Live Free. Live Loud. June 29, 2007

Some pictures up of last night’s concert in the Live Free. Live Loud. Gallery

live free live loud

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Originally uploaded by avclub.

Quick shot… from the concert. Only the AV Club delivers the action to you as it happens. Now if I could only get that remote web cam working…

avclub textures

First of all, thanks for all of the great song suggestions. Too bad it’s only a four week series. We have cowboy songs for days (and thankfully, only a few of these were country).

Next, on to artsy. I put a few new texture photos in the avclub online texture library (page 2). They’re full-res, so feel free to use and enjoy. If you do use them, just let me know. I’d like to see how they work their way into your design.

Sidenote: the gold is from a couch in my office… the black is my $3 yard sale chair.

setting the mood

No, I’m not talking about that. I’m referring to immersing yourself in the feel of a project. Right now, I’m working on the Gunslingers series at NewSpring. And my iTunes playlist shows it. Currently spinning:

Blaze of Glory – Bon Jovi
Wanted Dead or Alive – Bon Jovi
Wild Wild West – Will Smith
Mammas don’t let your babies grow up… – Willie Nelson
The Gambler – Kenny Rogers
(Ghost) Riders in the Sky – The Outlaws

Aside from Kid Rock, did I miss any old / new West anthems?

more gunslingers

Here’s another quick screen grab of Gunslingers. (previous post). That’s the image after treatment. Just wait until it moves.

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two thoughts

Two thoughts this morning (from my garage as I workout).

(1) Why is it when you call a large company, like Charter (my cable provider), that the first thing the computer asks you to do is enter your phone number, area code first. Then you wait. And wait.

And wait.

Then, you reach a real live person. And what’s the first thing they ask you?

“Yes, can I have your phone number, area code first?”

Why, dear person, did I give my number to the computer first? Isn’t there some way for that information to be passed from your computer to you?

(2) it’s precariously dangerous to listen to Brian Regan’s comedy routine while bench pressing with no spot. Just saying.

cleaning gmail

I’ve been crazy cleaning up my gmail tonight. Found a Lifehacker article that gave some nice tips. I was around 90% full… I whittled it down to a measly 83%. It’s better than nothing, and I have some headroom, now. I think I’m going to put some better filtration in place for the future.

Any gmail addicts out there? Obsessed with your Archive button? How do you keep it clean?

sneak peek, Gunslingers

A little insider / behind the scenes peek at the opener package for Gunslingers, our new series. We’re now in post production, and the footage shot will look NOTHING like you see here, but I know you guys love this stuff, so I’m putting it out there.

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Can it be true?

Ben sent me this today. Can it be true? Where does D.Hasselhoff (please click the link) fit in?

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Then I found the link on imdb.com. Brace yourselves for me talking into my watch a lot with “KITT, come here, I need you.” It’s going to happen.

weekend

It’s been an amazing weekend with about 1000 things going on. Meg and I had a “date day” Friday morning. We went to Greenville, she got an awesome new hair cut, and we had a little lunch before heading back home to spend time with the two most awesome kids you’ll ever meet.

We had a surprise birthday party for Suzanne. Seriously, SHE. HAD. NO. IDEA.

DJ and visited Ridge Stone Church today to shoot some video on their story. It was a fun trip.

With Matt’s help, I tore into the garage reformation, Phase I. (ever notice that my projects always have multiple phases). We built a storage loft, freed up floor space, and now have a dedicated “gym” portion. There’s a place for the heavy bag, so I can resume my boxing.

Finally, I just finished watching The Fountain. (wiki article). This is the most haunting movie I think I’ve ever seen, especially recently. The story of how the film was created is as equally as interesting, especially the macro photographic effects from Peter Parks.

Great weekend.

fun at Lowe’s

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Originally uploaded by avclub.

we’re building the home gym. I repeat, the boxing gym will be open for business. (thanks to Matt).

Willow Creek 04

Notes from Nancy Beach’s talk:

Looking at what’s right in the world. Then what’s not right. She focused on the duality of art… showing both sides, not just a glossy, inauthentic look at the Christian life. Most great art has this tension. Think of the secular, brooding artist who’s fully aware of his humanness and taps all emotions in his arsenal.

As she spoke, she had a person standing behind her, off to the side of the stage, reading scripture and passages from a book. It was creative and effective. It was also very artistic, and I wonder how our people would respond to something like that.

There was an interview with U2′s Bono, where he was defining worship: “all music is worship. It could be worship of self, of women, of God, but it’s all worship.” (technical note: the sound of the recording is incredible, very Barbara Walters in style, no background music)

Nancy spoke of duality and how that’s the mark of a lot of great art… it’s often missing from Christian art (we don’t show the struggle, we shy from the controversy). Some people see Christianity as people pretending that everything is great… it doesn’t ring true (look at Gospel music, everything is happy and perfect). Bono relates to the blues, or something more authentic. The world sees the religious life as a life that’s not honest, because it doesn’t recognize the other side of life.

“Living in the contradiction,” showing joy even when life doesn’t appear as rosy. Where are our songs of despair? David knew how to sing of hope AND lament in the same song.

“It is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength”

“You hold the newspaper in one hand, and the Bible in the other (choose to look for what’s right, and admit what is not right). A broken hallelujah”

“Most Christians are better at condemning the world rather than being a ‘friend of sinners’”

“Who are you intentionally building a friendship with that doesn’t go to church, or isn’t a Christ-follower?”

“We’re to be creating houses of hope”

My thoughts: how are we doing with this? Do we create enough tension? I know Perry does this very well in his speaking, showing the emotion, the need, before relieving it. He doesn’t shy from it. But how about in the other areas of art? Do we recognize and identify enough with people’s pain and struggles? Some things to think about.

Clemson, circa 1997

Found this from one of Austin’s many photo pages. It’s we, the FCA band, circa 1996 / 1997ish time frame. Lovely, huh? Hey, who’s the Sunday school boy in the front wearing khakis? Oh, wait, that’s me.

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worst fonts

I love sarcastic lists, especially ones about the worst fonts of all time. And yes, Comic Sans makes the list.

Willow Creek thoughts 03

Worship experiences

Saw David Crowder band live. It was awesome. His voice is so unique, and I love his style. The cool thing, during the instrumental, it sounded very much like Lee McD and the NewSpring band. That’s no knock on Crowder, but praise for the guys leading our worship team. They’re amazing, and it takes seeing other productions to fully realize it. And the guitar / keyboard tones… we nail it pretty close when we’re doing a Crowder cover.

I will say this, because it connected with me. When Crowder walked out onstage, they had Daft Punk’s “Da Funk” playing. Now, I’m a huge Daft Punk fan, and I even used this song in the 5:00 counter for Christmas 2005 (back when we were at AC). Then, he comes up to the mic, and was asked to answer the question “What is right with the world?” After a minute of thought, he goes on to describe Morningstar Farms. They make vegetarian options for people (chicken nuggets, veggie burgers, etc.). Now to most in the crowd, this is a little strange. But at the Wilson household, we live off of the stuff. We love it. Meg and I eat veggie options about every other day. Some I’m immediately connected to Crowder, and instantly miss my wife.

The worship experiences from the other days were equally as good, and a very diverse mix of styles and tones. Some songs were party style. A lot going on, (two drum sets, some additional percussion, and break dancers). Some were more contemplative, singer / songwriter stuff. From a production standpoint, I noticed three shoulder mount cameras on stage. They didn’t use grips (each guy carried his own cable). They have a “sky cam” shooting overhead. It’s only used a few times, but it probably pretty useful for certain sermon illustrations.

Their lighting is incredible, as is the stage set. I presume the giant sunshine is 30 – 40 feet wide. On a stage that size, you really have to build it up to look good, and they did.

That’s about it. Not all of the music was my style or tempo (by far Crowder was my favorite), but all was done with excellence.

Great ad from Durex.

Great ad from Durex. Don’t worry, it’s completely clean. This is clever at its best.

Willow Creek thoughts 02

Part 2 (these are not in order)

Breakout session – Live Directing 101, led by a 3 man team. Greg:

Successful production ministries do three things:
- Call people to the team
- Retain people well
- Exit people well

The first two are obvious; I was curious about the third one. He explained. Their teams are structured, locked teams. There are 14 on each one, and it takes 14 people to pull off a weekend production (Wednesday night, Saturday night, and Sunday morning). The teams commit to do that every three weeks. When someone decided to leave (move, called to another ministry, etc.), they spend time honoring that person. They share how that person impacted them, and they wish them well. They don’t hold people in a tight fist, not letting them explore other areas. They never discourage people leaving. They’ve discovered that how they exit a leaving team member communicates a lot to those members who are staying on the team and really encourages them.

They also look at their teams as an evangelism opportunity. There are a few non-believers serving in production, and that’s often an inroad to the church and Christ.

For recruitment, they advertise at a church wide volunteer expo, they put specific ads in bulletins, and they use their volunteers to recruit friends and peers.

There’s value in rotating every three weeks. It’s the best frequency for relieving burnout, and for keeping yourself from getting rusty. There’s a 100% attendance requirement. Willow places the responsibility of finding a sub on the person who will be absent.

They have a “community time” before their Tuesday night practice. They have a meal together, and they have some interaction and accountability time with the team. The team almost acts like a home group or community group.

When they bring a new team member in, they train them at practice. They take on one member at a time, and don’t do a large team training. The person is started out on shader, as it’s easy to pick up, and them moved around the entire team over several weeks. Most team members are trained to do most every task, other than directing, which is handled by staff or a select few volunteers.

All in all, I learned a lot about the structure of Willow Creek’s production team volunteer structure. It was different in a lot of ways from our team, and I liked some of their ideas. I think we need to do a better job cross training our members across all areas of the team, and I’m interested to know if a locked-down team approach would be better for us. It would ensure more cohesiveness in our team, and by rotating positions on the team, may help people from getting bored.

Thoughts?

Bryce 5.5 for free.

I interrupt this regularly schedules work day to announce that you can get Bryce 5.5 for free. Read, free.

Willow thoughts 01

The entirety of this week will probably be dedicate to my thoughts on this year’s Willow Creek Arts Conference. It was great, and I’m glad I went. My first post is about “the city.” I’m 100% convinced that I love South Carolina, and God has called me here. Sure, there’s a cool transit system in Chicago. We made it into the main part of the city briefly to eat, snap some cool pictures, and get out once again. But I can say I’ve been.

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What really impressed me was the area slightly North West of the city where we saw the Blue Man Group in the Briar Street Theater. This is much more my style than the “big city.” From what I can gather, it’s an arts district of sorts.

There were tons of anime / comic book / retro-shabby / art stores, and one incredible coffee shop that had a fiercely good vegan apple cake (and yes, I did have the coffee).

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Blue Man Group? This was one of the highlights, and was an outing arranged as part of experiencing the arts in the city. What are they? Hard to say, it’s a combination of performance art, comedy (think Steven Wright meets a mime, very down played), percussion (played with various PVC instruments), and toilet paper (you had to be there). The Briar Street Theater seats around 500, and provides a very intimate show. The Blue Men frequently make their way into the audience, and pick people at random to get involved with the performance. Totally enveloping.

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In all, I loved experiencing the city of Chicago, but I wouldn’t want to live there, especially after dealing with the toll roads.

Willow Creek arts conference

This past week, I’ve been at the Willow Creek Arts conference in South Barrinton, IN. I took copious amount of notes, about 400 pictures (across two cameras), and had my mind challenged and stretched every single day. DJ joined me and we had long flight(s) home yesterday. Today I’m recovering, but just know that for the entirety of next week, I’ll be sharing what I’ve learned. It will take me a few days (or weeks) to process it all.

(BTW – did anyone notice the AV Club on auto pilot again?)

One quick side note on Chicago: I HATE TOLL BOOTHS.