what creatives need….

By AJWired in AJ Mind Dump, Culture, Design, Leadership, Ministry, Technology 0 Comment

What do creatives in your organization, church or business need?  Not ALWAYS the top of the line equipment (although I must confess, having 16g’s of ram and 8 processor mac does help tremendously).  What they DO need is the freedom to create, experiment, dream and at times fail.  Case in point, the video below. Shot and edited on an iphone.  Watch all the way through to see how they did it at the end.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/12819723[/vimeo]

Little or no budget? Innovate.

By AJWired in Leadership, Ministry, Technology 0 Comment

Love stuff like this.  With everyone it seems experiencing cutbacks in budgets, including creative media budgets, it pushes us to a couple of options.  One option is to sit back, and say what we can’t do.  The other is to ask “what can we do?”.  Innovation is often limited by leadership that is 1. focused on what we can’t do and 2. doesn’t give permission to experiment and fail.  I love what Craig Groeschel says about LifeChurch and their culture: “Failure isn’t just expected, it’s required.”  Here’s a church that built a very cool LED-esque wall with existing equipment and $1000.  Check it out:

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thank you U2…and You Tube

By AJWired in Technology 0 Comment

Just an incredible online experience and exceptional quality.  If this was a beta test for anything, I would say it was a home run.  Of course, the fact that they are one of my favorite bands helped the experience.  On the technical side, I was VERY impressed. I watched the whole experience from my DSL connection at my house, was great video quality even at full screen and it buffered on my computer…once….that’s almost unheard of.  Few screenshots.  Click on any to enlarge.

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couple of On The Ridge Campus photos

By AJWired in Design, Ministry, Technology 1 Comment

Here are a couple of photos (compliments of Nick – Ridge Campus Pastor) of the worship center at Cedar Creek On the Ridge in Ridge Spring.  For those that don’t know, this is our second multi-site campus about to launch within the next few weeks.  It was very cool to see the reaction of those who had not seen the set completed (for the most part) this past week.  Tomorrow we’re having small worship gathering for the volunteers at the campus.  Just a few notes and comments from the production side of things.

  • As you can see, the house lights are on full…as we found out from our electricians on Wednesday, these particular lights have to be on (per the manufacturer) for 100 hours straight before dimming them.  They actually use a fluorescent bulb (not a fan) vs an incandescent bulb but are dimmable.  Not ideal for tomorrow morning but should be good to go for the first public worship service.  Once that 100 hours is up, we can really set the lighting the way we want.
  • Table at the front in the photos is for communion tomorrow.  Normally that is where Nick will be to greet, announce, speak, pray, etc.
  • We utilized a combination of LED washes, par cans and ellipsoidals in our theatrical lighting.  We also have a large spot mounted in the back (not pictured).
  • Ceiling was blacked out.  I was hoping that the back wall would be as well, but that was a no go.  I’m thinking perhaps some black fabric/curtain may be a good call to go behind the transformants and trusses on the back wall down the road.
  • Lighting is controlled by some free Chauvet computer-based software.  It actually is pretty cool in that you can setup 2d and 3d renderings of your stage setup, create scenes on your computer anywhere, bring them in and load them up..nice for volunteers.
  • Total of 4 screens, 2 on the sides, one on the rear wall (not pictured) and then the motorized screen that drops down from the center for the message.
  • 2 analog way switcher/scalers for the screens.  One for the side and rear screens, one for the center screen.
  • Imac using propresenter for media.
  • Small behringer board for media mix before sending it to house sound.
  • Right now we’re going week delay and using dvd’s for the ridge campus.  Quality is okay on the dvd, but we may quickly change over to using captured video from either p2 cards or from dvcpro deck.  We’ll see…still a work in progress.

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