Here is the intro video we are using to introduce the sermon in our current series. The series is called “Get In The Game” and it deals with our philosophy of ministry at SSCC and how we want our church body to walk it out. The main themes from the series are serving, living in community (small groups) and seeing lives changed by Christ. The messages so far have been great, head over to SSCC and pick up the podcast if you haven’t heard them. Everything for this series was designed around a ESPN Sportcenter concept. Our stage set has a Sportcenter news desk look, along with bleachers & goal posts framing our video screens. All of our staff and volunteers have been encouraged to come dressed in attire supporting their favorite teams. (Go Dogs.)

Back to the project. This is one of those deals that I am proud of but at the same time, I can QUICKLY identify things I would do differently across the board. I was limited with time to get good video footage for one thing. On the design end of things, again, if we had time, we could have created more layers and individual elements in the graphics and added more variety. But hey, we just aren’t in a place right now at SSCC where that kind of time is available. All the graphics for this series were designed in house, mostly by Chris. He designed the “title graphic” for this series first, this is the image that the video ends on. Everything else we have done has been based on that initial graphic. In the previous link you can see three images we have used.

The video is a combination of work from Photoshop, Illustrator, Final Cut Pro and After Effects. We took Chris’s graphics from Photoshop and Illustrator, video footage captured & edited in Final Cut and composited everything in After Effects. The BG music was thrown together by Fred even though I asked for it late. He got it in on his way out of town for vacation.

Again, I have to say that we are proud of the overall project. It took a lot of planning and coordination between people and applications. That being said. It is immediately apparant that there is much more we could have done to make it more professional looking. However, I have to regularly remind myself that our goal is not professionalism. Our goal is to effectively create environments where people can encounter Christ. I do believe the video did a good job of setting up our messages. Especially when seen in the context of the stage set and other elements around the building.

Here is the intro:

This second video is a loop that runs continuoulsy on two plasma screen TVs as a part of our set on stage:

What do ya’ think?

I wear a lot of hats here at St. Simons Community Church and at the Gathering Place where I volunteer regularly. My job title is Technology Director. My roll is WAY more complicated. I am involved with everything audio, video, lighting, IT, software, graphic design, video production, event production, service planning, content planning, and a few other things I am missing. I like the multitasking, I like the every-day-is-different, I like the freedom & responsibility. (This is where I must mention the two guys I work closely with: Bo and Chris, they share an equal load in tech direction in the church and I/we couldn’t come close to doing it without them.) What I don’t like is how it has fostered a critical nature in me.

I am responsible for what happens in our live services for instance. So whether I am running front of house, producing, or making sure that our awesome volunteers are taken care of, I still find myself generally somewhere in the back of the room or video booth critiquing. It seems that without it being specified in my job description anywhere, I am constantly identifying problems, errors, oversights and just things we could have done better. This is bad for people in my postion or similar ones because we will become generally negative pretty quick. It is the nature of the beast I think. We just have to tame that.

I don’t want to be the guy that only points out the bad things and neither should you. People will quickly discount what we say if all we ever have is a bad thing to say. Even worse probably, it will frustrate us quickly. If all we do is focus on the bad stuff we will stop seeing any good stuff. I had a real gut check this past week when running sound at a youth event in our community. We have had some technically frustrating nights this summer and followed that up with a few nights that SEEMED spiritually frustrating as well. This past week everything went pretty smoothly, which is nice, but the big thing for me was SEEING life change. People responded to a clear message and call from God through our speaker. I stood at the console in the back of the room while two people behind me wept and prayed out loud.

There are about 1000 students a week there and lives have been being changed all summer, I just hadn’t really even attempted to put myself in a place to notice. Actually, lives have been being changed by God long before I offered Him my amazing services. Lives were being changed before you jumped on board at your place too. Here is the kicker, God doesn’t need perfect pitch, flawless transitions, the right SPL and hyped up videos to move. He uses them to move and thankfully allows us to be a part of that. We need to remind ourselves of that fact.

So here is the take home on this, and yes, it will be on the test. Have you heard of a compliment sandwich? You should try one, they are delectable. I must confess that Stewie Griffin set the example for me. Anyway, KEEP CRITIQUING. It is important to always work to honor God by doing the best you can with what He has given you. However, every time you notice a negative, find two positive things about the event, service or whatever to report on as well. Sandwich that criticism between some positive review. Trust me, the people you work closely with will greatly appreciate it and they will PROBABLY start listening to what you have to say too.

So, anyone else feel me? Chime in with your thoughts and experiences.

Senheiser USA just added a plug about our new facility on their website. I was at an Expo in Chicago while at the Willowcreek Arts conference and one of the Sennheiser guys saw my name tag and told me about it. I gotta be honest, it felt kind of cool to be “noticed” by their East Coast rep. Apparently two of the guys in Chicago had worked on our wireless coordination. Even though I am not mentioned in the short article, I think I am famous by association right? I mean, A LOT of people read the Sennheiser Houses of Worship news feed right? Hmmm. I think this blog may have more readers (6) than that. Anyway, in a geeky sense, it was cool for them to “know me,” same thing happened at the Meyer Sound booth as well. EDIT: Turns out as I was about to post this, Bo found another article at Lighting & Sound America about the build. REMEMBER, these were written by our systems contractors and not us.

On that same note however, this “new building” thing was already on my mind. Nancy Beach, one of the creative leaders at Willowcreek, said something that really stuck with me yesterday. She discussed how much Willow strives to be known for making a difference in their community and the world and NOT to be known simply as the church with the big building in town. She actually teared up during that part of her talk. It really hit me hard.

I don’t want SSCC to become known only as the big church on the island or anything like that. I don’t think that we SHOULD be known only as that. But it is an important challenge to never forget. The baptisms we regularly hold and the missions teams we send out each year are a constant benchmark for the work that God has called us to do… Even if I do get excited about tech toys and the like. I like the exposure that the facility can give us, I just pray that we use it only to more greatly glorify God.

I read this article this morning on Engadget. A recent study shows that 95% of returned electronic devices are in fact NOT BROKEN. It attributed 26% to buyers remorse and the rest to basically laziness. How many of you never read the manual and then think “it” doesn’t work?

I know that I am not a manual first guy. I have to press some buttons and hear some beeps before I try to figure out how it really operates. I can’t say that I have taken many things back though. I guess us techies are more likely to figure it out.

No, not hand crank cameras but cameras used in filming the movie Crank 2. I have discovered on a couple different websites that a big budget Hollywood film is being done on budget gear. Somewhat of a church budget MAYBE.

The cameras in discussion are Canon XH A1 “consumer” grade HD units. These things sell all over now for around $3000 plus accessories. I just thought it was nice to know that you can get high quality footage (good enough for charging a hefty admission even, haha) at a relatively affordable price. We have two very nice non-HD cameras at church that we paid more than that for in the past three years.

A buddy of mine, Mike, was using one to film some live performance footage of another buddy, David, last night. He digs the camera. Anyone else use one of these? These will have to get bumped to the top of my wish list for production gear… maybe next year.

Well, it has been a while since a worthwhile post came to these parts. I decided I am going to try to get back on the blog-bandwagon along with a couple of other potential web activities that you shall hear about soon enough.

I am posting a video that we will be using in church for the next few weeks as the sermon intro, between worship and the message. The series is “Just Breathe” and it is a 4 week study on the Holy Spirit.

I don’t know if it is good or bad to say that this video is the result of the better part of two days work, spread over a week. The graphic appearing at the end was designed by Chris for the series. I worked backwards from it to animate it and add motion along with all the text. Chris did the initial design in Photoshop I did all the animation in After Effects and created the “flourishes” that grow in the video in Illustrator. The text may change week to week, I am not sure yet.

The music behind it is “The Adventure” by Angels & Airwaves. (I tried posting on YouTube first but couldn’t get audio in there for some reason, so it’s hosted on my site and may take a bit longer to play.)

Enjoy
-Travis

[quicktime]http://www.travispaulding.com/Uploads/JB_Intro_2_small_h264.mov[/quicktime]

Although somewhat technical, I definitely consider this blog subject “off topic” but I couldn’t ignore it. I stumbled across an article leading me to this website, which confirms something incredible.

PETA (the animal rights group) is offering $1 million for the first group of scientists to come up with commercially viable and edible meat. Let me say that again. PETA is going to award $1 million to whoever can make MEAT grow in the lab. It has to be distributable to multiple states and priced more cheaply than its real counterpart (chicken).

PETA is willing to help us “gain access to flesh that doesn’t cause suffering and death.” How very considerate of them. What about the suffering of the taste testers? I don’t even want to think about the test meals in that kitchen.

What a way to re-enter the blogosphere, huh?

-Yours Truly

I figured I would share a video from church with the small portion of the internet world that visits here. This is a testimony intro video we played in church on our opening weekend in the new building. I edited it in Adobe After Effects with the chair being hand drawn, scanned & cut in Adobe Illustrator before I imported it to be ‘drawn’ in the video. Our new projection system is widescreen, that is why the video looks cut off on the top and bottom. YouTube automatically letterboxes it. Also, there is no sound. Fred, our worship director, played piano live during the video.

The point of the video I think is pretty self-explanatory when you see it. It set up David Wilkin’s testimony pretty well. Even though there is not much to it, it turned out to be super-effective.

Enjoy! And let me know what you think.

We are getting ready to start a 4 week series in church on God’s love called “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” We were trying today to think of some nice popular and fast love songs to play as walk-in and/or walk-out songs in the services. You got any suggestions? We were struggling. We ruled out the title song because of subject matter IN the song. I suggested “Wicked Game” by Chris Issack, but for obvious reasons that one got axed, along side of “I Wanna Sex You Up” by Color Me Bad when Chris suggested it. A few Beatles tunes came up, but seriously, what else?

Thanks in advance for your service.

-Travis

I stumbled across this article today on the Consumerist. It ‘confirms’ that coat hangers work as well as Monster Cables for home theater speaker cable. It makes you wonder how many products out there are purely or mostly hype and not so much quality. What do you think? What products are mostly hype?

-Travis