Songs are such an interesting element of what we do every week. And there are so many opinions about style, song choice, and execution. There is no perfect formula except for being aware of your demographic and staying diverse. We are conscious of getting stuck and reach for some diversity as often as possible. Mumford is a reach back, but often it is just as effective. It holds a place in people’s hearts and takes them somewhere familiar.

For the first week of our Optics series looking at the life of Joseph we choose this as a reflection of Joseph’s dilemma.  Sam Hancock and the team pulled if off well even adding in a banjo to reflect the unique sound.

 

 

There are always opportunities to create within your campus that is not directly involved with the auditorium, stage, etc. Often we have to remind ourselves to look for those opportunities outside of the norm. As we began our Transformed series this fall, we made the decision to incorporate an Origami tree into our main lobby area. This tree would remain in place and origami’s representing each week of our series would be added as we went along. With some inspiration and incredible effort from a couple of our key team members …it happened.

 

You Can Do It.

For our final week of Art Effect we did a collaborative piece of art with calligraphy by Nikki Verbil and Animation by our Production Director, David Quiroz. It was a great moment including the Rend Collective song that accompanied the moment. With the combination of prep work, live art, and video animation.

Sometimes we are inspired enough to truly create original art. This was one of those times.

 

It is said that with most projects it always takes longer than you think, is more complicated than you think and will cost more than you think.

Unfortunately I think that is true most of the time.

A few weeks back we made the decision to not do a major stage change, but merely execute a mild tweak of our current setup. The mild tweak part is where it began to get interesting and where we were confused. There was nothing mild about it.

The idea was to leverage large, curved projection screens we had been gifted and add both movement and pop to our stage. Our current setup consisted of mod scenes and one curved screen up and center.  Our production director had spent hours tweaking backgrounds and lyrics to match the curvature, allowing us to project simultaneously.

When the second screen actually was rigged (which took a ton of time) and in place we realized some of the flaws of our plan. The screens were offset so images need to be tweaked to fit correctly. And initially we did not have the look we had assumed so it threw us. We stood in the room looking at it over and over again and running different scenarios and tweaks.  The conversation went everywhere.

Finally…after a long frustrating journey, we realized something. It was exactly what we had expected. Though it looked slightly different, the effect was still the same. It tucked behind and moved down to stage level as we need it. That was what we were going for. The screens lining up was never the complete objective. Discussion over.

SCREEN UP:

SCREEN DOWN:

Learnings:

• Everything takes LONGER than you think.
• Nothing works EXACTLY as you think.
• Sometimes there needs to be time for you TO think.
• Eventually you might have to stop listening to what OTHERS think.

And then…it comes together.

We were really happy in the end with the final product. It created a dual radius screen effect with the rear screen being able (through motors) to tuck behind the front screen. This enabled us to bring the screen in to the floor as we desired for certain creative moments and for our teaching time. Our video switcher was then able to project on both screens simultaneously when both were “in”.  The tuck effect worked well.

There is something about the ability to move pieces around and change the look of the screen even during a worship experience that is appealing and catches peoples attention. We would encourage you to look for small ways in which you can shift items around on your stage or make small tweaks that create movement.