Media

I know there are many links to see the Super Bowl commercials but I thought I would give you the NFL’s link to them. Love to know which one was your favorite and why? Doritos was pretty memorable. Careerbuilder was just wrong, hilarious, but wrong. Google’s was simple and effective. To me, Google’s commercial was made years ago when the developer’s created the search functions the way they did. Which was yours?

Found this gem over at the Illusion 360 blog this morning and have watched it over and over since then.  It’s a promo for The Rethink Scholarship and it’s generating a ton of buzz on Vimeo right now:
http://www.vimeo.com/8766811
Lots of cool food for thought in there.

What’s inspiring YOU lately?

You guys may already have this as it’s been out for a while now, but if you didn’t know, VideoCopilot.net released a Reflection plugin for After Effects that is absolutely phenomenal, easy to use, and FREE.

Video Copilot’s Reflection Plug-in

If you’re like me, you’ve spent a miserable amount of design time duplicating your layers, flipping them vertically, and messing with masks/blurs/opacity to emulate that popular reflected look in your videos, which has quickly become a staple in modern graphic design.  This plugin shrinks that process down to a few clicks, without having to mess with comp duplicates or layer parenting, etc.  It’s also very customizable.  If you’re an AE nerd like myself, this is actually a VERY big deal.  Enjoy!

On January 3rd we started the new year with a bang! Especially in the TenBefore. Nathan Boyd (one of our amazing interns) built a project in After Effects that included a little fireworks! Best thing about it is we can make future changes with ease so when we want to celebrate winter or spring we can do it with ease. I absolutely love it when we can highlight something that is a common emotion, like New Year’s, for everyone in the audience. For now, check out the 1st TenBefore of 2010 plus Trip and Tyler’s new years REVOLUTIONS. Hope you had a great start to 2010.
http://www.vimeo.com/8637774

On December 20th, the Service Programming teams (and I do mean TEAMS) of North Point Community Church, Browns Bridge Community Church, and Buckhead Church pulled off an amazing Christmas opener. From an internal perspective, the collaboration and cooperation that happened between the Music and Production teams of these campuses was incredibly rewarding to be a part of. Please make sure you read the whole post to see the people and positions involved. Go to www.NPCCproduction.com to check it out.

We wanted to take today and just say thanks for visiting the blog, thanks for saying hi, and a very special thanks for all you do in your little corner of the world with media. You have no idea what heart, or life you are changing and in what way. What you do makes a difference. Be encouraged. Blessings from all of us…

http://www.vimeo.com/8205736 Hey Everybody, North Point just released “AWAKE”, our live worship album that was recorded in August of this year. I am not gonna lie to you, it’s pretty amazing. Yes, I am biased but trust me these songs will stick on your soul in a good way. If you don’t believe me, well, here is your chance to get one for free. First FIVE people that comment on this post saying they want one - will get one. HURRY. You can also buy it on iTunes or at northpointmusic.com

The Resources department at North Point treated our team to lunch today to thank us for some extra work we’ve done with them over the past few months.  As if we could be any more thankful for our jobs, Suzy Gray and her team decided to celebrate the wins of the past couple months with a surprise gesture of gratitude and encouragement, and they took the time to share some really cool stories of people who’ve had their lives changed in small part because of what we get to do on a weekly basis.  It’s that kind of celebration that motivates us to continue giving our all to our work and supporting the other departments of the church with everything that we have.  They didn’t have to buy us lunch and we certainly didn’t expect it of them, but it spoke volumes about the staff culture we’re blessed to be a part of:  A culture of encouragement and celebration.

I just wanted to take a second today, in the midst of the inevitable evaluations and service critiques you are all experiencing post-Sunday, to encourage you guys to pause and celebrate what God is accomplishing through you in your town/city, etc.  (I know you’ve got a busy week, but it doesn’t take long to tell someone on your team, “job well done”.)  It’s vital to realize just how significant what you’re doing is, even if it’s just mashing buttons and compressing videos.  In a very small way, you are leading people to Christ with the work that you do, and truly, from an EXCELLENCE standpoint, you don’t realize just how amazing you all are at your jobs.  You are SO brilliant and resourceful, I hope you stop to celebrate that.  Not in a prideful way, but in a way that helps you realize how significant of a role you’re playing in this generation.

Just take a brief look outside your church one day for comparison’s sake to see what I mean.  If you take the average tech-savvy contemporary church of 200 or so–and juxtapose that with the average concert venue of 200–the higher production value is often hands down at the church.  I’m not saying this to brag about the modern church or to knock small club/concert venues, but to encourage you to stop and appreciate what each of you are accomplishing on a weekly basis from a purely technical perspective.  Not as compared to some other church with more or less money, but as compared to a real-world venue that parallels yours in size and resources.  Think about the last modest club/concert venue you went to:  feedback in the PA, muddy acoustics, dim lighting, and don’t even think about video screens or graphics…and it was a permanent installation, right?  Same amount of seats, less compelling environment, and they are charging for it.  Many of you guys, on the other hand, are portable churches with passionate volunteers who set up A/V rigs from scratch every week with screens, lighting, motion graphics, bulletins/logos and full on branding strategies, and your sound guy has WAY more knowledge of signal flow & EQ than attenders could ever appreciate, all with limited resources.  If culture is any indication, the majority of you church media types are incredible at what you do and you don’t even know it.

I hope somebody on your team is pausing enough to celebrate that reality with you.

If you are one of those solo jack-of-all-trades guys who is responsible for ALL of the editing, preproduction, tech directing, audio, lighting, volunteer coordination, and live production at your church…we salute and admire you guys like you wouldn’t believe.  Just know that you guys are heroes to us with the proportion of results you achieve. Each weekend, you hold your head down and work twice as hard as most larger teams, with a level of expectation being placed on your shoulders that far surpasses what your budget and manpower allows.  Each weekend, you are accomplishing more than could or should ever be expected of only one or two people. Each weekend, you are blowing similarly sized concert venues out of the water with your production & media excellence.  Each weekend, you achieve a near miracle by creating church environments that unchurched people love to attend, with extremely limited resources and time.  Though you may not hear or feel it very often, just know that your work is not in vain.

Take a second to breathe, look at how far you’ve come, appreciate the people who are coming to Christ at your church regardless of your most recent missed lighting/mic/video cue…and CELEBRATE that!  I promise you, this is not the same as bragging about your accomplishments or “settling” for less than the best.  You can evaluate your need to get better and celebrate what God is doing through you all at the same time.  Encouragement is a huge and vital motivator for so many people, myself included.  Celebrate what you’re doing, regardless of the size or scope, and let your love for those outside the church motivate your ambition to improve it week after week.  You ARE making a difference–remember that.  Celebrate!

I am a video guy at heart and I could talk about video cameras for hours.  When our creative team decided that “Velma’s Diner” should be a sitcom style shoot it brought up a unique opportunity to put our hands on some video gear that we don’t normally get a chance to use.

Enter Steve Thomason and High Definition Events. Steve did an outstanding job of partnering with us and delivering a portable video rig that was perfect for our situation.  We used 4 Panasonic HPX500 studio configured cameras on the Velma’s shoot.  These cameras allowed us to record isolated footage at the camera onto P2 cards as well as in our temporary control room from a switcher.  Steve supplied the HS400 multi format switcher as well as a P2 recorder for a live P2 capture of the switchers video feed.  That unit was the HPM200.

When it came to video format we decided to shoot HD in 720P in 60 frame mode.  Stylistically this kept the sitcom looking very ‘live’ and not overly theatrical. For camera positioning we affixed one camera on a small dolly, one camera on a portable field jib and the final two cameras were on fixed tripods. This set up gave us a tremendous amount of flexibility to move our camera positioning on the fly.

Ultimately it has been a great learning experience and the huge number of people involved in this project have been amazing to work with.  Have you guys ever shot anything sitcom-style?  What have you learned along the way?

Earlier this month, I was given the task of creating a new promo for this year’s MarriedLife Live Christmas event.  Last year’s promo was both simple and effective, so we wanted to build on that foundation with a fresh coat of paint.  Charged with merely adding “more pizazz” (I believe that was the phrase), I thought this was a good opportunity to experiment some.  (Note: This is not always a good idea.  It can be time-consuming and has a 46.5% chance of ending in tears.  It’s better to experiment in your free time and apply later.  I got lucky this time.)

Creating the Scene

I’ve dabbled a little in 3D modeling in the past, mostly with the headache/opportunity known as Blender (a free, open-source 3D program).  Most of my work, however, was based more in typography than actual objects or scenes.  But after searching around the internet for some Christmas motion graphics inspiration, I thought I would try my hand at modeling a three-dimensional cartoon-style forest.

After about an hour in Cinema4D, I had something that may have resembled a few trees, but was probably more akin to some clusters of green Hershey’s Kisses.  Still, it was an okay proof-of-concept– even if it’s not the greatest looking thing in the world, it’s good to reach a point where you know that, if you keep pushing it forward, it’ll eventually get there.

The models ended up being the easiest part of the project.  Other little details– like camera rigging, lighting, and especially texture work – proved to be a bit more difficult.  I spent probably more time than I should have trying to perfect the texture for the fallen snow, trying to find that right balance between smoothness, bumpiness, and reflectivity.  I also played around with actually modeling the clumps of snow on the trees themselves, and it could have looked great . . . after a few weeks of work.

Making the Scene…Magical?

My renders out of Cinema4D were actually pretty bland.  Fortunately that was part of the plan.  Cinema4D and After Effects work really well together, and it saves hours if you leave tasks like color correction, effects, and particle systems to After Effects.  When you render out of Cinema, you can also tell it to create an AE comp, complete with camera and lighting data.  From there, I was able to create falling snow with Particular within After Effects that actually reacted to my Cinema4D camera.  Thanks to a new feature of Particular 2, the individual particles can be shaded by your After Effects lights (which in this case, again, were originally generated by Cinema4D).  This little trick added a lot of realism and depth to the falling snow, if even only for a couple of seconds.  All of the other little finishing touches– the sky, the stars, the glow, the general color of the scene, and the text– were all done in After Effects.

Bringing it Together

The team did a great job of giving me feedback early on in the process.  This was essential since each Cinema4D scene took anywhere from 1 to 4 hours to render, even at the most basic settings.  The last part of the project was spent in Final Cut, just like any other project, making sure the timing, the music, and the flow of the story all felt right– not to mention the actual information presented by the video…which can change at any moment, including the last one.