Well, so much for posting from Catalyst. We had 4 great, but very long days. Day 1 was load in and setting up the 26 LCD screens we had going around the stage. Day 2 was teching problems and rehearsal, and days 3 and 4 were the actual event. We had 9 main sessions in those 2 days, so it was a total whirlwind.

The conference itself was great…featuring a short bus, live elephant , worship by the Fee band , Kristian Stanfill , and Eddie Kirkland –excellent hosts Lanny Donoho and Reggie Joiner , and great teaching from Jim Collins , Dave Ramsey , Andy Stanley , Steven Furtick , Seth Godin , and many more.

The set was in the round due to the sell out crowd of 12,400. There was a cylinder LED with MiStrip ‘icicles’ below it. Above and surrounding that were the 4 main IMAG screens. The stage resembled the Chevy logo with thrusts going off into each area of the floor–the stage was framed with 22 50" LED screens, and the drum sub was wrapped with 8 50" LED screens. The cylnder and MiStrips could raise up and go down via motor control,and the opener featured a cool reveal of the drummer who was on the drum riser inside of the cylinder and strips.

Our tech set up was pretty intense–I had 3 PVP machines in front of me at FOH, and did my best of keeping everything straight. I had a machine running to the MiStrips, a main playback for the cylider LED and screens, and a master for the 26 LCDs that surrounded the stage. With me in the pit was Brad Weston running screen control through the Big Stuf Indigo, and Sarah running lyrics on ProPresenter.

I think the thing that amazes me most about that event is the depth of talent at every position. I don’t think we could come close to pulling it off with the talented people in every department. We get to work a lot with the guys from Majestic Productions, and they always do a great job getting everything in the air on time, and keeping it up and running. Kudos to Brian Pirkle at Big Stuf who produced the event and managed to keep us on task and not melt down during some pretty stressful moments. Jeff , Brian, and Brad at Catalyst have an almost impossible task of improving this conference every year, but continue to raise the bar.

Below are some pics…the bad ones are from my cell phone, the good ones are courtesy of Michael Henson from Majestic Productions.

Any of you make it to Catalyst?

Tags: CREATIVITY, EVENTS, GENERAL, ProVideoPlayer, TRAVEL, VJ GEAR, backgrounds, catalyst, conferences, video staging by gregdolezal
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Well fall is officially upon us and that means my schedule is packed with conferences.  I’m pretty excited to be running visuals in a few weeks at the Catalyst Conference.  I’ll be working a with a lot of great people, with the crew at Big Stuf Events leading the way.  Leading worship will be the Fee boys–great friends and even better worship leaders.  Speaking of the Fee boys, I did hit the small white ball with Steve Wednesday, and we should all be glad he’s a musician  Can’t say I did much better…

Seriously, though, if you’re not attending Catalyst, I’d recommend it–the set and visuals are going to be great and unique (lots of LED, LCD, Mac Minis and more)–but the conference of the content is always stellar.  Lanny and Reggie do a great job hosting the event, and pull out more creative elements than most every other conference I attend combined.  I’ll be sure to send a few live posts from the event.

After that I’ll be making the rounds to Youth Specialties, WfX, CMS and many others.

What conferences are you attending? 

Tags: CREATIVITY, EVENTS, GENERAL, TRAVEL by gregdolezal
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BTW… the term is not derogatory  Dave Cooke, chief video engineer and friend of ours at Renewed Vision, has a site worth visiting, www.monsterchurch.com.  There you can learn more about why Willow is appropriately named a monster church by their tech crew that has the monster task of keeping up with everything there.

One thing I think they do really well and better than most is staging with soft goods.  I know, this is the worship VJ blog, and we’re supposed to focus on all things video.  Well, I wanted one of my first posts here to help clear the air–video is not the end all be all.  My home church had all video sets for a year, then basically hung up the VJ shoes for 6 months to make sure they were not wearing out a good thing.

We were up at the Arts Conference last month, and their set did a great job of adding depth and using lighting and soft goods.  They have a challenge there just due to the sheer size of their stage.  We have helped with some sets at North Point that the guys at Willow would need to triple just to make it look larger than a postage stamp on their stage.

Here are a few images–please excuse my camera phone quality.

How are you using soft goods to enhance your environments?

Tags: GENERAL by gregdolezal
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Over the years we have done a lot of work with Willow Creek.  The team up there have become good friends, and their work is second to none.  They more or less started the mega-church movement, and continue to innovate more than 20 years later.  

The set last week for their Leadership Summit was incredible.  Chis Thomas, weekend lighting director sent me a few pics.  

Here are the specs:

PVP Master Station
Mac Pro Tower, Dual-Core 2.66 GHz

PVP Node
Mac Mini Intel Core 2 Duo 1.83 GHz

Video Output
203 Element Labs HD Versa Tubes
2 Element Labs D2 Processors

Lighting Rig Specs
16 – VL3000 Spot (10 ours, 11 rental)
6 – VL3500 Wash (demo from VL)
8 – High End Systems X-spot (ours)
21 – Mac 2K Washes (ours)
18 – SGM Giotto Wash (ours)
12 – Robe I36 LED Wash (ours)
18 – Color Kinetics ColorBlaze LED striplights (rental)

This set is a great example of where video seems to be going–especially for live concerts.  For awhile now we have seen more and more low-rez video elements, allowing video (usually LED) to be used just as much as a vibe setting lighting element as actual pixel specific video.

How are you using low-rez elements in your services?

Tags: GENERAL by gregdolezal
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starting a blog is harder than i thought. i have so much to say…so many things i’m excited to blog about…and i have no idea where to begin.

i found myself in this situation in school when writing term papers and essays…starting is the hardest thing to do. so i thought i’d just start by talking about this very fact.

i can feel the pressure lifting already…

so welcome to the worshipVJ blog! after months and months of grueling work and designing and redesigning…we’re finally ready to launch!

You might find a few more postings on here by the time you read this…we (greg dolezal & i) wanted to have a few things for everyone to read by the time we went live.

our heart for this blog is to create a community for the VJs out there…the visual worship leaders…the creative worshipers…whether you are involved in a church or not, designing and running video, lighting or any type of visual media…even if you are a lead worshiper wanting to dive into the world of visual worship….we hope to host this community by sharing our own visual experiences on the road and hearing about yours.

do any of you have your own blog? if so, tell us about it…and if not, what would your blog be about if you did have one?

Stay classy San Diego…and thanks for stopping by (but mostly, stay classy!)

~ proctor

Tags: GENERAL by proctor
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