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Eikon Downtown At Club Revolution

2013-05-22-19.51.55Recently we had a pretty unique event.  Our young adult ministry, Eikon, took over a club downtown and had an outreach focused worship service.  This was at Club Revolution in downtown Fort Lauderdale and we called the event “Eikon Downtown”.

The goal was to reach out and meet people that don’t know Jesus in an environment that’s comfortable to them.  We had a DJ open the night.  Then a time of worship followed by a short teaching and alter call.  Several people came forward which was awesome!  Then we closed out the night with some more worship.  I don’t know the exact number but over 500 people showed up and it was a very cool event.

We did some prep work ahead of time and used Light Converse to help previsualize our lighting looks and plan the stage layout.  This really helped us have a plan before getting into the room.  The schedule was fairly tight so a lot of time was spent ahead of time planning and trying to make the day run as smoothly as possible.

2013-05-22-17.52.22We used the club’s lighting system which consisted of 8 Martin Mac 600 wash lights, 2 Martin strobes, and 3 Martin Mac 250’s.  We augmented the lighting with a fairly large video projection.  We brought a drop to use as a screen and made a 36′ x 9′ image using three 12,000 lumen projectors.

Lighting was controlled by an ETC ION lighting console.  Video was fed from a MacBook Pro running ProPresenter.  This controlled all of our videos and lyrics.  All of this was then controlled by another MacBook running Ableton Live.

Ableton sent out Midi commands to the ProPresenter machine to change all of the backgrounds and lyrics.  It also could have controlled lighting but we ran out of time to program cues, I had to run lights manually.  The plan was to trigger lighting cues from Ableton.

For audio we used the house Turbosound system which worked well.  We brought in a Yamaha CL3 for FOH and took care of 6, stereo, wireless IEM systems with the CL3 and an iPad running their app.  The iPad was great and allowed us to dial in mixes from stage for each person.

So far the response from this event has been very positive.  That’s a good thing, ha ha.  When you’re trying something new there’s always that chance of it falling flat.  Again we had a great response so we’ll probably do this again at some point.  If over 500 people came out on a Wednesday night then getting the club on a Friday night would be awesome!

 

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Microsoft IllumiRoom

Screen Shot 2013-04-29 at 5.30.38 PMWith all the high end projection mapping out there for big events it’s easy to overlook ways to integrate things on a smaller scale.  Looks like Microsoft figured it out already, ha ha.  They have some really impressive proof of concept videos on their site.

Basically they’re using a combination of a short throw projector and a Kinect to map the room’s objects in 3D then project content.  Some really awesome ideas!

Check out the link for more technical details and the video below for a short demo.  It would be pretty interesting if a media server company like Green Hippo integrated a Kinect into 3D mapping setups like this.

Microsoft IllumiRoom

Research Paper

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Renewed Vision Announces ProVideoServer

Screen Shot 2013-04-28 at 8.56.16 AMRenewed Vision is probably best known for ProPresenter, their church presentation software.  They also make ProVideoPlayer which is tailored a little more towards video walls and environmental projection.  Recently at NAB they announced a new product, ProVideoServer.

ProVideoServer is a software based solution that replaces an older software and hardware based solution for satellite church campuses.  Basically it provides sync’d playback of up to 4 video sources.  This allows for what most churches do for satellite campuses where there’s a center large screen and smaller sides screens.  And since there’s up to 4 channels of playback you have even more options.

You can get a little more info from Renewed Vision’s site, they have some teaser info up now.  They also showed a demo at NAB which can be seen below.  Pretty cool part is that with computers getting so powerful now you don’t necessarily need special hardware like you would even a few years ago.  In the demo he’s just using a newer MacBook Pro, very cool.

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Oblivion The Skytower Virtual Set

Today I received an email linking to this short behind the scenes video.  Pretty awesome setup!  Huge seamless video wall for the set of Oblivion The Skytower.  Now if only I could get their budget to use in our sanctuary, ha ha.

For the filming of Universal’s new sci-fi movie OBLIVION, the Tom Cruise film opening this weekend, Cinematographer Claudio Miranda, ASC, and Director Joseph Kosinski filmed many of the visual effects live in-camera rather than using blue screens. For the scenes in the futuristic “Sky Tower”, a set built almost entirely of glass windows and highly reflective surfaces, PRG projected a 270° sky surrounding the set. Eleven PRG Mbox Extreme media servers and 21 Barco FLM-HD20 20K projectors were used to cover the 494’ wide by 42’ tall projection screen.

 

PRG Project Manager Zach Alexander, the Media Operator on the film, used the PRG V676 control console to call up the different looks. During filming, Kosinski and Miranda reviewed and selected the sky footage options by viewing the video directly on the V676’s Media Window.

 

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Luxi Incident Light Meter

e8696d51f15753e084dff0baf40011f9_largeSo I think it’s pretty obvious that I love Kickstarter, ha ha.  So many cool things are getting launched on there that otherwise probably wouldn’t make it to the mass consumers.

Recently I found (and backed) this light meter.  The Luxi is an attachment for the iPhone that lets you use it as a light meter.  It’s pretty cheap, much cheaper than a standalone light meter.  So that makes it attainable for just about anyone cost wise.  And since it’s a small attachment it’s easy to just leave in your bag and keep on you for jobs.  Easier than hanging onto a stand alone meter.

I meant to post this before the Kickstarter campaign ended but I just got busy.  The good news it that it will go into production and will be available to people outside of Kickstarter at some point.  Currently it’s only for iPhone 4, 4S, and 5’s.

Once I get mine I’ll post a follow up article and compare it to a standard light meter.  Make sure that it’s working like it should!

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Stadium Easter Service 2013

View from FOH
View from FOH

This year marked another successful Easter service out at FAU stadium in Boca Raton.  God came through again with some awesome weather and 26,000 people showed up to celebrate with us!

Once again Special Event Services (SES) provided just about everything on the production side of things.  The stage, PA, lighting, and video truck was all provided by SES.  Having SES provide everything streamlined and simplified the planning that it takes to pull off a large scale event like this.  They’re great!

PA was highlighted by the GTO Outline line array system.  At the stage were four hangs, a main left and right plus side fill left and right.  Towards the back of the field were three small delay carts to make sure that the people 450 feet away still had clear and intelligible audio.

Amazingly the main PA hangs will reach that far no problem.  But with an outdoor event and wind that could pick up at any time and blow away the sound, we hedge our bet and put out the carts.  The end result was even coverage throughout the entire venue.

We recently installed a Midas XL8 in our main sanctuary.  Because of that SES brought out an XL8 to the stadium for us to use at front of house in place of the analog Midas they used to bring out.  We loaded up our show file from the main sanctuary and immediately we were 90% dialed in, very cool!  This really helped us get through sound check and rehearsal efficiently.

At monitors we used a Yamaha PM5D feeding 2 universes of Aviom.  One set of 16 channels for the vocals and another set of 16 channels for the band.  Since we’re running a DSP5D in the main sanctuary we were able to just drop in that show file and bring up monitor world pretty quickly.  Overall both digital consoles saved us a lot of time and allowed us to fine tune instead of starting from scratch.

Even though our Easter service was a daytime event we brought out some stage lighting.  Since the stage is covered you can see the lighting and it added some nice eye candy, especially for video.

SES brought out a pretty cool LED curtain system.  This replaced our static banner that we used in the past and allowed for some cool motion graphics during the service.  The video wall was 37′ x 16′ and pretty high res.  It was also much lighter and traveled smaller that a typical video wall.  Overall a very cool system.

That’s about it, I just wanted to share our experiences this year.  It’s nice to go to the same venue, you get to learn and improve on the event each year.  I’m sure that next year will be even better!

 

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Easter At FAU Stadium 2013

Screen shot 2013-04-03 at 7.28.12 PMIt’s crazy to think that Easter service last year was my first post on MinistryAV.com, time flies!  I’ll post up some more details later but I wanted to show the time lapse I just finished.  My friend Eric helped out and got his GoPro way up high in the stadium, made for a great shot!

This was all done with GoPro HD Hero 3’s and 2’s.  I was going to get my CineMoco set up, I even brought it to the stadium, but I just didn’t have the time to manage it.  Maybe next year.

Music in the video is original music from our Oceans Edge School of Worship, awesome stuff!

Thanks to the FAU staff that helped our service go very smoothly!  Also a special thanks to Special Event Services who once again provided all of the production elements.  They’re a truly top notch group and they make large events like this feel easy!

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Supraflux Camera Stabilizer

supraflux-stabilizer-1-webKickstarter has been one of my favorite sites lately.  So many cool and unique products are being launched on there by smaller companies.  Products that wouldn’t have launched without the help of Kickstarter and the backers willing to fund projects.

Recently I was contacted about another great product that was just launched on Kickstarter.  The Supraflux Stabilizer is a new camera stabilizer that is very versatile and has some cool, unique, features.  This product hit it’s funding goal so it will be produced.

What stood out to me was that it can work with a wide range of cameras, from iPhones, to GoPros, to DSLRs.  It also has a custom brake allowing you to pan your shot without touching the platform.  This means that you won’t ruin your shot with shakiness when you adjust your framing.  There’s lots of other features too, it’s pretty obvious that they’ve done their homework on this one.

Check out their video for the full list of features and to see some demo footage.  If it looks like something that will help your next video production head on over to their Kickstarter page and support their product!

Supraflux Stabilizer

Update, they’ve hit their funding goal so this will go into production!  They’ve also uploaded another demo video, looks very cool.

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Oceans Edge School Of Worship Drum Feature

Screen shot 2013-02-22 at 12.23.30 PMDuring last year’s The Show we had a lot of fun putting together a pretty cool drum feature.  Just a fun break from the norm during the show.  Lots of drums, lots of lights, what’s not to like!?

I had a lot to do with the lighting.  Light Converse really allowed us to try out ideas before loading into the room.  We also did the bulk of our programming virtually.

We video taped it and some very creative people put together this video, check it out!

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Green Hippo Hippotizer 3.2 Released

Screen shot 2013-02-16 at 6.35.50 PMGreen Hippo has officially released their Hippotizer 3.2 software update.  They’ve added a lot of really cool features to their already powerful and easy to use Zookeeper software.

A couple of the features I’m looking forward to are the built in region mapping (for 3D mapping).  A crossfade engine that goes way beyond just crossfading media.  It creates smooth transitions for anything you can control.  So media, FX, color or geometry changes, anything!  Lastly they have a nice preset component that makes it really easy to create, store, and load, all kinds of looks.  Again it goes way beyond just the clips themselves to include FX, multiple layers, whatever you want.

There’s a lot more than what I’ve listed.  Head on over to Green Hippo’s site for the full info on their release.