Central Rough Cuts

The Summer is over, and Videoland is in full swing here at Central!  We all seem to be busy at any given moment, and I couldn’t be more excited about it.  

One of the productions I am so excited about happens to be a big one.  Its called, “The Central Minute”, and its going to reshape how we do weekend services.                                                                                            

The Central Minute is a video based weekend element that shares all the upcoming announcements in a minute or less.  The purpose is to quickly and clearly announce all the upcoming events here at Central.  The video will play during the Host time, and allow more time for the Host to connect with those attending.

This is a huge project, one that will have to be replicated every week.  Our goal is to have a full practice run with one of these videos this week, and air our first video at next weeks launch.  Also, holding auditions for the video talent this Thursday, should be a lot of fun.  Will keep you posted on how everything goes.

I’ve lived in the Vegas area for almost two years now, having moved here from a far more rainy climate. Most of the folks I know that have lived here longer love it when it rains, since it’s such a rare thing. Personally, I can’t stand it.

No, I don’t find it beautiful.

I prefer the sun. Someone once told me that the Las Vegas area is sunny 300 days out of the year, and as far as I’m concerned, the only thing that would be better is if it were sunny 365 days out of the year!

Snow, however, is a different story. Love the stuff…  though I think I might live in the wrong climate for that preference. Ha!

Many people claim to find creative inspiration on rainy days. Me, I find myself sapped of all energy, and end up watching movies and TV shows all day long. What about you guys? Does the rain inspire your creativity or drain it?

So check out this trailer for a new Christian Film called, “Fireproof.”

Now I know what just happened when I said “Christian Film.” Your face crumpled. Your eyes rolled. You vurped in your mouth a bit. Well, do me a solid and watch it.

Yeah, I know. It’s cheesy. It’s unappealing. It’s a lightly veiled sermon with no likeabilty. In a word, it’s cliche. But you know what’s MORE cliche? Our reaction to it.

The whole issue is just plain sad. A group of well-intentioned Christians make a movie to help marriages. They pray before scenes. They work hard (every movie is hard work). They even dream big (a train scene, pyrotechnics). Then they cut a trailer and all their brothers and sisters mock it.

Cliche.

I’ve been trying to figure this out. This comes close: Imagine your family loves football. Your brother loves it so much, he decides to play football for a living, but instead of trying out for the NFL, he starts up his own team and his own league filled with others who love football. They have uniforms, pads and gear. They even play in stadiums with lights and bleachers (every city has them). They design plays. They practice. They follow the rules. There is just one problem… they are not pros. And because they are not pros playing in a national arena, the only ones who will ever come to their games are their close friends and people too scared or troubled to go to big games.

If my brother did this, I’d love him. I’d support him. I might even go to a game or two, but I wouldn’t wear his jersey. In my heart I’d know the truth. If he really loved football, if he was really gifted and meant for it, he settle for nothing less than the NFL.

And millions would watch him play.

Working in After Effects isn’t always a glamorous process. The more complicated your projects get, the more likely you are to encounter render glitches. It’s an inevitability. Here’s an After Effects bug I discovered when rendering my latest motion graphics project. It seems working in 3D in After Effects and motion blur do not get along very well when it comes time for the final render.

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Alright, so I lied. I wasn’t able to get this video finished until this afternoon (and that was a pretty nerve-wracking experience, let me tell you), but I did, at least, get the video posted before the first service at Central! Enjoy!

It’s finally happened. A video we produced called, “The Good O Meter” is now our 2nd most-watched video on youtube with just over 150,000 views. 

It really took off a three months ago - sometimes averaging 5,000 views a day from all over the world. The funny thing is, these views did not come from any kind of blog feature or high-profile web link. It was all word of mouth… mostly through people’s facebook pages.

And this has been one of our most commented-on videos. There is no lack of passion in people’s reactions, whether they be positive or negative. A quick scan of the comments provides an enlightening glimpse into the divide between people who welcome grace, and those repulsed and angered by it. 

How do you feel about grace? And how do you extend it to people with such angry hatred towards the only solution heaven has to offer?

Central’s ministry season is getting ready to kick off in full force, and that means we’ll be making videos practically weekly for you all to enjoy. Starting this Friday, you’ll be able to watch the video for the upcoming weekend a full 24 hours before it airs during a weekend service!

This weekend’s video is going to set up Jud’s topic for the next few weeks and will be created entirely in After Effects. Here’s a sneak peak of the visual style we’re going for:

So, it’s a very exciting time in the Live Video Department as we undergo a fairly significant graphics change.

Within the next couple of weeks we will be changing our graphics presentation system at all three campuses from the Inca Inscriber to ProPresenter, a great program developed by a company called Renewed Vision.

ProPresenter has actually been around for several years, but every time I tested it out it was always short one or two critical elements that were crucial to our services.  With their most recent release, 3.4, they seem to have solved those issues.  In addition, they have released an Alpha Module which allows us to do a clean key over live video.

Inscriber has always been great and served us well.  It was just we had no use for 90% of the features that it had, and it was not very volunteer friendly.  It was also a very expensive product and seemed to be under-utilized in a church environment.

ProPresenter is Mac based and extremely user-friendly.  It is also cost effective.  There will be no wasted bells and whistles.  Everything we pay for is everything we are using.

Check it out….www.renewedvision.com

I got to be honest, I am pretty dang excited for this new ministry season.  One of the things I am excited about, is the new faces we will get to use in our videos.  Coming up soon, Justin and I will be holding separate auditions for new actors and adding them to our list of talent.  With this on the radar, I was reminded of an excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell’s book BLINK, it talks about casting Tom Hanks in his roll for Apollo 13…

***”Everybody said that they couldn’t see Tom Hanks as an astronaut,” Grazer says of his decision to cast Hanks in the hit movie Apollo 13. “Well, I didn’t know whether Tom Hanks was an astronaut. But I saw this as a movie about a spacecraft in jeopardy. And who does the world want to get back the most? Who does America want to save? Tom Hanks. We don’t want to see him die. We like him too much.”***

In need of a blog update, I thought I would talk about what I’ll call Integrated Interaction.

Television shows, movies, and even product lines are using web and media interaction as a form to keep their audience faithful and entertained. I must say, I love this creative approach.

It use to be, “what you see, is what you get”, when it came to media. But now, there is so much more to it. If you’re a fan of the show “LOST”, you can dive deeper into the plot by investigating the Hanso Foundation . Viewers were introduced to the site by hidden advertisements that would air during the show. HBO has a show called “Voyeur“, on the shows web site, you can interact as if you were part of the show. The Dark Knight used viral marketing with their I Believe In Harvey Dent political campaign that got more and more involved as the release date to the movie drew near. DVD’s and websites often have Easter Eggs, which have viewers searching for hidden video treasures.

Integrated interaction is popping up everywhere, and I love the creativity, time, and energy that is put into it. As a church video guy, it inspires me to find ways that allow our church to interact, investigate, and have a really good time in the process.