found myself worshiping.  The music was great and the entire room seemed to be involved and I just couldn’t help but worship.  It was amazing to see how great worship songs matched with a good mix (Amanda and Steve did great today) really brought the congregation into corporate worship.  What a great day.

Career Day

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Today was an interesting day.  The best part of my job is that I get to work with volunteers.  About two weeks ago, I got an email from one of my long time volunteers asking if I would speak at a career day.  He is an assistant principal at a middle school and was looking to fill some slots.  When a volunteer who has served in the tech ministry for a long time gives you the opportunity to help him, you jump.  So I spent the morning speaking to eighth graders about my job as a technical producer and a web developer. Certainly not the way that I had planned my first day off in three weeks.

Each time I think that I have other things to do, God lets me know where I need to be.  I was paired up with a graphic designer and we spoke to six different groups for about 25 minutes each.  Being that my week was crazy, I didn’t have much time to prepare my talk.  During the first session, we each gave a short description about our jobs and then asked for questions.  The question was asked if there was anyway for them to start learning about graphic design, web development or technical production.  What a great opportunity to invite the kids to church and become a part of the tech ministry!  That same opportunity presented itself for the remaining five classes.  Just where I needed to be.

Outside Events

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Planet WisdomThis weekend we hosted Planet Wisdom. Anytime we have a outside event it means work. In some cases we have to totally clear the stage. So you have to ask is it worth the work that is involved? In the case of Planet Wisdom, I would say yes.

This event was lots of work and as usual was scheduled on my two days off. We had to clear the center of the stage as well as move some of the pews to fix their equipment. Load in and out is taxing and then being that this event ended on a Saturday evening we had to reset the stage for Sunday morning. I think that I ended up in leaving at about 10 pm.

So was is the value? Just the fact that 900 students were given the opportunity to hear the word and grow in their faith is value enough. But events like this can also be a learning experiences as well as spark some creative ideas. This event had some good lighting as well as some creative video shots that I might have to try in some future services.

Over the past week or so I have been checking out the site visualworshiper.com. Dave had sent me the site and I was very impressed with Camron’s use of projectors for architectural projection. Come to find out Camron has worked with Planet Wisdom for a while and I had the opportunity to meet him and get a better idea of how he created such cool stage looks. I still am planning on getting up to Dallas and attend Irving Bible Church and see the projectors in action.