Here is the sermon intro video for our “Constructing Christmas” series at SSCC. We will play this video to set up the sermon for the next few weeks.
Chris and I tossed around a few ideas for the final look of this series’ graphics before we landed on this one. We were going for the feel of old blue prints but not technical drawings. As with many of our videos, I worked backwards. Chris designed the “series art” which appears at the end of the video. I worked backwards from there to cut everything into Illustrator layers and animate it in After Effects.
I bought John Williams’ “Carol of the Bells (Voices)” on iTunes (off the Home Alone soundtrack one-the-less). I chose that song because it instantly makes me think of Christmas when I hear it. Also, I wanted to communicate the peace and joy of Christmas and also a sense of urgency or hurriedness. I felt like the vocals accomplished all that.
Every one can stop holding their breath. I have posted again. Mainly because Fred asked me to post this.
We are in week 5 of a 6 week series on dating, sex and marriage. It has been a great series so far, we have gotten a ton of positive feedback and CD orders and podcast downloads have been above average for us.
Here is the intro video we used this morning and will use again next week to set up the two marriage messages. I think the video is pretty self-explanatory. On a technical note, this was our first attempt at using a green screen. We learned a lot in the process about editing keys in After Effects and lighting for a green screen and I anticipate a faster process and better results next time. The music for the video was done by Fred in ProTools, he did a great job syncing up and obviously capturing the feel of the Apple commercials we are playing off of.
I read this article this morning on Engadget. A recent study shows that 95% of returned electronic devices are in fact NOT BROKEN. It attributed 26% to buyers remorse and the rest to basically laziness. How many of you never read the manual and then think “it” doesn’t work?
I know that I am not a manual first guy. I have to press some buttons and hear some beeps before I try to figure out how it really operates. I can’t say that I have taken many things back though. I guess us techies are more likely to figure it out.
Although somewhat technical, I definitely consider this blog subject “off topic” but I couldn’t ignore it. I stumbled across an article leading me to this website, which confirms something incredible.
PETA (the animal rights group) is offering $1 million for the first group of scientists to come up with commercially viable and edible meat. Let me say that again. PETA is going to award $1 million to whoever can make MEAT grow in the lab. It has to be distributable to multiple states and priced more cheaply than its real counterpart (chicken).
PETA is willing to help us “gain access to flesh that doesn’t cause suffering and death.” How very considerate of them. What about the suffering of the taste testers? I don’t even want to think about the test meals in that kitchen.
Guitar heros beware, there is a new kid moving into town. Game Tank is far along in the development of “Guitar Rising.” Rising is similar to Guitar Hero & Rock Band in that the players try to play along with the game’s songs in order to score points. Where Rising sets itself apart is that its real.You plug a real guitar in to your computer and play real notes to real songs. Points are awarded based on accuracy, as you would expect. Apparently its as fun as Hero for beginners AND it teaches guitar at the same time.
I have never played Guitar Hero or Rock Band myself, I have to admit, I am excited about Guitar Rising though. I’d love to think I can learn to play like with a method like that.
A good question isn’t it? Hmmm, strangely enough, my email box has NOT filled up with anxious pleas for my whereabouts, safety and much less… another post. Regardless, here I am, again.
Where have I been? Its been a looooong 6 weeks or so since my last post. I have a three part answer to the question you didn’t ask.
Reason 1 I have been here at SSCC’s new building. I was coordinating audio, video and lighting guys most of December and into January. Long hours there led to late night laptop work and just down right exhaustion. Follow that up with a week of moving our offices and a weekend more of audio/video systems guys in town and you get… well, you get nothing as far as you are concerned. Nothing, and you will like it.
Reason 2 I always said that if I didn’t have anything nice to say, I wouldn’t say it. Hmmm, wait, that isn’t quite it. Unfortunately I will sometimes say not-so-nice things. What I DID say was that I never wanted to blog for the sake of blogging or even worse, for the sake of driving traffic. So, that reason, in the midst of reasons 1 & 3, played largely into my silence. I just didn’t feel like I had anything that anyone else wanted to hear.
Reason 3 My daughter was born! Gracie is here!
I just love this picture of her yawning that I took earlier tonight. I think she is bored of my blog or something. Anyway… we welcomed her to the world Monday, January 14th, at 7:49 pm. She was 6lbs, 12.8oz and 19 inches long. (Shouldn’t it be tall? I think she is only a few inches “long” really.) All are healthy on the mom-daughter end. And we are adjusting to that whole “being responsible for another human life” thing.
So that is where I have been. Thanks for asking and I will see you soon!
About to years ago we did this video for a sermon opener. We were in a series studying David. This video is making a point about being overly concerned with the outward appearance. Our youth pastor, Jon Blankenship, is in this video as “JBlank.” Unfortunately for Jon, JBlank is a recurring character he plays that seems to always manage to make a fool of himself in each video. Somehow this video came up in the office today and I showed it to Fred, our worship director, who hadn’t seen it before. He insisted that I get it online so we could share it with the world. Make sure you hang on til the end to see Jon on the treadmill. Yes, he really fell. We were planning a fall and I had Bo running the camera while Jon was figuring out what he was going to do to fall. In the process, well, he fell. We staged a fall a couple more times but once he fell for real he couldn’t commit to a fake one and they weren’t nearly as good. I guess getting flung into the wall head first makes you gunshy. Oh, and sorry about the low image quality, I ripped it from a DVD and then had to re-encode it to upload it and that degraded it pretty noticeably.
Enjoy!
-Travis
I know some folks have had trouble playing embedded videos here, so if thats the case, here is the link to the file.
Guitar heros beware, there is a new kid moving into town. 
