My Day

[Esoteric]

So today we had the people from Invisible Children in, and let me say before I start they are terrific people and I love their ministry and what they are doing. But today is one of those days when God had to be working, because everyone else was doing their best to muck things up.

So, first off, we didn't get their video until Friday to rip it to PP. They had to overnight it to us Thursday.

So I get there at my usual 7:00AM start time and am puttering around for an hour getting the projectors up, the usual stuff.

Well, their guy strolls in at 8:00AM asking if both videos are ready. My response? Both videos? We only have one.

Luckily it is on the DVD and only 4 minutes long, so we are able to handbrake it fairly quickly.

Then the video guy imports an announcement video. it is a pretty good Choma-Keyed video (considering the video guy was a college senior with no media experience 6 months ago), but the subject was very dark compared to the background. So I did my best to brighten it a bit, but I couldn't do too much because we were showing 3 other videos that also had to look good.

Then I had planned for the guests to use 2 headsets. Turns out one of the headsets is broken, and all of our hand held wireless are all of a sudden MIA. So, when they ask for a stick mic, we have to scramble to find one. In an episode of terrible miscommunication, they grab the BGV mic and we load in a preset EQ, erasing the EQ for the BGV (which the sound guy doesn't tell me until after he does it). So we have to switch channels.

Then the guest speaker grabs the BGV mic instead of the mic they were supposed to use.

Then, our sound guys are used to people muting their own mics, well these guys don't and so they just set down the mic and we get a great big click, buzz, feedback!!! Ugh. Well the first sound guy gets this worked out, but of course the second and third guys don't get the note until it is too late (because of everything else going on).

Then I discover the brilliant plan for our satellite campus. The pastor is going to speak at our main campus and then drive to the satellite campus and speak and then drive back and speak and then drive back and speak. Brilliant eh?

So finally at the 4:30 service the tech guy decides to install a new version of our lighting software. The only problem? We can't figure out how to make the new program work and it has taken over all the USB ports so the old version of our program refused to work until we uninstalled both and reinstalled the old version. So we did our 4:30 service without lights.

All this, and many, many more headaches but in proof that God does not need us to work, the previous record for scholarships at one location for them was 30. In the first three services there were over 60 scholarships given!!

Mike

[katanna]

Every Saturday night I pray that we, as tech guys in the sound booth, deliver a distraction free worship environment for our congregation. However it have been proven many times that God sometimes has other plans! Remember that we can only do all we can, anything past that we have to leave to God!

Today, 7 minutes before one of our services I was told that our pianist needed an Aviom unit, which involves grabbing one of the units, setting it up, finding some headphones, repatching the Aviom cables so she can get the right channels, and giving her a list of what channels are which. This is on top of everything else we still have to do before the service starts (set up the choir microphones, get the band off stage, etc.). But again, God prevailed, everything came together!

Matthew

[Arlin]

Then, our sound guys are used to people muting their own mics

I have found it MUCH better if the sound tech handles on/off muting themselves at the board. I say people using the mics should not have to think about it... that is the sound guys job. The users should be able to just grab their mic and do their thing.

This especially solves the problem of the users flipping the switch the wrong way... they might turn it off when they wanted to turn it on or vice versa, or forget to do anything at all.

For wireless mics, my #1 rule is:
If it is not in storage, then it MUST BE TURNED ON!
If it is in storage, then it MUST BE TURNED OFF.

[Esoteric]

I agree Arlin. Our worship guys don't. So I roll with it. Plus our Pastors have gotten used to turning mics on and talking whenever they want. They dont like being controlled.

[waynehoskins]

Our guys are used to muting their own mics, and so far it's worked out well with very few problems. It was that way when I got here five years ago (when there was but one wireless mic), and it works for us. There have been a few times (and by that I mean very few) where they forget to mute, or get the switch backwards, or forget to unmute -- but in those rare cases, I usually catch it quickly.

But in our case, there are but three wireless: two body packs and one handheld, and they're only used for things like announcements and sermon -- the band are all hardwired. I'm usually pretty aggressive on the mutes anyway, though realistically very little bad would happen if I left everything open for the whole service, and we virtually never have people walking up to speak unplanned. It works pretty well for us.

I've had those days too -- thankfully not in a fair while, but they do happen. It really is quite comforting that, while we do strive to be transparent and free from distraction and all, God's work isn't dependent on us.

[jksbc]

Satan must have been working overtime yesterday. Immediately following the countdown video I cued up the background loop and first song on PP. I saw the beachball start spinning and sure enough, LOCK! I had to hard boot the iMac and it took the entire length of the first song. It was by the grace of God that the worship band remembered the lyrics to the first song. They don't use music stands and rely on the confidence monitor when they don't remember them. Whew, I got it back up and running before the second song which was one we hadn't done in a while. This is something that has never happened. I am going to have to look into it. I believe the iMac may need some RAM added to it.
I was very blessed by the comments made by church members after the service. All of them were very encouraging and positive.

[scottengstrom]

LOL And until I came here I thought I was the only one having all these problems. HAHA. I'm not alone, I'm not alone yipeeeeee..