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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Here’s some more pics from Integrity Live’s seminars4worship in Grand Rapids.

that would be Paul Baloche. “what-a you lookin’ at???”

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These 2 below are from the first night for the Songs & the Stories.

Mia Fieldes: one of the great worship songwriters of our time.

Tags: CREATIVITY, EVENTS, TRAVEL, VJ-ing, conferences, integrity live, seminars4worship, video staging by proctor
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PVP + rat’s nest @ 12:15am = whoa…we actually pulled it off.

Tags: CREATIVITY, Hardware, Software, TRAVEL, VJ-ing, video staging by proctor
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Today I thought I’d start a series of postings on the art of VJ-ing and the various components that go along with the territory. Most of these postings will be taken from a few articles that I’ve written back in the day for Worship Leader Magazine and EDIROL’s ENGAGE newsletter, but slightly updated and refreshed. Today’s posting will serve as the intro section. Enjoy!

The term “VJ” stands for “video jockey” or “visual jockey”, and sometimes has been known as “video DJ”.

The idea behind the worship VJ is not so emerging, if you think about it. You’ve seen this in forms of visual artists in the Church. But in the context of digital media & newer technologies, the role of the VJ is relatively new. It has emerged from the position of the “powerpoint guy”; you know, the volunteer running the slides on Sunday mornings.

It’s the guy we all turn around and look at when there’s a misspelled word on the screen, or when the slides are behind, or when the video doesn’t start on time, or when…i’m getting depressed.

Being a worship VJ means taking that role to the next level…intentionally & artistically. It shifts from being a spot on the tech team to someone engaging with the worship band. You aren’t just hitting an arrow button and “doing your job”; you are now carrying the mantle of “visual worship leader”. Because whether you like it or not, anything visual during corporate worship is going to affect the Body. It could be meaningless and wasted space, not to mention boring and misrepresenting the glory of God, or worse…distracting; or it could be inspiring, convicting, and truly engaging…leading and pushing the Body to worship the Living God. It’s given that we are affected by what we see, so why not take great care and responsibility with that knowledge?

Many have started to integrate visuals into our gatherings, usually in the form of lyric backgrounds. Video Staging has become the next logical step in the evolution of visual media. And any and every type of visual image (and format) are at our fingertips b/c of the internet. It seems that life for the VJ is better than ever now! But the battle to keep the focus in the right place is stronger than ever. It’s so easy (at least for me) to lose balance and make the “experience” about the technology/creativity. I heard Louie Giglio confess his own struggle with this at one of the Passion conferences; it was very convicting for me.

So have we reached the summit in our climb to overcome the obstacles of doing media well? Can we as VJs do anything else that might enhance our worship and keep the focus on Jesus? Where do you think the journey is going from here?

All for now…. - proctor

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(the above image is from packaging of Highway Video’s “Elements” - a great resource for the worship VJ.)

Tags: VISUAL WORSHIP, VJ-ing, WORSHIP, video staging by proctor
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for years i’ve been blown away by creative and engaging video staging setups. if you are new to the idea of “video staging”, think of it simply as adding screens (or any type of video display) to a stage/platform, going beyond the typical setup of one/two screens for displaying lyrics and iMAG/backgrounds. you can get extremely creative with video staging; it serves as a great backdrop as well as a great way to bring the visual element more into the experience that the worship team is facilitating.

i recently got to work with the amazing teams at LifeWay & Technical Innovation on Beth Moore’s Living Proof Live conference in San Antonio. usually on an “end stage” setup, we have a large center screen framed by trussing. this time, we decided to take it up a notch and produce a 3-screen setup.

we accomplished this by simply adding two extra projectors & screens, plus a nifty little device by Matrox called the TripleHead2Go. i simply used my MacBook Pro (running ProVideoPlayer)….set my resolution to 3072 x 768 … and outputted to the TripleHead2Go … which split out directly to the 3 projectors. some content i custom created for this resolution…but most of my loops were either set at 800×600 or 1280×720 …so i had to live with a widened image… but honestly it still looked great to a sea of 10,000 women!

for another great blog entry on the TripleHead2Go, click here!

have you ever used a TripleHead2Go or done any kind of video staging?

Tags: CREATIVITY, Hardware, video staging by proctor
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