Things I Like: Aside from the Bible, if I could make only one book required reading for those involved in church tech and performing arts it would be Francis A. Schaeffer’s Art and the Bible. Schaeffer offers “a Christian perspective” on the arts. Not just arts within the confines of the church but within the whole of life. Schaeffer addresses architecture, statuary, bas-relief, poetry, painting, music, drama, and dance; occuring in the secular marketplace and within the church. Biblical support…
This week’s “Things I Like” is a book, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (Unabridged), authored by Tim Wu. Wu, trained as an Attorney has held positions as a Columbia Law School professor, contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, Obama administration Senior Advisor to the Federal Trade Commission and National Economic Council member. Most notably, Wu coined the phrase “net neutrality.” Tim Wu takes us through the history of United States communications; from telegraph and…
This installment of Things I Like: LEAD . . . For God’s Sake! A parable for finding the heart of leadership (Unabridged) by Todd G. Gongwer To be honest with you, I am not typically a fan of “leadership books” and as a result have not spent much time reading in this genre, however I heard someone I deeply respect (my son) make mention of this book and decided to look into it. LEAD . . . For God’s Sake!…
This “Things I Like” are an inexpensive set of in-ear buds I found out about from Scott Devine’s “Scott’s Bass Lessons” YouTube channel. The in-ear buds are manufactured in China by a company called KZ. The model I bought is called the ZST and they are available via Amazon for the meager sum of $18.69 USD. The Pros: Very comfortable (including various sized tips) and lightweight. The cable retains its shape to aid in holding the bud securing in the…
The folks at the tech website Engadget have produced a video entitled, “HDR10, Dolby Vision, and HLG: How does high dynamic range video work?” While explained from the consumer (not the content creator, production) perspective, Engadget does an admirable job attempting to explain REC709, REC2020, some of the various HDR (High Dynamic Range) standards and what improvements and challenges each offer. For churches that are wary about a potential eventual migration to 4K/UHD; HDR in 1080 resolution may offer dramatic…
This week’s “things I like” is a 2011 movie I happen to stumble upon on Amazon Prime entitled, “Thunder Soul.” Executive Produced by Jamie Foxx, the film offers the true story of a 1970’s Texas High School stage-band music teacher who inspired not only his students but the entire student body and community at large transforming a student jazz band into a legendary funk powerhouse. For those of us involved in church tech-arts that are inclined to quickly dismiss all…
Let’s face it lighting without haze is the equivalent of looking at your Christmas tree lights from across the living room… they can be pretty, but nothing to write home about. However, when we add haze to a room and shoot some lighting beams through it, we can make an entirely different, immersive, amazing, mind-blowing, awesome, 3-dimensional experience. Our auditorium seats around 700. We use some decent lighting gear along with IMAG. However, our old, water-based hazer produced something more…
Have you ever seen a behind-the-scenes video from a feature film and the movie Director is walking around with what appears to be a film camera’s viewfinder attached to a film lens with a pistol grip? That’s called a “Director’s Viewfinder.” It allows the Director to see for himself/herself what a particular lens’ focal length will produce in field-of view. They use this to visualize a scene, insure that the lens will capture the view needed, as well as to…
Do you know how to clean your camera’s or projector’s lens the correct way? We have a really good post on the subject here on controlbooth.tv which includes a detailed kit list in case you want to put together your own lens-cleaning go-to bag. To augment this post I recently found the following video from The Black and Blue below. How to Clean a Camera Lens Without Damaging the Glass Tom D'AngeloTom D’Angelo has worked in television production and AVL…
Ever need to figure out how many gigabytes of storage your video recording will take at a certain resolution, frame rate or codec? Ever need to compute how many hours of footage you can fit on a certain drive size? This week’s “Things I Like” is Aja’s DataCalc, an iOS app, and it can do all those calculations whether you use a Aja recorder or not! Pros • Computes space requirements for many codecs including 8bit YUV, 8bit RGBA, 10bit…