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Here are few more pictures from week 2 in the new theater.
Please look carefully at this picture. This is a picture of several staff kids playing together in one of the new Kids City rooms at the Yellow Box Saturday night.
That is my daughter in the blue dress playing in the kitchen. The boy behind her having way too much fun with the fake microwave is Andrew Girdwood, son of CCC Financial wizard, David Girdwood.
But the best part is Joey Metcalf, son of the new Icon service Campus Pastor, Eric Metcalf, pushing the purple baby stroller..... and I would go as far as saying, "pushing that stroller with GUSTO!"
He will make a fine father some day, just like Eric!
It is finally here. Today was the Grand Opening of the new venue at the Yellow Box. We had staggering numbers in attendance this weekend. Tons of new families, so all the hard work was worth it. (My wife has been a SAINT the last 6 weeks while I was gone all of the time!) Here are some videos and photos. As always from my cheap digital camera, so no audio and bad video. Enjoy!
I have had many requests from people asking for specific information on who we contracted with for supplies in the new theater. I won't list what we paid on the blog, but I will give you all the information you would want otherwise. (If you need specific price information, E-mail me.)
The Barco ScreenPro II system. We used three machines. One for each screen. The first is the controller and machines 2 and 3 work in remote mode.
Each machine allows you to create two Picture-in-Pictures per screen, plus key and logo over the top of those. By having three, you can create the "pseudo" wide screen effect with an image that moves across all three screens. In reality, it is not wide screen at all. You are programming each machine to take the exact same video source, blow it up three hundred percent, and then only project 1/3 of the image. So the right screen is blowing up the image 300% and then just showing the right 1/3 of the image, the center is showing the center 1/3 and the left the left 1/3.
To attain that effect, you obviously must take an image and blow it up heavily. In the videos I have posted so far, we used normal jumpbacks. When you are standing on stage, you can see we are pushing the resolution after blowing them up so big. So we have now switched to HD jumpbacks to give us the resolution we want. Those look much better. I will post some footage of that video after this weekend.
You could just have those machines and program on them. You could possibly do everything you need by using the front panels of the machines to program, but it would get really old really fast. So they make controller machines that slave the Screen Pro IIs and allow you to both program quickly and most importantly save "presets" of programs. This is the feature that matters. I can spend a couple hours programming several different "looks" with the controller and then save each "look" on a preset button. So a volunteer from a different ministry can come in, press one button, and the machine will run a DVD in the center screen and PowerPoint on the outside screens, press another button and run a jumpback across all three screens with lyrics overlay. As long as you have one person who can initially program the machine, it is very "user-friendly" for volunteers. All of our training has gone awesome and the tech volunteers at our Student Ministry and Connections Women's Ministry have picked it "no problem".
These components are the machines that I went to California for 2 weeks to train on. (Barco HQ.) Besides learning to program the machines, the training was instruction on how to install and set-up the system.
We also added a Matrix Router to our system to allow us the ability to automatically send any of 12 video sources to any machine instantly. We bought the Folsom (now owned by Barco).
You can only buy these machines from dealers. We used Enhanced View Services to purchase our machines through Barco. They deal in used machines also, if you are feeling lucky.
Enhanced View Services
877.873.3843
For our projectors, we used the new Eiki LC-XT4U. They are 12,000 lumen projectors that we can feed straight in with DVI cables from the Screen Pro IIs (with DVI boosters in-line). As far as power and brightness, I love them. But you will have to ask me what I think in two weeks, because I have to send two of them in for repair already. Not happy about that!
We purchased our projectors at Touchboards.com.
Touchboards.com
866.942.6273
The trussing structure we designed specifically for that space. The vendor used for that was Applied Electronics. They specialize in stage truss, stage roofs and fixtures. I would say these guys were extremely helpful. What we were building was child's play compared to the stages they equip, but they had all kinds of suggestions and tips for us. In one instance, they suggested a monster truss hinge that we didn't know existed. They also held our order for us until the exact day we needed it shipped. We couldn't have the supplies on site until we had occupancy, but we needed them there immediately after we got it. They waited for our call and then sent it out the next morning. Liked these guys!
We went with the 12X12 box truss. It looks much bigger than the 8X8 and lights up REALLY, REALLY nice. We used a bunch of cheap $85 LED lights and they worked perfectly.
Applied Electronics
800.883.0008
For screens, we used Da-Lite Permwall, Damat surface 9X12 screens. Da-Lite is really the only company in the game making screens. They have the market cornered, but they make really good stuff.
We purchased our screens from United Visual.
United Visual
800.226.1131
