I got a phone call on Friday from one of my close friends and former Associate Tech Director who is on a mission trip in North Africa. We were just catching up and I was learning about how much I take pizza for granted. Pretty deep stuff for two guys who haven’t talked in over two months I know. The geographic area of his ministry kept the conversation from going very deep and especially from addressing his ‘mission.’ When I hung up with him, I immediately remembered a broken promise I had made to him over a dinner right before he left the country. The discussion was about ghostmen… or is it ghostperson now? I don’t know. Regardless, I promised that my first blog post would be a dissertation on the merits of the ghostman. Well, it is not my first post, but, Bo, heres to you!

First of all, some of you have no idea what I am talking about. Take a trip down memory lane with me. I remember playing whiffle ball on my dirt road when I was in elementary school. Apparantly I did not have many friends. Because it was always like, 2 on 2. So what happens when I get a hit, the other guy on my team gets a hit, and we both end up on first and second with nobody to hit next. Enter the ghostman. The situation is easily rectified by my calling “ghost man on second” as I run back to the plate to hit again. The ghostman is great. He can’t be tagged out, he is always faster than you, and he always, ALWAYS tags up on a pop fly. The perfect teammate.

Now that you are somewhat tracking with me. Here is the important question. What happened to the ghostman? Or more importantly what happened to me? Unfortunately, the ghostman was made obsolete by necessity. I can’t leave my office and tell Laura that I have a ghostman working on the new soundboard if she needs him. A ghostman can’t walk Ruby, my weird dog. Nor can he write a blog for me. This sad realization leads to my next question. What happened to the things we used to do that WERE ghostman-ready? I think I just missed “blog action day” or whatever it was a few weeks ago. But pretend like it is today, no, TODAY, the day you read this. This week, do something that requires a ghostman. Live it up, enjoy it.

It is sad that I now am thinking that I will have to wear my ACL-saving knee brace if I can get a whiffle ball game going, isn’t it?

Now that I think about it, I need help coming up with ghostman-ready activities. I’ve got wiffleball, kickball & baseball. Hmmmmmmm… I’m already slowing down. Let’s start a revolution. Let’s build a list of ghostman-ready activities! Put it in your comments. Tell your friends to comment and give their suggestions too. Together, we can make this world a happier place!

Thanks!

-the ghostman of Travis

Hey folks. At the urging of some coworkers I want to share another video done at SSCC. This is a video played in Rush Hour, our Middle School ministry. We use it each week as kids break into their small groups. The theme for the ministry is based around driving and cars, that is why you have a car bouncing in the video. The final copy of the video runs for the length of the song and is at full resolution.

This was done using Illustrator & After Effects. I used Illustrator to recolor and cut the car into separate parts for animation. Once in After Effects I created the headlights and then animated the driver’s side wheels, headlights and car body to move with different frequencies from the soundtrack. The headlights were created using a plugin called Lux and the motion was animated to sync with the music using a plugin called Soundkeys. Both plugins are from Trapcode. The song is “Love Addict” by Family Force 5. The background and waveform in the video were generated in After Effects as well.

Let me know what you think. Also, if you actually like it and want to use it for your ministry drop me a line. My only request would be that you buy a copy of the Family Force 5 CD for yourself so you have the right to play it.

-Travis

Small Group Video

Here is a video testimony we played in our three services this morning. It is the first video I have shot since we got in our Britek lighting kit. We got a 3 point florescent kit with boom stands, an umbrella and two light boxes. Anyway, it was a learn as we go thing. Chris, my Associate Tech Director, and I set the lights up about an hour before Kevin, the guy in the video, and Deb, our Producer got there. We basically took turns sitting in the light and looking into the camera until we got something we liked. I have a lot of experience using make-shift light rigs with work lamps. I also have experience dealing with 100% “house light.” Chris is a still photography nut, and has used some photo lighting a good bit. With our powers combined… Captain Planet! Ok, sorry, I am a child of the 80′s and can’t say “with our powers combined” without thinking of earth, wind, heart, fire, and water, along with the poster boy for Greenpeace himself, Captain Planet. Who is with me there? Anyone…?

OK, apologies for that rabbit trail, welcome to the inside of my head. Anyway, with mine and Chris’s EXPERIENCE combined I think we pulled off something pretty nice for some “professional video lighting” rookies. As for the rest of the shoot…. We used our two Panasonic DVX-100 cameras and a Sennheiser wireless mic on Kevin. We used a Rode NTG-2 shotgun mic for the second camera but it was only used to sync footage. Pretty standard two camera shoot. One camera basically locked on a tripod straight ahead while I roamed with the other. You’d be surprised at how many cool shots I ruined with my shaky hands.

Here is the video, let me know what you think, heck, let me know what I can do better next time. I promise not to delete your comments unless you make it personal. HaHa.

Oh, and props to Explosions In the Sky, a rockin band that I used to back this testimony in church. The song is called “What Do You Go Home To?”

-Travis

Video Testimony

Update: Further reading has linked the freeze possibly to Mac users who are running Unsanity’s Application Enhancer. I had it running with a dock modifier, a lot of folks use it for “shape shifter.” The recommendation, if you are ahead of the curve and haven’t gone the hard way already, is to uninstall App Enhancer before you upgrade to Leopard. Here is a link to their support page for uninstalling: http://unsanity.com/support.php?vf=15.

This is good news to Apple fans who can potentially chalk another failure up to third party software and not directly to Apple.

Thanks to my work, I got to be an early adopter of Leopard (AKA: OS X 10.5), Apple’s new state of the art, benchmark setting operating system. And let me tell you, it is pretty impressive. Everything I have done is faster than before, which is nice, as many ‘other’ operating system upgrades use more of your computers resources than before and slow things down a bit. I have already tested After Effects & Photoshop in Leopard and both ran smoothly after my archive & install. (Interesting in itself b/c according to Applecare, I would have to reinstall most third party software.) Why did I talk to Applecare you ask? That leads to the first three hours, where my screen looked like this after my upgrade installation.It was nothing 30 minutes on hold with Applecare couldn’t fix though. A simple reboot to the DVD and ‘disk repair’ verified that the MacBook Pro was fine and that it was indeed the ‘netinfo manager’ that had been corrupted during install. This is the database file that brings you your login screen (or something like that), which, as you can see in the picture, I didn’t quite ever make it to. Apparently, I was not the only guy in the States with this issue yesterday, Google “leopard blue screen install,” go ahead, haha. Also, an after hours call to Applecare revealed that they staffed it heavily after hours for tech support choice 1 on the phone: Leopard. To my dismay, Jared (my Applecare guy, not the Subway guy) recommended an archive & install to skirt the issue. The dismay part was because I was told that I would have to reinstall my third party apps. I don’t know about you, but installing Adobe CS3 Extended, After Effects CS3, Microsoft Office and everything else does not make for a happy day at the office, not to mention that it would take most of the day. I am pleased to report that so far, every App that I have tried to open has worked, including CS3 and Office, with no reinstalls or updating or anything. They were right on the dock were I left them. Maybe this post will help someone els skirt the problem, if they have the ability to get on another computer when theirs locks down, haha. Or maybe they will read it first here, since this is one of the hottest blogs on the web.Anyone else have any interesting update experiences.

-Travis

I got this from a search I was doing. Too good not to share. And if you are not a Mac user, then you¬†just¬†wouldn’t understand. Marble of Doom

Holy cow. I have to share this video I stumbled upon. I confess I LOVE seeing technology used in big ways in worship settings. I think that music and media are the languages of the people. I know it isn’t a MUST have, and I know that I do not represent everyone’s opinion here. I have some good friends that I would label ‘anti-production’ when it comes to ‘doing church.’ I just agree to disagree, Ron Burgandy would be proud.

There is more to worship than big sound, big screens and big lights. The heart has to be there, the passion, all that stuff that I guess I need to acknowledge. That being said, I KNOW that when I have more senses engaged, I am more engaged. When I get wrapped up by the sounds and all that ‘good stuff’ I love it. I focus in, I can get lost in worship in that moment. The flip side is how distracting it can be for me. I have to watch myself. I will end up spending the first 10 minutes of a big event evaluating equipment and production value. The next 10 minutes I will critique the front of house mix. After about 20 minutes I am in though. HaHa. I also believe that good production value helps the Church.

I know, I KNOW, I KNOW that Jesus doesn’t need me or my computer. However I am pretty confident he chooses to let me minister along side of him. I LOVE when a worship experience excels in technical production. I think this shows the world that the church can be an exciting and engaging experience. One possibly worth even giving a shot if you can get that 16 year old away from MTV and the movie theater. I consider it a modern time mission trip type of cultural relevance. So be it fortunate or unfortunate, the culture I minister in is overwhelmed with media. I think Jesus likes being in that media. And a last disclaimer… I think Jesus likes to be in the calm quiet, other-than-the-world stuff too. I just don’t think ‘we’ need much help and encouragement going there.

So without further delay, the AMAZING 12 minute intro to the Hillsong Conference. Let me know what you think of that Amazing Grace when you get done.