Infocomm

Well I’m back from Infocomm!

Last week I spent some time in Orlando at Infocomm, checking out the latest and greatest in the world of AVL Tech. Got some hands on experience with the Jands Vista lighting board, saw some cool audio demos by Tannoy and Digico, and had a very long and interesting talk with a couple guys pushing their LED products!

That’s not all I did of course but you get the jist of it. Not really much I can say at this moment though, my head is still swimming with all the information I received, so today I’ll be sifting through it all and seeing what we can apply from it and what’s worth looking into!

One thing that did intrigue me was the Digico SD8 soundboard…it was really interesting….

The other cool product in the video realm was BlackMagic Design’s ATEM 2ME switcher…this thing is quite the power house for a really small price and footprint!

Light Demo Thoughts

Alrighty!

So after demoing the ION board here are my thoughts…

Essentially the ION is what we call a tracking board, so if you are programming a cue it would look like this…

Cue 1
1 – 50
2 – 0
3 – 75

Cue 2
2 – 25

Cue 3
3 – 0

So you can tell anything that is done in Cue 1 carries over unless it’s changed in a later cue for example Channel 2 changing from 0 to 25%. Now this is basically the biggest difference for us, we are not used to a board like this. The board that would be equivelent to what we are used to would be the congo which is a preset style controller so a cue list would look like this…

Cue 1
1 50
2 0
3 75

Cue 2
1 50
2 25
3 75

Cue 3
1 50
2 25
3 0

So notice how you can to put everything in one cue, it doesn’t carry over at all. So the big question is what is best for us?

If both the Ion and Congo seem like not the right choice still, others to look at are the Jands Vista I3, High End Whole Hog III.

New Look!

I’ve been slacking on posts because we are going professional with our site! That’s right we will be getting a new look and feel for this site and have it be more professional with all the content up to date and I’m hoping to start posting mini training deals on here for all areas of our studios.

I’m very very excited for this! Keep an eye out! I will be posting our expected launch date soon.

Reminder on Lights

So we are having a light DEMO tomorrow, not training. The board will be here for a day or two so if you can not make it tomorrow evening then Thursday if fine also. Please let me know what time you are coming if you are coming tomorrow!

The rep will be here starting at 1pm tomorrow to setup the whole board, I’ll probably be looking over her shoulder the whole time. Mark Whinery has submitted a list of questions he had for the board which is awesome! If anyone else has questions do let me know so I can get them to her asap.

Remember this is just a demo, I want to see if this board will be a good fit for us or not. I do encourage anyone that is in lights or would like to be involved in lights to participate though, you never know what insight you might bring to the group!

Thanks!

Jib or Boom

I’m really excited to say that we have a Jib approved and it’s being produced as I type this =)

We are getting a 21 foot jib with a 17.5  ft reach. Any of our cameras will be able to be mounted onto this jib. I’m very very very excited to see what this will do to our video team and ministry! To begin with we will be putting it on 3rd camera to see what kind of shots it gets during the sermon.

I’m not quite yet sure how training will go, more than likely Sarah and myself will need a couple weeks to figure out all the ins and outs of the thing, after that we will probably have a training session with everyone and at that time everyone can mess with it and try different things.

It is a made to order item so we will not actually receive until about 5-6 weeks from now.

Still…like I said…I’m excited!

Date Set.

The date for the light control demo is set to June 8th. I will have more details on time to come. I know the rep is getting in town in the afternoon, just not sure yet how late they will be able to stay.

If you are interested in joining let me know at luis.alicea@newspring.org and let me know what time works best for you!

I know I might not say this enough but I can’t thank you guys enough for what you do at NewSpring. All the work and time you put into makes not just life changes in  my life but thousands of people’s lives are changed because of your guys willingness!

More control!

I know I was talking about lights last week and this week I’ve made some progress in what we could potentially do for lights this coming year.

We have tentatively scheduled a demo for a new lighting control console in June 8th, I will give you more solid information when I know more so you guys that are interested in lights can come check it out. It will during the week but I’m sure we can setup a specific evening where you guys can come out and get some hands on experience with the rep there.

I’m really excited about this, it’s actually not the board I was originally looking at but I’ve spoken to a couple consultants and the biggest deal about this console, which sorry it’s the ETC ION Console, is their support. Apparently ETC has great support for all their products and they respond really quickly and sometimes even sending reps out to help!

If you want to check it out and watch some videos on it go to http://www.etcconnect.com/product.overview.aspx?ID=20351&lang=us&region=1

Singles Worship Concert

We are doing this awesome outreach/ministry for singles May 22nd starting at 7pm (sound check at 6pm). Here is a brief description provided by Megan hopper…

” Its a night of worship for singles only, and a chance to (if they wanted to) meet people from the various singles groups and see what the groups are all about – hopefully getting plugged into a group if they want.  More focused on the worship than the groups, although its sponsored by the groups.  And free coffee/lattes/frapps provided by Java Villa.”

So it’s going to be a very fun night of music and coffee =) Why am I posting about this? Guess what…we need full tech team, 5 cameras, switcher, pro presenter, shader, director, audio, and lights. The jury still out on livestream because the event is meant for a more in person feel. So please if you are available to help with tech, this would be awesome. We also need a crew to help with stage setup and tear down (there’s about 2 band changes).

Please send me an email, Sarah will not be a part of the tech team for this since she is actually a part of the crew putting this together on the singles side. So we will definitely need a volunteer director also.

Lights are pretty…

Lights can be real challenging.

I received a phone call yesterday from a church wanting to know who we use for lights and how we use them. I couldn’t give one definitive answer because there are a lot of schools of thought behind lights and if you talk to this consultant versus another they will more than likely say very different things.

I very much appreciate our lighting programmers! They have definitely stepped up to the plate and taken on our system and made it their own with very little input from me =)

Well we are about to blow it up once again! In the spirit of upgrading everything around us, we are looking at different console ideas for our lighting to replace lightjockey. If anyone has comments, concerns, or ideas by all means let me know as I start this venture. I have a pretty good feeling what I want but I’m trying to research all avenues to make sure it’s the right decision.

I’ve been looking at the ETC Ion, ETC Congo, and the S3 Jands Vista. All very good boards.

Very excited to see what we decide upon and where it will take us.

Please please please! If you guys EVER have any ideas on cool lighting, whether it be techniques or purchasing hardware, speak up =) I know I’m always down for buying more intelligent lights but if there is something out there you’ve seen that would be cool let me know.

Highlights 04-10-2011

Here are some highlights from 2 weekends ago =)

Camera Highlights 041711 from Luis Alicea on Vimeo.