Hi Def Upgrade Installation date moved

The schedule on the HD Upgrade got pushed back 2 weekends. The new date is scheduled for Sunday, February 6th, which happens to coincide with our Volunteer Fair and also with the Super Bowl. I'm not sure how late we'll work but there is a good chance we'll be there past kickoff, but the Bengals aren't playing at least:) I'm sure we will have a screen somewhere with the game on. Heck, we'll make a party out of it.

More details to come...

Updating the rule of thirds

http://www.digital-photography-school.com/divine-composition-with-fibonaccis-ratio-the-rule-of-thirds-on-steroids

Get Me To The Church

HD Upgrade is almost here.

Here is a quick HD upgrade update.

The new HD projectors are here and temporarily installed and operating at standard definition and at half of their brightness(about 7,500 lumens, it can go as high as 15,000 lumens). If you noticed them this weekend, they look incredible! When the booth install happens in January they will be moved and mounted in another location to accommodate the moving of the screens. (The screens will be moved toward the center and down and they will be a little bigger) (from 9' x 12' to 10' x 16')

The video booth de-construction is scheduled on
Sunday, January 23rd. The install will then begin Monday, January 24th.

We will need 5 or 6 volunteers to assist in gear removal on that Sunday, 1/23. We'll start immediately following the 12 o'clock celebration, so around 1pm. It should be fun pulling all that stuff, making room for the new.

We will also need help installing equipment and cables that week of January 24th - 28th but I don't know what that schedule is right now. More details to follow.

Let me know if you're available to help out. Thanks!!! I am soooo stoked for this!

New Rehearsal Time beginning in January

As most of you already know, we are changing Celebration times starting in January of the new year on January 1st and 2nd. (Saturday @ 5:30pm, Sunday @ 9am, 10:30am and 12 noon) Obviously, this will effect our rehearsal time on Saturdays. So beginning January 1st we'll begin rehearsal at 4:30 and tech crew call time will be at 4:15pm. This may change how we handle dinner on Saturday nights. We may switch from providing dinner Saturday night to breakfast Sunday morning. Let me know if you have a preference or any questions. Thanks!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I wanted to take a short moment to wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving. This is one of my favorite holidays of the year. It is an important time for me to pause and reflect on everything God has provided for, and done. I have more blessings than I can count and honestly I get a little overwhelmed thinking about all he has provided and how little I really deserve any of it. I am so thankful to have Stephanie and Spencer in my life, and a cozy roof over my head and a job that I love. Many of good people, friends and family fill my life, even though I am very flawed. I guess we all are undeserving, but The Father still saw to it to make a way to redeem us to Him through His Son. That's what is most mind boggling to me, that He gave His one and only Son. When I watch Spencer play it is hard to fathom how agonizing that must have been. Hard to imagine, but I am thankful for His grace and mercy. I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving, I pray that each of you get to spend valuable time with your families, and remember what He has done for you.

Change for the New Year

Here is a quick note about a change in 2011.

Celebration's times will shift starting in 2011 on the first weekend of the new year, January 1 and 2. Saturday night will move to 5:30pm and Sunday morning will shift slightly to 9am, 10:30am, and 12pm noon. This will give more time for Children's ministry to get kids checked in and out, and will give us a little more of a breather between celebrations.

This will adjust rehearsal times for us on Saturday, I'll update you on those times as soon as we set them.

Short update

You might have noticed that the house-right auditorium projector has gradually been looking worse and worse. It has a dingy yellow cast to it. The only way to fix it is to send it back to Panasonic. Since we are on the cusp of new equipment all around we have been trying to stretch it until the upgrade. But it just has gotten worse and worse each week. Fortunately, the guys at CSG said we can get the new projectors and put them to use right now. Leadership approved the expense, so we will be getting the new projectors in the next couple of weeks. They are 15,000 lumens so we may use them in 7,500 lumens mode at first and save some of those lumens for the rest of the upgrade. We'll use them in 4:3 mode until the rest of the upgrade in January. I imagine that the screens will really pop just in time for the Christmas show.
Your Brother in Christ,
Bryan

Video Booth Upgrade Update

Hi Team,
After months of research, discussion and deliberation we have chosen a vendor for the upgrade to High Definition video. We went with Church Solutions Group out of Chicago. They are owned by the same guy who designed all of Willow Creeks tech set ups, Bruce Smith.
If you're interested you can check them out @
www.churchsolutionsgroup.com

So here are the basics right now...(which are subject to change)
3 High Definition Panasonic HPX-370 cameras. 2 of which will sit at the back of the auditorium floor, on risers, against the back wall.
One of these will be equipped with an 18X lens with a Lens doubler, effectively making it a 36X lens. This will be the pastor close up/follow cam.
The second one will have a 17X lens and will follow pastor wide, probably head to toe, maybe even wider, but we'll see.

The third Panasonic HPX-370 will be a side view (probably baptistry side but exact location hasn't been determined yet) and also have a 17X lens.


The 370's will have tally lights, nicer zoom and focus controls, return video(which means you'll be able to push a button and see what is in program)

Next, there is a 4th camera which is a smaller Panasonic HPX-170 which can be a hand-held camera or we can lock it down somewhere, we will use it most likely on stage. This camera will very closely match the 370 b/c most of the electronics are exactly the same only the body is different.


We will be using a Panasonic HS450 video switcher which can mix HD and SD sources but ultimately puts out a full HD image.


Also replacing our current projectors which are 3200 lumens(measure of brightness) with 15,000 lumens High Def projectors. They are going to look AMAZING!


Along with the technical changes, we'll have a chance to change some aesthetics in the booth, probably a coat of paint, possibly removing some or all of the counters and maybe make the booth a better place in which to hang out. The new equipment will take up much less space and we should be able to turn the current work space to where the director can just look to his right to see the stage.

Anyway, at this date it will be very tough to get this comfortably done by the Christmas show. So we are pushing it back to start in January. In order to keep the bid down we will need some volunteer help when we start pulling out old gear and installing new gear and cables etc. We think it will take one to two weeks to completely make the change over. I will keep you all up to date right here as more and more details get sketched in. I am really excited to see this project get started. This is a HUGE puzzle piece in leadership's plan for macro and micro sites and we will continue participate in what God is doing through the church in Cincinnati. Exciting isn't?

Eventful Fall

Hi Tech Team,
I wanted to post an update about our busy fall schedule and update you on some stuff.
Here are some of the important things to keep in mind...

-Shareholder's Gathering Friday, October 1 Is happening at the Healing Center auditorium possibly needing help with set up, audio and powerpoint. Luckily, this event requires just one or two people to run audio and powerpoint. Let me know if you want to help out here. Yes, it is happening at the same time as Veggie Tales Live, but shouldn't impact that event too much.

-Veggie Tales Live Friday, October 1, we still urgently need 5 to 6 more volunteers for each of the 2pm and 7pm showings of Veggie Tales this coming Friday. Please let me know ASAP if you are available.

-25th Anniversary Celebration Sunday, October 3, don't forget that we're not meeting here at the auditorium next weekend(10/2 & 10/3) but we'll instead meet one time, in one place together at the Cintas Center to Celebrate 25 years of God's work here at VCC. We'll be relying on Xavier's tech people to handle most of the video stuff so most of the Tech Team can sit back and enjoy worship and all the festivities.

-Love and Respect conference October 22 & 23, this event is coming up and we'll need to field a full crew for this. I'll be sending out more communications about this after October 3, but feel free to let me know if you're available.

-Celebrations Team Party Friday, November 5, we will be having a tech team/worship team party on November 5th. We're still working out details for this but block it out on your schedule. More details to come.

-Video booth digital upgrade, we're very close to pulling the trigger on the HD upgrade. The big decision that remains is whether or not we can get this finished before Thanksgiving. If we decide it is to close to complete the upgrade by Thanksgiving we may push it back until January. More details to come.

What an exciting fall we have in front of us. I look forward to seeing what God does each step of the way.

Summer 2010 Updates

Howdy!
I wanted to update y'all on a few things. Here goes:

# 1 SOS is just 18 days away. As you may already be aware, it is one of VCC's biggest events and outreaches of the year. It is part of of our DNA and part of our mission as a church to reach out and love our city into a loving relationship with Jesus and to give away what God has given us. And as a part of the tech team we get to play a small part in the transformation of these 1,000 or so young people's lives that week. And just think, those one thousand kids go on to touch other lives, so indirectly God uses us to reach out to several thousand people every year. We still have many roles left to serve, please sign up online: robo cams, cameras 3 and 4, switcher, director, etc
https://vinenet.net/vc/mv.php?p=volslotroles.php&x=1

We can't do this with out you!

#2 We have had 3 people join the team in the past couple of weeks: Antoinette Graham, Shawn Flannery, and Som Gandham. All 3 will be helping take care of the web upload at the end of the day on Sundays around 1pm. They'll check in with the director each week to see which celebration needs to be uploaded and then handle it. This is a huge help for us, and it gets the video and audio of celebrations up around 3pm on Sunday of the celebration! I don't know of another church that gets it done faster! Amazing! Thanks Antoinette, Shawn and Som! I would love for everyone to say hi to them if you get a chance on Sunday afternoons.

#3 We replaced the intercom headphones at cameras 3 and 4 because the original head phones ear muffs were hard and uncomfortable. The new head phones are soft and much more comfortable. Check them out the chance you get, I think you'll like them:)

#4 One of our youngest volunteers Katy Stuhlreyer accepted an internship at Disney in Orlando. Katy served with us primarily at camera but also did Powerpoint. She floated from team 2 to team 3 most of the time. I am excited for her opportunity, but bummed that we'll miss her for a while on tech team.

That's all the updates I have for now. Please sign up for SOS when you get a chance.

Thanks

BW

Sunday Morning - A must see video

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

HE IS RISEN!

"HE IS RISEN!!!" As a teen, that is what my Southern Baptist pastor Brother Phillip Bradshaw always greeted folks with on Easter morning. And the expected response was HE IS RISEN INDEED!!! It always felt a little cheesy, but the spirit intended was right. After all, this weekend marks the most important event of our faith. Without the resurrection, Christianity would have been just a passing fad. With the resurrection, Jesus Christ simultaneously paid the worlds debt for sin, gifting each of us with the decision to choose eternal life and also demonstrating God’s mighty power over the natural. It cannot be overstated how important Christ’s death and resurrection is to all of us.

My decision to follow Christ started in 1990, when I was 18 the week after Easter following a week of revival at Williamstown Baptist Church. Revival happened about once a year and consisted of 7 nights of church services culminating in a bunch of baptisms. It was always scheduled ahead of time, and to me, basically it just meant that Granny Sharpe was going to guilt me into attending as much as possible. This particular revival seem to speak to me for some reason. All week I felt moved and stirred for some reason. I didn’t even understand what was happening, but the urge to come forward during the alter calls was percolating, but I was able to resist. I was able to stuff that emotion way deep down inside, and it also helped that I always sat up in the balcony. It was kind of hard to come forward when I was so far away. I was in control.

One afternoon the week following Easter, Brother Bradshaw came knocking on my door. I was sitting in the living room watching the Reds play. We made some small talk about the Reds or something. Eventually Brother Bradshaw says “Bryan, last week, I noticed you were Pew clutching”. Williamstown Baptist was not a gigantic church but it seats about 500 people and I always sat in the balcony. ‘How in the world did he see that?’ is what I was thinking. Anyway, we continued our conversation I don’t remember everything that was said but I do remember praying and accepting Christ right then and there in my living room while watching the Reds play.

My life has never been the same since. Now I understand the enthusiasm behind “HE IS RISEN”, because I am risen with Him.

Tape Op Training

Vcc Tech Team Orientation Tape Operator - Rehearsal

Just for fun

You have to check out the video I just posted above. The band has been kind of a Youtube wonder with this being there second video sure to be a viral hit for the next year. Supposedly it is recorded all in one take which is just amazing. I read that they did the same take 60 times to get it right, with it taking about an hour to reset each time. Amazing.