A Guy. A Camera. A City

I am going to start a new series to show the photos I take. Living in a City like Chicago I am always surrounded by amazing inspiration for the art I create. I often have my camera with me and will snap photos of things I find interesting. 

Reflections at Millennium Park

Train tracks at the Art Institute 

In the gardens surrounding the Art Institute 

Found this in a garden at the Art Institute 

Love the contrast

The entrance of the Roosevelt Theater

Iconic Chicago Summer

Love the texture

Just a fun picture

Again love the texture

Cool Toys

I am always loosing my USB thumb drives. I saw this on the key chain of a friend I was having lunch with the other day and asked where he got it. I ordered a couple for our team. We got the 8GB version. It is water proof and very light weight. You can order them from the LaCie web site.

RAW

This morning at park I went with a very raw look for the music segment of our service. The rest of the service had our usual look. I side lit the coroplast shapes with 3 source four par cans from either side of the stage. I also aimed 1 source four par can up into the structure from both sides. In the house I turned up the bare bulb fixtures higher than normal to provide an very ambient feel. All of this together provided a very raw warehouse feel. My favorite part of the day were the cues that took us back to a theatrical feel, it was really cool to watch the room transform it's self.

Balance

Balance. Life is filled with always having to balance priorities, this is an area that I have always struggled with. Historically I will get busy with a project and things start falling off the end of the table. In my mid 20’s I was forced to start balancing this aspect of my life. For me it’s like an addiction, you are never over it you just have to learn to deal with it.

The introduction of a wife brought one more aspect of balance in my life. Although we flowed pretty well. She would spend time and help with projects. This continued until I was 29. That year brought the birth of our son, yet another element to have to balance. All of a sudden my table was getting fuller of things that could not fall off, the price was to high. This kept Simone from hanging out and helping as much.

The next couple of years were pretty smooth. When our son was three we introduced another element to balance. Our daughter was born when I was 32, at the same time my work load increased. I literally felt like I was spinning plates - just going from plate to plate just spending enough time to make sure it did not fall. I missed simple things like playing in the snow, I look at those pictures and still regret it.

I am 35 now and don’t feel like I have made much progress. I am convinced that this is not something that ever gets easier you just have to make daily decisions about where your time is going to go. Maybe by 40 I can get a handle on it...

I wrote this on the plane on my way to be a part of the the Worship Facilities Expo Tech Talk. One of the questions that was asked from the audience was about how we balance work and the rest of our lives. Jill Gille one of the panelist said “I wish I had been brave enough to end the meeting, or just leave” It made me think how many times thing have been rearranged in our personal life because a meeting ran long.

Piper|Carson Event

Last week the Gospel Collation held their annual conference just outside Chicago. For the last evening of the conference everyone was invited to join John Piper and Don Carson at Park Community Church for a discussion titled "the Pastor as a Scholar, and the Scholar as a Pastor".

Due to the fact that we were just hosting the event we had to put the sponsors logos on the stage behind the speakers so that they were visible on the video. I used our three screen setup from our christmas set except this time I lined up 3 58" plasmas and used them to display the logos. I moved the computer for the three screens on stage right behind the plasmas, we then covered it with black fabric. Our video room is on the second floor so this kept us from having to add two additional cable runs. I often use remote desktop to control computers so it worked out great.

I added 6 columns three on each side of the stage. I used Coroplast left over from easter. I scored the 4 X 8 sheets every foot and folded into a square then taped the connection corner with white gaff tape. I then cut a slot in the bottom for the cables and placed them over our LED par cans.

This event maxed our our facility, It was fun to see the building overflowing with people. We set up every classroom and public area as overflow and they were all full.

Remember

For Good Friday this year we did a short theater piece where a man beat a cross on stage. While he was beating the cross a figure representing Jesus was hanging from a rope on the other side of the stage responding to every blow. During this scene a sin would flash on the wall with every hit.

For Easter Sunday, we took one of the crosses he beat on stage and hung it in a stair case that connects our two main lobbies. The Good Friday theater piece was very moving for a lot of people and they are reminded of the sacrifice that Jesus made for us every time they enter the building.

Got to love it!

Late last August my wife went to visit her parents. I took the opportunity to go see The Dark Knight. I first went to Navy Pier to see it at IMAX but it was sold out. I took a bus to the next closest theater. After the movie I started walking to the L station. It was one of those amazing summer evenings and after seeing Chicago in the Dark Knight it was an amazing feeling to walk down those streets.

On my way home I saw a shoot happening on lower Michigan Ave. I wandered down that way and snapped a couple of pics on my phone. They had wrapped for the night and the cast was leaving when I got there. I often wondered what they were shooting. There was a CTA bus down there so I thought it may have been an ad for CTA.

Today I was sitting in Joseph's office and we were listening to The Fray's 'You found me'. We were talking about the video so he pulled it up on You Tube. I saw them on the bridge and knew what it was. I had been there and seen the set up.

I love living in the city. I love the crazy things you stumble upon.

They shot this on top of 311 Wacker. It is the building Jazz, my 6 year old, can see out of his window and judges whether it's bedtime by whether the light is on or off.

Easter

Easter at park was fairly low key short service. We did 4 services at our main campus and one at our Lincoln Park Campus.

I used 4X8 sheets of white coroplast hung by black chain to create the reflective surface for the center projector. I also treated the entire room with a breakup pattern in an amber color.

We also did baptism as part of our easter service we have always done it at the lake during the summer and baptize a large number of people. We have started doing them in small numbers. I was against each person sharing their testimony but in the end think we should always do small numbers so they can share. This became a real family moment and people connected on an emotional level to each of the people being baptized.

Good Friday

The set for Good Friday had to provide space for the band to play and for a short theater piece. The band was small keys, electric, drums, acoustic, and violin. The theater piece consisted of a cross that we created out of metal studs that would be beaten with a metal pipe and a rope with a hook on the end for a Jesus character to hang on.

I wanted to create a oppressive feel in the room. The ceiling of bulbs above the band made the space feel small and closed in. This was done with sockets from IKEA and 90w par 38 spot bulbs. I rented 4 MAC 700 wash and 4 MAC 700 profile fixtures.

As the cross was being beaten we flashed sins with our center projector on the wall above the ceiling of bulbs.

It was cool how the cords for the bulbs became a piece of art when his from the sides with a rotating pattern.

Editing

We shot a promo for program called Alpha the other day.
The actress, Kirby O'Connell, that came in to do the promo was fighting a cold at the time. After we shot the footage we noticed there was a "glisten" in her right nostril in some of the shots. It was very noticeable in three of the shots. we were short on time to get it turned around for the weekend. I spent a couple of hours Saturday tracking the "glisten" and applying a circle blur to remove it.

This is the unedited promo

This is the motion tracking for the circle blur

This is the final edit of the promo.

Cool Image

So we really have not been doing a lot of cool stuff lately but just the basics while getting ready for Good Friday and Easter. I did want to post this image because I thought it was just very cool. She was singing about being sheltered under the wing of God.

O what a tangled web

We have branded the next part of 1st Corinthians "O what a tangled web". We immediately knew we wanted a Tim Burton (ish) look. I designed the artwork. After several fonts, we decided on the one. I asked Chris Joye to compose a short score for the project. His piece was amazing. It was a perfect fit.

I had designed 20' diameter spiderwebs to flank our stage and hang above the house. We ran into some scheduling issues - this part is not 4 weeks like we thought but 6 weeks. It will span Easter and we have a wedding right after Easter. Spider webs for a wedding would not go over well. I decided to make 10', easily movable, webs. We put one together and it looked horrible. I scraped the idea at the last minute. It's called creativity. I guess we'll just have to stick to projection-based elements.

When it came to the video I knew we would do a 3D thing and fly the artwork in and webs were going to be part of the visuals. I really was struggling with what would tie the whole thing together. A couple of weeks ago, I got the idea to make the webs out of words, words describing the things that cause the webs.

I hate coming up with ideas like that when I have no idea how I am going to make it happen. I started doing tests to make sure it was possible with the software I have. It was a lot because to be able to zoom as far in as I needed to, the files had to be huge. It really slowed down the processes. I needed a couple more gigs of ram. I made several attempts at including the wall paper, changing the wall paper, and trying to create a room out of the wall paper. After several failed attempts and much frustration I just let the background be black and flew in the wallpaper at the end.

Preview

So we have changed the set this week more for fun than anythings else. Joseph's band debuts this week so I thought it would be fun to do something different. I wanted a rougher small stage look so I scoured Chicago land Goodwill stores and got a bunch of great lamps for really cheap. I then put 4 sc40 pipes in some bases we had and put 3 source 4 pars with 575w lamps on each pipe. I left the random lenses in the top 8 in the bottom 4 we put a very narrow lens and pointed them up at the ceiling. the top 8 fixtures are focused at the band. The lamps are on 6 different channels so we can do a random chase and have a really cool look. Not really sure what imagery is going on the big screen in the center or the side screens... I know it's Friday but I'm sure inspiration will come soon.

Theatrical

So we went with a theatrical look at Park today. After a lot of changes at the last minute due to several key players being sick the music changed at the very last minute, Saturday at 1:30. The "band" ended up being a single voice with piano. We had a single look for all the music.

I created this by overlaying a gilded frame over an image of burgundy drapes and adding some lighting effects in photo shop. I then washed the curtains in red to match.

Park usually has more of a raw urban feel so the classier look was very different for us.

Maps

Our lead pastor, Jackson Crum, uses a lot of historical references during his teaching. He often shows you temples, ruins, statues, and maps. As you can imagine the quality of most biblical maps leaves a lot to be desired.

I was watching CNN one day and saw them use Google maps. I was hooked, what a relevant way to show people what happened. The first map that I did I was amazed at the terrain. When I imagine Paul on his journeys I did not thinks about how rough the terrain was that he had to overcome. It brought it home to me in a whole new way. This file is Paul's 4th Journey. 

I purchased the Google Earth application so that it gives me the ability to export to what ever codec that I need. I export to HD720 and it plays flawlessly. The program is somewhat challenging because it really is not a "production" type of package so you have limited control over time and speed. I will often bring the file into Final Cut Pro and speed it up, or pause it at a location for an extended amount of time.

The reaction from our people has been overwhelming they really love it. During our Three Screen setup I created one that spanned the screens, you almost needed Dramamine because of the motion sickness effect it had. For that one I exported the clip at 1080p so I had the most pixels to work with.

Reduce, reuse, recycle, and impress!

Ok so we all know the economy suck. So in an effort to be good stewards and wise spenders I am trying to be creative with what we have laying around.

I was really tired of the three screen setup. I was having to create two versions of everything it was really getting old. So last week we split the screen apart, we put the two screens back on the sides of the stage. I put the wide angle lens in the center projector and put aluminum screen, that was left over from our first set, at different angles from the bottom of the cat walk. This created a 20 X 30 foot image that is fragmented and creates some double imagery at points. The overall effect was very dramatic.

We launched the common.org for our church today. Benjamin Gott, the founder of the common, was there to help us launch it.

Relationship Status is our current series the backdrop added a dramatic visual aspect to the artwork.

The great thing about this set is that you can use traditional elements in a contemporary context.

Love the tree.

Relationship Status

So we are going through 1st Corinthians. We are hitting the relationship part in February. We have branded this section Relationship Status, This is a preview for the series. Week one is dealing with sexual immorality, week two is Singles, week three is marriage, and week 4 is divorce.  The last couple of series have had complicated art so we decided to make this one really simple to keep things mixed up. This is a very different look for us so it will be fun to hear people's response. 

I love seeing this on my blog

I love seeing this IP address on my blog.