Neato Lighting

evil drug companies and faith

2011-02-28T22:05:00.000-08:00

(1:00am thoughts)

So, I have found myself on more than one occasion working a pharmaceutical salesmen training seminars..... Those salesmen were pumped up about the exciting new drug and were ready to knock down the doors to the ballroom to tell everyone about it because they believed in the product.....

They didn't learn about the product, get excited and locked themselves in the safety of the corporate training environment....

I think there is a pile of awesome Christian folks that have a great knowledge of what Jesus can do to people and get REALLY excited when they talk about him....

...but they lock themselves away in the safety and comfort of home/church/prayer meetings and never go outside and "sell" the world on the love/joy/healing that comes with a relationship of Jesus Christ...

What I bring with me....

2010-08-20T22:12:00.000-07:00

Some of you are young and impressionable and may think what I do is possibly cool and you may want to run around and do cool lighting gigs too.

I must be busy, there is like at least three months between my posts... oh well.

My wife was out of town and I needed something to do so I organized my tool bag and gig case.

I take my tool bag to everywhere. It usually sits in my car when not in use... waiting for its next time to be useful.
Tools are sometimes hard to find at church so it usually stays close by when I am working on a project...
There is at least a 90% chance what I am going to need is in my bag - it makes me feel a bit more confident walking into a room.

Here are a few snazzy pictures:

And its beloved contents:

Yeah, mind blowing, I know!

The List:
>Hammer
>Long philips head screwdriver (great for reaching into Martin 518's
>Klein 10-in-1 screwdriver (if you don't have any tools, start with this one)
>SAE and Metric hex keys (a must if you are going to work on movers)
>Random box cutter thing
>Flash drive (with a few pdfs and show files)
>Locking pliers
>Diagonal pliers
>Needle Nose Pliers
>Linesman pliers
>Wire cutter/stripper
>electric tape
>white board tape
>Crescent wrench with safety (you better show up with this)
>5 pin to 3 pin dmx turnaround
>3 pin to 5 pin dmx turnaround
>Gerber multi tool
>Mini Mag
>(sharpies)
>Grease pen (for writing on gel)
(not pictured but here in spirit)
>Multi-Meter
>Polarity Checker (not pictured)

Thoughts on multi tools:

I will have my little Gerber multi tool on me at all times... that is how nerdy I am. On a show, its nice to have one on you...You maybe on a ladder or away from your bag and need something right there to make the party happen. Whether you buy a Gerber or a Leatherman its up to you, its a great product. Both companies guarantee their multi tools for life. I've sent mine in on more than one occasion with a broken plier and a broken knife. I got a new one in the mail a week later. I have always used Gerbers. I've lost 2 Gerbers in 7 years, which is pretty good I think. I dont feel bad losing a Gerber that I spent $30 on ebay as opposed to a $80 Leatherman Wave I bought new. Gerber's knives always seem kind of dull, Leathermans always seem to rigid. I once owned one of those cool "the pliers pop out with a flick of the wrist" versions of the Gerber... I didn't like it and sold it to a friend. The one I currently own is an older version of the Gerber Evo model.

I really miss my Legend 800, it is missing in action.... Christmas is coming up.

Whatever you decide in a multi tool make sure it at least has these:
>Pliers
>Flat head
>some form of good philips head that wont strip.
>a tweaker (great for older DMX switches)
>knife
>saw... (seriously, this has come in handy on more than one occasion)

Everything else is just icing on the cake...

So yeah.... Next blog I will talk about my super awesome gig case...

why I do what I do

2010-08-13T08:27:00.000-07:00

Hey... I am not really into hardcore music.... I spent 10 or so years at The Murray Hill Theater doing lights for piles of hardcore bands....
My little brother (that does security over there) showed me this video a while back... Its a band called Seraphim, and they are playing to a sell out crowd at MHT.

(skip ahead to 2:15 if you aren't into this music and want to see the point of this post) Basically some dudes (that were too old/violent) to be in a pit with 16 year olds were asked to leave. The lead singer pauses the show and shares why fighting in the pit is bad and what God will do in your life....

I have never seen a hardcore band present the gospel like this....

I love church stuff, I love big worship rallies with big altar calls, big guest speakers, lots of lighting, countdown videos, weeks of planning, scenery, musicians with a scary loyalty to Apple products, and words on the screen.....

The thing is that it is hard to get lost people to come to church (no matter the effort/time/money you put into your service) especially folks that have been hurt by other "Christians" in the church.....

Do I believe that church is effective at presenting the gospel and letting people know whats up? Yes.

Does the church reach everybody? No.

This is where MHT and the bands that play there comes in.... its a middle ground for Christians or otherwise, neutral - yet bathed in prayer and built with a purpose... This is why Jenn and I support Come & Live - its a great tool to get the bands out there, talking with the fans, sharing their faith.

This is why at 28, with a wife, kids, and a career I still try to make the time to support MHT - whether its running lights for a show with some local bands, fixing their lights, or putting together a dance party.

I still find fulfillment/joy whenever I work up there and hang out with the staff and volunteers.

This week marks Murray Hill's 15th year as a Christian Rock and Roll venue. I went there for the first time when I was 17, I started volunteering at 18 - which makes 10 years volunteering/working at the theatre.

Trackspots!!!

2010-08-05T22:11:00.000-07:00

I love these lights. I first started working with these lights back in 98 at the Murray Hill Theatre.

I always wanted my own set. Eventually I did, and had a great time with them, and made a lot of money with them. I've used them in small rooms and big rooms with no problems.

Around a year ago, I sold them to a church in Seattle with hopes of getting something a bit more modern. Long story short, I couldn't, I almost purchased a set of Martin Mania 600's but I couldn't find them at the right price and I as worried that Martin was going to randomly discontinue them and not offer parts.

I turned back to Trackspots. I had one left from my original lot and purchased one more from eBay.

Thanks to Craigslist, I was able to purchase 6 more Trackspots out of a club at an amazing price.

Well, I got them on Christmas eve and started tinkering with them after my family went to bed. Powered all of them up and started making a repair list:
1 blows fuses when it gets power (bad logic board)
5 needed new pan motors
2 had shutter related problems

Since the pan, color, gobo, and shutter motors were the same exact motor model - I stole all the motors out of the fixture with the bad logic board an was able to give each fixture a working pan motor. As for the shutter problems, one was missing a set screw the other needed the shutter to be hammered out. After my parts swapping party was over, I had 5 good working Trackspots with a pile of spare parts giving me a total of 7 moving lights to my name.

Each fixture needed a massive cleaning as they spent all 12 years of their life hanging in a smoke filled club.

I went to High End's forum and followed some pretty detailed cleaning instructions.
Once a day I during my Christmas vacation, I would take one fixture completely apart and gave it a massive cleaning outside.

Trackspot torn apart before cleaning:

After cleaning:

After cleaning I brought each fixture into my dining room and re assembled them:

My son thoroughly enjoyed this part:

Happy Trackspot!

After re-assembly, I let each fixture run on test mode in my laundry room(how cool is that, a test mode on a "cheap" fixture) for several hours. It's pretty funny, when the fixture heats up, it smells lemon fresh thanks to the scrubbing bubbles.

Overall it was a fun experience. Trackspots are old, but well designed, and even now you can get amazing tech support from High End almost 10 years after being discontinued.

Maybe next Christmas I will find some Technobeams out of a club for a good price.

Youth room awesomeness

2010-02-10T00:01:00.000-08:00

Post Youthquake - I took all the gear to New Life to play with at work.

We took down our home made sails and quickly threw up the corrugated
plastic from our old set in the sanctuary. We lit them up with my
LEDs which looked awesome.

Also, because 6 Martin 518's wasn't enough for a youth stage, I threw
in my 6 trackspots for more 90's moving light flavor giving us 12 movers.

We basically maxed out our poor little Fat Frog controller. Andrew
did a great job programming and busking the show.

Best looking youth room lighting system in town.

Here are some pictures from our "hunger and thirst" worship service at Follow:

(rehearsal)

Small Group Prayer:

More pics are here on the Follow Facebook page.

Youthquake Live at Paxon Revival Center

2010-02-03T00:01:00.000-08:00

I love working Youthquake live.... it brings me to new venues that have their own challenges...

Last year I brought out 4 Trackspots and 4 LEDs. Since then I
seriously sold that entire setup.

I came back the next year with 8
Trackspots, 6 new 1 watt LEDs, and my new Radiance hazer.

For a relatively cheap setup in a 5000 seat room, it looked great.

You will notice the other element that changed is the truss
configuration - I was trying my best to hide the "architectural"
elements of the room via some black drops and hanging Youthquake's
screen from my truss along with some movers.

...I figured out how to make chamsys go into "high contrast" mode:

Woman's conference set

2010-01-30T13:27:00.001-08:00

(first post in 100 years)

So, I wanted to break away from the "three screens of death" video look
for a while on the big stage for this woman's conference at the nlcf
and make the stage look a bit more girly.

We first raised the center screen. Then took 30ish strands of
Christmas lights in hung them in three groups coming down the
catwalk. After that tedious process was over, we hung some sheer
fabric on front of the lights. The effect looked great.

The next thing we did was reset our projectors and screens to a 16:9
ratio. We did this to be able to hang lanterns under the screens and
so we didn't have this giant awkward square where the center screen
should go.

The set looked great. The funny thing about switching the screens to
a more wide screen look made the stage appear newer. It's funny how
we are programmed to think that rectangles are more futuristic and
hip than squares.

The plan was to keep this look through the Sunday after the conference.
Well, we went to power our center projector back up and imagine our
surprise whe. The stupid thing wouldn't start up. One of the fans
stopped working so it told the projector not to turn on. So we sent
the projector off to Sanyo. We kept our woman's conference look up for
2 more weeks.

A few pictures:

Starting to hate my cell phone...

2009-09-05T20:42:00.000-07:00

I came in pretty late to the cell phone game... I was so against getting a cell phone that I opted to get a pager in 2003 (yes they still made pagers). 6 months after getting a pager I finally took the plunge and got a real cell phone with a real cell phone plan.

I have had the same phone number since 2002 - 7 years, which is like 48 in people years.

Two months before I got married in 2004, I added my fiance to my cell phone plan - this was Jenn's first real cell phone plan too.

A cell phone is a tether for me... always keeping people connected with them... Just a phone call away. I have over 100 names in my phone book, so when a number shows up without a name, I automatically assume that it is someone calling for me to do a lighting gig (for money which is awesome). I used to get gitty when the phone rings and I don't recognize the number.

Now I have a texting plan... I got a texting plan because I wanted to start twittering - I assume that my life is interesting enough for people to want to know that I am watching an episode of "my so called life" or at a thrift store....

The problem with texting is its instant gratification for the person on the other side of the phone... now you can request lighting from me without a hello, how are you doing, etc....

This sucks...

For these reasons:
A. I run a little lighting company with just under $10,000 in gear....
B. I have right around 15 years of technical experience doing lighting/sound/video....
C. I am a Christian
D. I am a nice guy
E. I am horrible at business/money stuff

Here is the problem....

I get texts or calls from people that know about A/B and want it on the cheap or free and then play the cards from items C/D, then I (acting on item E) say/text yes in response.

I have seriously got a little under 10 texts/calls/messages wanting items A/B for little to no money using item C and D as bargaining chip...

Now my phone is stupid and I now cringe when my phone lights up with a voice mail or text message. It doesn't just happen during "normal business hours" it happens at night, on the weekends, when I am on dates, or with my family..... I can't shut off my phone because I am afraid I am going to lose money.

Money doesn't bother me, no I was just joking, money really bothers me, stresses me out, and honestly causes a lot of heartache...

I have one ministry that has owed me money for two months
I have a check from a client that is a week old that I can't cash
I get calls from folks wanting free consultations for their trendy churches
I get texts from people that want gear for cheap, debate me on the price and use the ministy card as an exuse for not having money.
I currently have $1.50 in the bank.

The past few weeks have sucked for me and my little business... I did three gigs...

1 - was fun but a lot of work
2 - paid but it sucked working with the client
3 - was a lot more work and no cash yet....

on top of that, my phone is blowing up with people wanting me to use my experience or my inventory for free/cheap.

I digress.....

I love doing lighting work...
I love my cool church job but sometimes I can't sleep at night because of my cool church job....

I gave "Genesis Productions" 10 years of my life.... I am ready to kill it... sell the gear and call it quits.... but I can't...... cause I have $1.50 in the bank.... I now HAVE to do the stupid gigs because I need the money...... Don't get me wrong.... I love getting paid to do lighting stuff...

But its getting harder and less fun... I think its a tragedy. I want my phone to ring with people wanting me and my gear and want to pay real money.

I just don't have that now...

at this point in my life I wanted 2/3 of my income to come from my lighting business... now 2/3 of my stress comes from my lighting company.

I want to be able to concentrate on my family, my church job, and nice freelance work.

Get rid of my current cell phone number.... and start over.

that is where I am at right now.

Feeling like I am missing out on things.

2009-05-29T22:45:00.000-07:00

My son Nathan turned two recently - he is growing more and more independent as times go on. He is aware that there is a new baby here and probably still doesn't know what to think of it.

Nathan sometimes gets in these horrible emotional moods complete with temper tantrums, screaming, throwing stuff etc...

Then he will turn around and be the sweetest, funnest kid ever. I believe that he is going to be the coolest kid ever.

Just today - I had Brandon, Maggie, and John over today - they wanted to bust out the old Nintendo and play a few games.... Well like most nintendo games you have to blow in it to make the game work. Nathan saw Brandon blow in a game a few times - then picked up another Nintendo Cartridge and began blowing into the game.... that is how cool my son is....

Believe it or not - I do work a lot - between work at the church, side work, etc I find myself getting busier and busier. Nathan will catch me getting ready to go to work/a gig and yell "Car Seat" - which is Nathan's way of telling me that he wants to go with me. Sometimes when I leave the house to go do a gig the last thing I see is Nathan looking at me through the glass in our front door.

and it kills me every time.

I wonder what is he thinking at that moment?

Where is daddy going? Why is he leaving me? When is he coming back? Am I really that unimportant?

I know that little kids emotions are less complex then grown ups but it does make you wonder.

I have to work to make things happen - I love my work - I love what I do - I strongly believe that God has me here to do the tech work that I do everyday at New Life, random churches, venues, etc...

Sometimes I hate leaving the house to do the things that I love doing. The questions that are running through my mind as I am departing from the coldesack that we live on is:

Where am I going? Why am I leaving my family again? When will I see them again? Do they know that they are important to me?

Hey blog reader(s)

2009-05-02T08:34:00.000-07:00

I have lots of cool stuff to talk about.... Then I get lazy and waste time on facebook...

Some personal stuff going on:
>Garrett Newton Tucker - my second son
>really enjoying my job at new life
>wife=awesome

Lighting related stuff I've been meaning to write about:
>the Russian game show gig.
>the new stage set for Night Church
>Demo-ing Pro Presenter at our church
>Catalyst (an event for providence school)
>I just bought a Radiance Hazer
>The 1 watt LED vs 500 watt par can shootout
>Switching cameras for the first time for a big youth event
>My new dedicated chamsys computer

(pick one and I will double my efforts to getting around and writing about one....)

Married for 4 Years

2009-02-27T21:02:00.001-08:00

February 26 marked me and Jenn's four year anniversary....

On Thursday I was in a rehearsal for most of the day, Jennifer was at the hosptial with one of her doula clients....

To commerate four years of Marriage I will give you this link. (Scroll down to the fourth entry...)

Magazines....and Church

2009-02-07T02:50:00.000-08:00

Yeah, magazines....

I get a free subscription to Church Production Magazine - this is one of those ad based free magazines with a few articles thrown in there... basically it highlights mega churches that spent piles of money on their a/v systems or products that are too expensive or irrelevant for 90% of the churches in America... It sounds stupid - I get it for the pictures... Every once in a while they will show a cool stage set that looks achievable and inspiring (oddly enough in a design firm or video company ad not in an actual article). So for free its a good magazine - its a little stupid sometimes - but its free..

I got a free copy of Collide magazine at LDI last year... It was amazing - it was the perfect mix between church production magazine (without all the megachurch hype) and Relevant magazine (with cool music/movie reviews without Derek Webb on the cover every month)...

A few things that sold me on the magazine:
>an article on putting together a projection system for new churches using a $500 projector, a copy of powerpoint, and an old computer... How cool is that - had that article been in church production magazine, you would of least spent $5000 on a projector, a $2000 seamless scaler, and a $400 copy of easy worship or someting.
>Good reviews of Christmas media (the magazine is targeted to church media folks)
>A writeup about effective use of movies and such during worship.

I got a real subscription and spent real money to get the magazine every other month.

Well, as time went on the magazine focused less on production related articles (projection, lighting, etc) and more on graphics, social networking, and an incredible focus on online/satellite churches.
Which is cool - but it doesn't pertain to me - I don't have a desire to go to a church and watch a preacher on a projection screen 1000 miles away and my internet connection is so slow that I can barely stream my churches service.
There was also a lot of complaining about the church.... The pinnacle of this is when they interviewed Derek Webb for their magazine... I like Derek Webb's music... I ran lights for him several times at Murray Hill - I just don't like it when people have a almost hate for the church....

There are a lot of screwed up churches in America - I know - I was a member of several.... What pisses me off is when folks complain and discourage others about their views of how they do church. Those folks leave their church and get with more pissed off people and plant another church 15 miles away from where they actually live... I have 10 or so churches within a mile of my neighborhood - most of them are dying out - you wouldn't even call them contemporary or youthful. There isn't anyone under the age of 40 attending...

All the cooler/hipper churches are miles away in cooler/richer parts of town... I am not making this up...
Why is it that church plants only get planted in rich parts of town...
Moreover - why plant a church in a city with 1000 established churches and at least 100 portable church plants?
Why do only rich white attractive folks go to these newer churches? Where are the lower class ugly people going?
Why not get all your plant friends together and go to one of these struggling churches within a community and make it not crappy?

I want to go to cool conferences and hangout with other cool church media folks from around the country... But if they all think that traditional (not online, not a satellite, not portable) church sucks, then I don't want to be around them or their conference because I am going to want to punch them all, grab their iPhones, iBooks, and any other pretentious Apple product and throw it in the nearest body of water.

There are a lot of messed up churches that do suck (leadership problems, stupid conregation members, drama) - but good churches do exist.

Back to magazines... I didn't renew my subscription to Collide - I had hopes on it becoming something cooler. Maybe next year.

Where the trendy churches get an "A" for effort in things like the Starbucks coffee in the church cafe, which music they are doing from the Hillsong library, knowing what current movie/top 40's music references to use during the sermon, or the designer clothes the people on stage wear.... My church gets a definite "A" for effort for drawing people closer to God, changing folks lives, and reaching a wide range of demographics is where my church gets an "A" for effort in what they do....

...and achieve.

Sorry guys...

2009-02-02T22:22:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in a while.... I've been too busy watching Scrubs on DVD and watching the Office on Hulu...

A few cool thingscoming up
>Today (tuesday) - we are watching Ernest Goes to Camp @ Murray Hill Theater
>Friday - youthquake live again at Evangel Temple
>Saturday - I am lighting a game show at a church - No I am not making that up.
>Monday - meet with a youth pastor at Zaxby's about planning his first big youth service
>Tuesday(ish) - work on TV ligthing at a russian speaking church

March - hopefully lighting up two press conferences
Another Zepheniah show
Youthquake

Zephaniah Tabernacle Concert

2009-01-24T00:10:00.000-08:00

Another awesome gig.

Zephaniah Tabernacle (I had to google it to get the spelling correct) is a church in Springfield about a mile from the house Jenn and I used to live in on Laura Street....

This was their first "worship concert" with their new band/praise team and a live recording. We setup the night before at midnight, right after tearing down from youthquake the night before.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

All in all it was a good show.

The majority of the effect lighting came from 4 10' truss uprights with a Trackspot and a pair of LED 64's mounted on top. 8 Pars on a pair of tripods provided basic front light.

The back truss lights were ran by Chamsys on Andrew's laptop. I am still amazed at what you can do with the software and a USB>DMX box.

Here is a video of the band (and conregation) having a party between songs:

More pictures can be found on the good ole photobucket There were three cameras shooting the event for a promo video, when I get the DVD (and figure out how to rip DVD's) I will post the video for my MANY readers.

This is one of the ONLY shows in 10 years of lighting at various churches where the pastors invited me to come pray with the band back stage

I found this door sign - maybe I'll add "minister of education" to my resume and enclose this picture to prove it:

Believe it or not, I saw my second gold church chair less than 24 hours after seeing the first one at Paxon

My favorite new things from 2008

2009-01-20T00:22:00.000-08:00

Entertainment:

>Netflix

>Scrubs

>Yo Gabba Gabba

Computer/Internet

>Pandora.com radio

>iTunes store

>New (used) computer

>learning some basic video stuff in Sony Vegas and final cut

>Selling stuff on craigslist

>RSS feeds

>Facebook

>gimp (open source photoshop)

Random:

>Our "new" house

>Nathan repeating stuff I say

>Jennifer's new glasses

>Our new camera

>Learning how to solder cables

>More MHT movies

>the (new) baby due in April

>Mc Donald’s 1.99 iced coffee

Lighting/Production:

>Light shows with more LED's than conventionals

>Calling the show for YQL over the production coms

>DMX splitter system with power/dmx looms

>ChamSys - lighting software

>1000’ of new DMX cable

Favorite New Life Related Things:

>Taking the short bus to Angies on my birthday

>My youth tech volunteers

>YA (young adults) meetings @ NLCF

>Designing stage stuff

>Skiing in front of a blue screen for a video announcement

Favorite gigs:

>A fest - Glen St Mary's GA

>E-Now Conference - Orlando FL.

>River Town Church - Jacksonville

>The Elvis Video shoot - Helen Ga.

>FCA outreach in the providence Gym

More fun pre youthquake picture

2009-01-15T13:15:00.000-08:00

Dancing room:

Me and Sean Yost - the guy that made these chairs must be a millionare - this is the 10th church I've been to with these chairs.

Youthquake Live @ Paxon Revival Center Church

2009-01-12T13:00:00.000-08:00

Paxon is a 5000 seat church with metal halide gym lights for house lights. I really didn't want to use their house lights so we put 8 cans on tripods in the balcony with red/orange gel for house ligthts. It was a little dark but it was much better than the alternative.

Andrew actually ran lights from his laptop on stage... This was the largest event Andrew had to program for.

I basically ran the church's installed lights off a cool older NSI controller

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

To make the room "seem" smaller I suggested putting something cool in the back to distract from the under balcony area that seated 800 people. I borrowed some spandex thingees from Chets Creek and lit them with some led pars. One random thing that came to mind was lining the path under the balcony with Christmas lights - it turned out pretty cool.

3000 kids showed up.

YQL did communion for the first time. It was an event that I was really glad to be part of.

River Town Church Portable rig

2009-01-02T21:23:00.000-08:00

River Town is a church plant that (like most church plants) has to setup and teardown every week.... They wanted a cool lighting system that would give them lots of different looks and is configurable for different sermon series.

Here is the concept:
The system is designed around 4 12' tripod stands placed on each corner of the stage.

>The 2 "front light" tripods had 2 LED 64's, 2 Shorty Par 64's with 500 watt wide lamps, and a dimmer pack per tree (for white light, we also used shorty pars so that the would have the same dimensions as the par 64 leds - so we can put them in a case easily).

>The two back trees had 4 LED 64's each.

>I also had them buy 4 more led 64's on mic stand bases for wall streaks against their back wall or for random lights on the floor (like putting them behind the drum set, etc)

The pars were pre rigged on the par bars and pre wired with power strips and DMX cables. They also designed some pretty slick cases for the 4 par bars.

To make the setup go even faster... We took dmx cables and loomed them to extension cords with friction tape giving you one cable per tree. We purchased a DMX splitter so that you don't have to daisy chain all the trees together...

Sunday morning rolls around:
1 - Roll in cases, place tripods
2 - Place par bars on tripods
3 - Plug in DMX splitter and power strip (near the splitter in a little roadcase with the splitter)
4 - Distribute power and dmx via the 50' power/dmx looms (just like you would run your mic/instrument cables to your snake box on stage)
5 - Lay out uplight pars, daisey chain dmx and power to uplights.
6 - Run the 150' DMX home run (we put it on a reel to make it easier to roll up and not knot up)
7 - Hook up DMX controller (we used a DMX operator - works great)
8 - Test lights
9 - Raise stands
10 - Program lights (if needed)

Its a cool system for around $3000 (16 leds, 4 64's, dmx splitter, controller, tripods, cabling)

We also designed it to be useful if permanently mounted when they actually get a venue..... The dimmer packs are 4 channels, so all they have to do is add 4 pars or lekos for white light and they still have 16 LED pars for front color, back light, side light, etc.

Here is some pics I took from their site:

Friendship ramblings...

2008-12-29T23:04:00.000-08:00

Probably the hardest thing I continue to experience in my life is the influx and outflux(?) of friends in my life.

I have probably 100 people in the memory of my cell phone. I probably call three on a regular basis.

I spent most of my teenage (church) life in and out of various churches - mainly because my brother was/is a baptist youth pastor and the average life of a baptist youth pastor at most churches is two years at the very most. Whenever I got comfortable at a church - they would start to have financial troubles or the pastor leaves and brings in new leadership - so I honest;y thought that I was a plague to a church.... Once you spot James Tucker and his gelled hair- that meant your church was going to fall apart within a matter of months....

When Kris decided to go back to seminary (and at the same time I got a car). I went and searched out a church of my own... THis was really really hard. From the time I was 16 till graduating High School - I was involved with five distinct churches in two years. I knew each youth pastor really well and each church wanted to keep a loyal sound/lighting/video guy around....

I am getting off topic here...

Friends..

I just spent 30 minutes searching (via facebook) for people who seemed to stick out in my mind from those old youth days.... I found three... out of sixteen.

You are reading this and saying - James (you jerkface) why are you trying to live in the past?

The truth is - I don't know.... My wife seems to think its that I never went away for school and had that post high school separation. When I graduated - I lived at home and never moved out till Jenn and I got married...

Back to the year 2000 (yes I am talking about high school again) - I probably had a core group of 6 or so folks that I could hang out on a regular basis.

By the time I got married my core 6 turned into 5 - then 4, 3, 2, and 1 - mostly its location change - if its not location change, its lifestyle change (new girlfriend/wife/cooler friends) prevents the whole hanging out thing happen. Its tough. Losing and Making friends. People you want to actually hang out with, outside work, church, or forced social activities.

You know what is the hardest thing to find? Married friends that you actually can/want to hang out with.... I am not bashing anyone here - Jenn and I have come across a pile of cool married folks. It seems whenever the phrase "lets all hang out or go on a double date sometime" is spoken - it becomese a friendship death sentence - you know darn well we are not going to hang out.
Work, kids, time with the wife, time alone will prevent you from hanging out. I do want to hang out with married folks and talk about lame married people stuff like - the weather, cool restraunts, TV, and traffic.

Before anyone points the marriage conference stick at me with the whole - "your wife should be your best friend" routine. - Jenn and I are best friends - she is like #2 on my speed dial (#1 is my voicemail and I can't change that). After almost 4 years of marriage we are still learning how to communicate with each other.

Maybe one day I will host a "cool people who went to church with me pre 2000 reunion" party. I'll start making the guest list right away.

Nature Of God Series - Part 2

2008-12-27T01:45:00.000-08:00

New Life did their very very first sermon series called "The Nature of God" each week focused on a different aspect of God. We had a variety of speakers with different preaching styles - it was pretty cool.

I was sitting in on the initial planning meeting for the series.

I almost had a heart attack when the assistant pastor of the church looked at me during the meeting and said "so, we want to do these sermon series things, we want some cool stuff on stage to make it look different"

Which is really really cool....

I really wanted to do some cool set design stuff - the catch is that I've never had any real experience making stages look cool outside of creative stage lighting.

I did the stereotypical contemporary church thing a few times and hung some spandex sails - you can never go wrong with spandex sails. Another time I wanted an art gallery look on stage. So I asked two artists in church to let me steal their paintings and sculptures and hung large art pieces from my catwalks, smaller pieces were attached to my truss uprights, and sculptures were put on pedestools - it was a really really cool look. I of course don't have any pictures - I do have a DVD of the event - at some point I will figure out how to get some screen caps and share....

Back to the Nature of God...

I went to Home Depot and bought four 13' and two 8' sections of corregated plastic
(the stuff you make greenhouses out of) and hung them from our upstage catwalk at various heights. I programmed a few focus points where my studio colors and cyber lights would hit the plastic at different angles for different effects.

The other added bonus to doing this is that it forced us to only use one middle screen (as opposed to three) for lyrics and video rolls (we also have two other screens that just display the program feed from our TV folks)....

The result is pretty cool for $120 worth of materials. It makes our stage night church look appear totally different than our AM service... The downside is that we have to setup and teardown the plastic before/after every night church service - I am not complaining, it takes me and another guy 10 or so minutes.

I did some experiments trying to project low resolution graphics on the plastic - pretty cool. One day I will buy some more plastic and get a Matrox Triple head2go and try splaying graphics across the entire back wall.

Anywhoo... here are some pictures.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T00:34:00.000-08:00

Hope everybody is having a tony the tiger grreeaattt Christmas.

River town church - college gathering lighting

2008-12-22T00:30:00.000-08:00

I did this show around a year ago - probably one of my slickest looking setups ever!

Front lighting was your basic 8 par tree setup (red, amber, white, blue)

Behind the band I put 4 truss uprights with a LED 64 uplighting the truss and a Colorpalette (I eventually sold) for band back lighting.

I programmed a pile of with the truss uprights one color and the palettes another color - it was pretty rad.

Boyd - their assistant pastor/environment guy snapped these pictures.

Red Look (the night before with no screen)

Pink Look:

Teal Look:

Amber Look:

Seriously - one of my favorite looking setups ever... No haze, no moving lights. Boyd was a pretty cool guy.... Not once did he ever say "Yeah we want it to look like Hillsong".

Thanks for reading

2008-12-20T21:21:00.000-08:00

I have enough posts to have a "more posts" link at the bottom of the page.

Champagne for all!!!

Concert Goodness ---

2008-12-19T11:30:00.000-08:00

This is The Dundees - a band composed of some good friends:

Chad (bass/guitar)

Ashley (drums)

Levi (guitar/vocals)

(I even DJ'd Ashley and Levi's wedding)

I got to see them at their first show at the Mandarin UMC Coffee House....

They had the BEST church coffee ever. And at the right price of fifty cents a cup.

I brought my niece and one of her friends along, naturally they texted each other the entire time...

Here is a video clip of the Dundees performing a familiar Christmas tune for your Christmas awesomeness....

...And you can't have a church coffeehouse without a projector and some stock photo of a coffee mug:

...Enjoy the rest of your Christmas

Nature of God series - Part 1

2008-12-17T00:10:00.000-08:00

Our evening "night church" service is doing its first sermon series ever! I was asked to do some cool stage stuff for the series.

The first night was focusing on having intimacy with God. We scaled the band back some and moved them downstage for more of an unplugged worship set. For video I hung a 9 x12 rear projection screen with the projector shooting from our baptistry. To make the stage seem more "intimate" we closed our mid stage curtain flanking the screen and cut our stage in half.

I needed a cheap cool looking stage thingee that can be easily struck each week. Another churhc in town had the number 10 on their stage for their church's anniversary made out of corregated plastic lit up with some par 38's. I found the same corregated white paneling from Home Depot for $20 for a 13' section. Hung 4 of them from the catwalk and lit them up with my cheap led pars.

These pictures were taken with the sound guys IPhone....

Here is our normal setup for sunday (three screens, lots of moving lights, band very far from the front of the stage)

...and here is our unplugged "intimate" look. Less moving lights, static lyric backgrounds. Singers up front... One video screen displaying lyrics instead of two with a third screen with an iso from our center camera on who ever is preaching/singing.

The picture make the stage look really dark.... I am doing a variant to this look for the other nights of the series with a full stage. (Part 2 coming soon)

We were able to do some cool color change effects with the LED's then layered two of the cyberlights on top with static and moving breakups.

If anyone is bored and wants to add this to their stage:

$50ish dollars for the plastic
$500 for 4 LED par cans to make the plastic change colors (I already had these in my own inventory)
$100 for a basic DMX controller.
$2 for a Large Iced coffee from McDonalds for me giving you the idea.

Full House remake

2008-12-15T11:39:00.000-08:00

(I think I got this link from my hotmail sign out page.....)

Full House Remake "Completely Dead"

ABC

Have mercy!

Just as Warner Brothers officially shoots down rumors of a Gossip Girl spinoff, I've just been told by a reliable inside source that John Stamos is no longer pitching a "semi-remake" of Full House.

"We couldn't make the deal," says the source, who is close to the project. "It's completely dead right now."

So how will we find out what Uncle Jesse, D.J., Stephanie and the rest of the trusty Tanners are up to?

And how will Mary-Kate and Ashley pay their rent?

Well, it "could happen in the future," says the insider.

Earlier this week, Candace Cameron Bure (D.J.) told OK! magazine: "John Stamos has actually been working on a semi-remake of Full House. I know it would involve me and Jodie [Sweetin]...We would revive our characters but today as young women."

With the success of the CW's new 90210 and plans to relaunch a new version of Melrose Place, not to mention NBC's attempts at Knight Rider and Bionic Woman, clearly nostalgic TV remakes are something of a trend, but I'm told there wasn't enough interest in a House of Tanner women without either of the Olsens (who'd be about as easy to book as series regulars as God).

Extreme church websites....

2008-12-13T21:51:00.000-08:00

I am not a web guy.

I have dabbled a bit in html - published a few sites in the past - nothing big.... I do not know the ins and outs of web design....

I don't remember how I stumbled to this church's site - but I poked around for a while....

This is the most "indie" church website I have ever seen.... I don't know how that makes me feel--- There are no stock photos on the church site - in fact there isn't any pictures at all - now that is weird. I don't have a lot of experience in these new fangled plants/startups/portable churches - but being a surfacy guy - I think this church (by judging from the site alone) is too much for me. I still need church to "feel" like church for me (one day I will rant on what thing make me feel at home at a church). I guess the same is true for a church site.... I need a church website to feel like a church website - That's probably not seeker friendly I know - bit I am not a webmaster either. Who cares - I am a friggin lighting guy anyways.

I've heard a lot of good things about this church.... This church is reaching a lot of people that a lot of churches are missing or failing to reach - and that is always cool in my book. They are meeting in a Homeless shelter - not some brand new school cafeteria in a suburban area of gated communities or wherever else white people live.

Honestly, I don't really care to visit it - If they needed help with their projector or iPod hookup, I will probably help them though....
I like my church (warming up to it after three years). Check out my cool bio on the youth page.... My church just re-did their site - now we got photos (stock and originals) out the wazoo!!!

Thanks for reading....

Oh yeah, if you are actually reading my little blog - tell me... If this blog is useless - I will go back to doing random notes on facebook.

Christmas gigs

2008-12-07T08:16:00.000-08:00

So - I opened up this blog to talk about (neato) lighting stuff - sorry, I haven't done a lot of neato things lately and I haven't taken any pictures of any recent lighting stuff...

Summary of my lighting work in sermon bullet points:

~ I've been back to Southside assembly to do some more programming and revise my plot.

~ I still haven't put up the 800 Christmas lights that I bought for my house.

~ I need more side work

~ I have two gigs going on at the same night December 19 - I am running lights for a balet(sp) recital at a high school with 16 pars and some scoops - while Andrew is going out with the trackspots and LED's at a small church for their first college gathering ever

I did lighting last night at MHT for a band called "Endless Sacrafice" - they are the worship band from Evangel Temple. They did this cool Trans-Siberian orchestra thing with a pile of guitars. synths. and typical rock and roll stuff... Every 4 songs we played a video vignette with narration and text over moving backgrounds. It was pretty cool - I would actually pay to see them if I had to.... I think with some creative marketing - they can get paying gigs at churches for their Christmas programs. Anyways I bought out 4 additional Trackspots to add on to their lighting system with 3 Martin 1220's and a pile of pars. I was really stressed out and couldn't get into the music - it was wierd. I am usually pretty good at predicting music but I really struggled with this band. I made some cool looks but it was like pulling teeth. I enjoyed the music - but I really wanted it to be over ASAP.

Andrew did lights for the first 2 bands - having only ran lights at MHT once, really rocked the lights with minimal calls for help.

Thanks to Andew for taking pictures while I was running lights:

Just a typical James Tucker response to a message board topic

2008-11-28T23:27:00.000-08:00

my response to a thread titled "what do you want in a worship software" on Churchmedia.net

they always start out informative...

Impromptu Movie Night @ MHT

2008-11-27T21:20:00.001-08:00

Was fun thanks all 10 of you for coming out. We watched Pee Wee's big adventure on the big screen with full STEREO sound. I don't think that movie has been shown on a movie screen since it left the dollar theaters. Thanks to Robbie for opening up the building, letting us use his PA, and hangin out. Thanks to Stephen for the projector.

Back when I had keys and alarm codes to MHT, we used to show quite a bit of random movies:
~ Spaceballs
~ The Warriors
~ The Peanut Butter Solution
~ Toys
~ Walk The Line
~ The Business of Being Born*

There's a few more I can't remember at the moment. Maybe we'll get back in the habit of doing random movies at Midnight.

(* actually we never watched that movie - I was just seeing if my wife was paying attention)

Nathan Art

2008-11-26T23:25:00.000-08:00

Nathan had a good time on our furniture-less back porch. He created his first chalk drawings:

The Result:

He heard something (probably a car passing or something) - the sunlight shined at the perfect spot:

We've noticed more and more that Nathan prefers doing things with this left hand... Picking up the chalk, (trying) to use forks, turning on/off light switches. Looks like he's gonna be a lefty like his dad. Welcome to never having left handed scissors in kindergarten - the special green handled ones.

Oh yeah, here is some video of Nathan dancing:

(and for the record - we cut our back lawn a few hours after this video was made)

Projection for more than lyrics

2008-11-26T10:16:00.000-08:00

(click for a big picture)

All done with three projectors

Visual Worhsiper

Pretty cool - I would love to see this in person

Install Awesomeness

2008-11-24T17:03:00.001-08:00

(this is my first time describing what I did for an install - so have mercy on my descriptive abilities)

Just got done designing/supervising the installation of new lights at Southside Assembly....

Their old setup was 12 or so pars on a Strand CD-80 dimmer pack controlled by a NSI memory console...

Overall they wanted more lights (obviously) for normal worship services and special events. The pastor wanted the ability to change the way the stage looked for each sermon series. We installed 16 Leviton LEO's for specials and a pile of pars for color washes and Altar lights.

We put LED's (Chauvet Colorado 1's) along their back wall... Those things are bright...

This is what you can do with 6 led's:

The Colorado's were so bright you can even make red (usually the dimmest LED color) show up on their black wall with full stage and house lights.

As you can see you can do a variety of looks with a few led Pars. If they wanted to - they can take the LED's off their back wall and set them on the ground accenting props, musicians, etc. We also put two of the LEO's midstage to give them the ability to throw breakups on their back wall... Each sermon series they can spend $24 to buy a new pair of gobos for their back wall. The streaks against the wall is temporary - the church is eventually going to buy some spandex and other random soft goods to vary the look up more.

Another thing we added was 6 Par's and 2 Lekos for Altar and pulpit lighting on two new electrics farther in the hosue... The pastor would walk in front of the stage and have no light on him - this would greatly upset their video guy that is trying to stream the service for the internet and DVD sales.

(I don't have a picture of this) I spec'd a Fat Frog to replace their lighting controller - they wanted a contoller that would one day control moving lights. In fact - the Fat Frog was recently discontinued - Southside has one of the last Fat Frogs ever made. Another random upgrade was putting their chandeliers on dimmers.... Instead of parking their house lights at full - they can dim them for video rolls and for worhsip... Pretty cool. We replaced the CD 80 with 36 channels of NSI dimming.

The last thing we added was a simple 4 channel DMX dimmer pack that sits on stage to control small stuff like uplights on their flags, Christmas tree lights, and the occasional 500 watt work light for Jesus' tomb during the last scene of a Passion Play.

Overall the system is pretty cool - I wanted a system that if I walked in the room to play with their lights, that I could have some fun and create a lot of really nice looks.

The church leadership is happy, I am happy.

DVD stuff

2008-11-23T08:52:00.000-08:00

(wow a pointless post - I love blogging already)

Jenn and I have netflix - it is well worth the $6.99 a month I am working my way (slowly) through every season of Scrubs - it will take a while as their is 26 or so DVD's from tne show's 5 seasons.

The cool thing is you can take a risk on renting a DVD that may nit be good... Speaking of bad movies, I got Leatherheads the other day - I had high hopes, George Cloony and Jim from the office set in the 1920's....

Not good.

The other DVD thing me and Jenn discovered was those Red Box things that are in front of Wal-Marts and MC Dondalds.... $1 for a new release - pretty cool as Netflix doesn't have a lot of new releases.

Cool birthday (part 1)

2008-11-21T21:33:00.000-08:00

Well, I completed my profile and even changed the color scheme after writing my first blog post.

A lot of cool stuff happened this week.

I turned 27 on Wednesday - I got the day off of work - me, Jenn, and Nathan had a busy day.

11:00 - met my mom and dad at Best buy - they bought us a cool digital camera for our combined birthdays.

(by the way - here is the first picture we took with the new camara)

(stunning)

12:30 - lunch @ Chilli's

3:00 - back at the house - took a birthday nap

3:45 - made this video BEFORE the Ultra Sound

4:00 - Ultra Sound Appointment

Nathan took a nap during the Ultra Sound:

(best screencap ever)

6:00ish - made this video AFTER the Ultra Sound

7:30 - stopped by New Life and said hi to some folks in youth at their annual bonfire

Here is me and Shuffle - my main youth tech:

Here is Adam Zink and Brandon Zink about to play some sweet Hillsong cover tunes - on a flatbed trailer with some hay - where is Darlene Zschech when you need her?

(no I didn't do the lights)

8:00 - Dinner @ Carabbas (steak with mushrooms, fettuccini, and really good sweet tea)

the company was nice too:

We were supposed to to see The Mates of State at Freebird but one of the band members (in the two piece band) was stuck at an airport so Jenn and I did what most good American's do when they get bored - went to Wal-Mart. I bought myself a new zip up hoodie ( I also call them emo-jackets) this year I got a red one! Then we went home....

All in all a great birthday.

The next day was awesome too... will talk about that later.

The First Post

2008-11-21T21:07:00.000-08:00

So I finally decided to jump on the blog bandwagon. The wife and I got a nice camera for our birthday - so we can actually take pictures of stuff and write about it....

I am hoping to post some lighting stuff here with some pictures from my church work and freelance work.

Due to the poor economy - the freelance work has been few and far between.

Hopefuly I will remember my password and not get tired of this....

I had a few blog entries on the Myspace - nothing too cool - I complained a lot - I deleted a hand full of them.

I think I will actually stick with this if people actually read my little blog and respond - so America - its in your hands...

by the way...

these url's were already taken:
lighting.blogspot.com
thelightingguy.blogspot.com

Oh well - early bird catches the worm.