Hi, I'm Jeff. This is my personal blog – random thoughts on Media, the church, the arts, popular culture, being a husband and father and about any other thought that comes to mind.
As part of our ongoing upgrade, we have completed another set of changes in some of the websites related to this blog (mediaartsdad.com), the High Pointe media ministry and where you can expect what information to show up. Full Story
Okay, so I jumped in and never really explained what “Foldback” is or what I am doing with it here.
First, a quick bit of history. Back in the dark ages of audio reinforcement, one of the cheapest audio consoles (mixing boards) that was available was the Yamaha MC series. Several churches I worked with back then had these consoles (8, 12 or 16 channels), so I was fairly familiar with them. Yamaha used the term Foldback for the stage monitor sends, but very few other manufactures use that terminology. The idea is that you are folding back some of the audio from the musicians back to them so they can hear what they are doing.
So the idea of my “foldback” for my blog is to fold back some comments, observations and planning information to those who served on the media team for the weekend that we might all grow in excellence in our service of worship. All this to further our purpose to glorify Christ, help spread the gospel and provide tools of training and encouragement for the church.
Learning from others
As I have been reading this book all about Walter Murch’s experiences doing the editing and audio mixing on the movie “Cold Mountain”, I have tried to pick up some hints and ideas that would help us improve our quality and craft on our media projects. There is not room here, nor can I verbalize all that I have picked up, but here are a few lessons I would like to share.
Take time planning and getting familiar with the project. Instead of just jumping in and shooting or editing, take time to study each element, listen to the audio, watch all the clips, re-read the script, make check list or drawings and lay out exactly what you want to accomplish.
Even when you think you have it together, spend a little time exploring other angles. What happens if you lengthen or shorten a shot? What difference does changing the music make? What about changing the order of the elements? What does it look like if we set the camera over there? It is fairly easy to “UNDO” changes with all the digital audio and video methods we use, so take a minute to explore, you might find something that works better.
You will never have enough time. I don’t care if you have a year to edit that video, there will still be work to be done to it when the deadline rolls around. So make the best use of the time you have and don’t assume you can get it done in the last hour. Also, you will never have enough channels / tracks!
Where Are We Going
As we approach a new year it is natural to look back over previous years and look ahead at what is to come. So what does the new year hold for the media ministry? While somethings never change and there are a lot of unknowns, there are a few specific areas I would like to challenge us as a team to strive for in 2008.
More Media, More People. In keeping with our mission, the first goal is to make even more media resources available to even more people. This may involve releasing media in more formats, making the media more available or even making the resources better known through marketing and advertising.
Increase the Quality. From the technical standpoint, push down the noise floors, increase the bit-rates and sampling rates, improve the compression, improve the resolution. From an artist standpoint, improve the mix, smooth the shots, capture the moment, up the expectation.
Become More Flexible. By finishing up some of our infa-structure projects and carefully planning future purchases and installations we can make our systems and equipment more flexible to meet the changing needs of the ministries we serve while at the same time decreasing the amount of time and work it takes to meet these needs.
What are your thoughts?
Making it stick
I am not a marketing expert, but I have learned a few things about effective marketing over the years. One element of the marketing trade is branding – that is, making an association between a product or service and a logo / slogan / identity. The purpose is to make the product or service more recognizable and memorable, usually to get you to buy it more often.
Where does this branding fit in with our media ministry? While we are not out to sell anything, we are trying to make a message more memorable, and branding the media is one way to accomplish this. We also work on promoting worship series, classes, ministries, events and even our church, all of which can benefit from a “brand” recognition.
Branding message series helps create a whole out of the parts. It ties them together and helps connect the pieces in our mind. This includes media covers, bumper, flyers, posters, fonts and even the worship song backgrounds. In the future this may include the “feel” of the services – lighting, room decor, color schemes, screen elements, foyer layout and many other components.
Branding our media ministry also gives us a method of reminding people of the resources that we make available. By having our media logo on everything we “produce” it reminds people that there is more than just this one item they are holding available. It also serves as advertising for our team, reminding people that someone put this media together. This can help us recruit new team members among other things.
It is important that once a brand has been established to stick with it and use it faithfully and repeatedly. Corporations understand this and spend large amounts promoting and protecting their brands. For us this means making sure all of our media has our team logo on it. For worship series we need to remember our theme and stick to it (graphics, looks, feel). Finally, we need to look for ways to brand and market more effectively.
In pursuit of home network bliss, I have moved on to step 2.
Step 1: Managed network switch – Netgear GS108Tv2 switch will allow setup of multiple VLANs for managing network traffic.
Step 2: Small PC to setup as a firewall / router – Jetway Quad Lan / Fanless Case (don’t forget to add a small SSD harddrive)
Step 3: Install and Setup PFSense as the firewall software / OS
Now here is where the trouble begins: the Google Fiber Network box can’t be put into bridge mode… so it looked like the only answer was to double NAT, not a good solution…. until this came along:
Spent a good part of my weekend improving our online security. One big part of this improvement was to tighten up some of my online accounts. We have all seen the new stories of the massive data breeches, the stolen credit card data, the big hacks & wide scale identity theft. And while we need to be careful, there is not a lot we can do with our data that other people have. But what we can improve is the security of the small things.
So Google fiber is here, you would think that would be enough. But consider our crowdedhouse. Our network not only serves our family (which admittedly is larger than average, ranging between 9 and 11 people depending on the day, your definition of family and my general attitude), but the network also serves our carriage house apartment, 3 guest rooms being used by long and short term guest and whoever is couch-surfing in the basement at the time. Add up all these users and all their devices plus the odd server or six we tend to run, and we have 25-35 devices on the network at any one time. Supporting this network has become quite the job.
Trash everywhere. That is one thing I am noticing about this urban living. Sure, Main street is nice and clean, but that is because people are paid to keep the trash cleaned up. What about the rest of the streets we live on? Who is responsible to cleaning them up?
In general, we have found that the median life cycle of audio equipment is around 10 years. Some pieces will last longer, others will require maintenance or refreshing to continue to perform to specs and some things will need replaced much sooner. Environment, handling and maintenance, and materials and workmanship directly affect longevity of components. Indirectly, the experiences and expectations of people effectively shorten product efficacy.You could call this the “inside, outside, upside down” theory of life cycle of audio systems.A worship facility is not just another performing arts space. As the spoken Word- the sermon- is at once equal to and yet higher than the “singing of hymns, psalms and spiritual songs” it is therefore neither lecture hall nor concert space, but Worship Facility. Designing the Worship Facility means to design a space that supports speech as well as music.
During our last move we left behind a spotlight that had been used for a college touring choir since 1976. It was a used donation when they got it, and it was still being used for special productions in a technologically geriatric setting [stored under risers and used once a year] at a large Baptist church. In finance circles, there has long been a mantra that leasing is not good stewardship. People want to own homes, not lease, to build equity. Buying a car, not leasing, is said to be less expensive in the long run. So why would I promote leasing equipment? You do want to purchase the durable workhorse whose technology remains steady- predictable and reliable. Things susceptible to needing upgrades and becoming outdated should be leased. Here are four points to consider when deciding to buy or lease equipment.
If technology used in the church is of poor quality (in the eyes of those attending), it will tend to reflect poorly on the message, evening cheapening the message. If the technology is too glitzy and fancy (again, in the eyes of those attending), it will make the message feel more like a story, entertainment, even fantasy. We want to get the right system into the right church to give the right message while recognizing that the real question being asked is, “But, how can we make the most of available resources?”
How can I mic our choir so we can hear them? We are hearing the orchastra / band through the choir mics and if we turn up the choir any more we get feedback. We currently have six AKG CK47 mics suspended above the choirloft. Do we need new mics?
… I wanted to talk through a couple of the issues and my thoughts on the solution of your choir mic problem. Your setup and arrangement is very similar to what we had at High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin where I was on staff and we battled with some of the same issues.
