One Man's OOPS is Another Man's Treasure

One of the things that I've learned in years of doing large scale sets and projects it to constantly shop the "oops" bins at the local hardware stores. My family laughs when we go to Lowes or Home Depot and I head for the paint departments. I'm always looking for a great color and a good bargain.

The last two sets we've done at The Ritz Theater have been totally with "oops paint" from our local hardware store. I go in with a color in mind, and if I can find it or close to it--I go for it. This set for Southern Hospitality needed a blue--but not a bright blue. I found a gallon of bright blue and 2 brown gallons and combined them together for this look. And the grand total...$15.00 for 3 gallons of paint. I even had some left.

So--check out these bins when you go to these stores. One man's "oops" might end up being your treasure.

RT: What is oops paint?

How To Mix Oops Paint

Creative fuZion

It's Creative fuZion day over on Dorothy's site, where we all get together and share something creative that we've done.



I guess some people wonder where I got my bent for visuals in worship. I don't know that I could place my finger on a certain day or event (I've always enjoyed arts, photography, etc) but I guess my connection with it in worship began with the Technology For Worship Conference in Dallas when The Midnight Oil team talked about Metaphors and what was happening at Granger Community Church. It was like a light bulb went off and I said "yeah, I get it, I see it and love it--give me some more"

I did some visuals at my church in the late 90's but it wasn't until 2001 when I landed at a church in the Metroplex that was moving to a new facility with large screens and lighting that I began to see the potential for this in worship. The above pics are from that church.

This was our ORDINARY DAY WITH JESUS in January of 2004. Some people called it our Mardi Gras Set. It was the next step in our use of visuals. These are just ordinary (no pun intended) items from Lowes; concrete forms painted for the columns; insulation board and my all time favorite, Wal Mart $1 fabric.

During this series we also did worship pathway stations (based upon the book SACRED PATHWAYS (by Gary Thomas) where we had the congregation identify their pathway. (Boy, I took some hits from our ultra traditionalist when they came into the room that day--I remember our Interim Pastor coming up to me with my emotional blood on my hands and him saying "Don't own that--that's their issue-not yours"- Thanks Bruce for that!) Oh by the way, I'm a Sensate, if you couldn't tell.

Alright, in honor of Mardi Gras (just passed) I present my stage design for ORDINARY DAY.

Test your Sacred Pathway here.

Where did you get your bent for visuals in worship?

Creative Chaos-New Set

We started our new series last week on RELATIONSHIPS.  Our metaphor for RELATIONSHIPS is The Front Porch (where people used to spend a great deal of time getting to know their neighbors).  We leaned heavily upon Frazee's MAKING ROOM FOR LIFE in introducing this series.

• I sketched the Porch in Sketchup and gave the specs to the builder.  
• I secured the screenporch and the windows from our local theater ( a great resource that usually goes untapped).  The porch is 10' wide and 8' tall.  
• It sits on a platform that we built two years ago for the STEWARDS 'R US series.  
• The porch light is the original porch light of the church that was unused.  
• The yard light is from our NARNIA series.
  
• The rocker is our pastor's and he preached from the front porch last weekend.

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This post is part of CREATIVE CHAOS over on Ragamuffinsoul.com

Worship Post-Fessional, July 27, 2008

This post is part of Sunday Set List over on FredMcKinnon.Com.  Each week worship leaders post what their sets were for the week.  I met Fred in person last week at the NWLC.  This is the first Sunday for Set List--I'm anxious to see what others are doing.  

When we go to conferences like NWLC, I'm always heartened that our church is singing some of the best songs written today.  And, we continue to polish up the old hymns and do them in new ways so as not to abandon our past.   Just a thought here....

Here is our list this week.

O Worship The King (Tomlin)

Sing To The King ( Foote)

I Will Sing of My Redeemer (Ortega)

Show Me Your Ways (Fragar)

What Can I Do (Baloche)

I Stand Amazed (Jernigan)

The Wordle above is from this morning's teaching in Proverbs 6--can you guess what the topic was?

So, how was your Sunday?

Creative Chaos--Christmas In July-What Gives?

This post is part of the Creative Chaos over on RaggamuffinSoul--where the creatives gather each Thursday to exchange ideas big and small.



It's July and I'm thinking about Christmas. It's crazy, I know, but in the field of worship and music minsitry you have to start thinking about Christmas in July.  Consequently you are thinking about Easter at Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July at Christmas.  It's a messed up world.

I thought I would blog this time about a Christmas set that we did a couple of years ago at my former church.  The first picture you see is the Worship space.  It was wide open with theatrical lighting and such.  The Christmas production we were doing called for a massive procenium arch and red velvet curtain.  Yea! Right--who has one of those laying around that you can rent.

So, necessity and creativity forced us to think outside the box.  The second picture you see is the schematic of the arch.  We used (4) 4X8 luan sheets across the top and (2) down the side to create the opening.  We framed them with 1''x4''x8' boards to create our box.  We hoisted the four cross pieces up on a lift and chained them to the inside light cove just above the stage.  We attached the side pieces with small screws and presto we had a stage.  

The red velvet curtain was actually red gossamer from Stumps Party supplie.  We had about 25-30  15' lengths attached to a ledger board and screwed them in to the top of the arch.  It didn't have to open or close--but just provide a background for the performace.  You can tell by the pictures that the colors really popped off the stage.  I think we spent less than $150 to create this look.  The large holly leaves were blown up using a overhead projector, think insulation board and paint.

So--what tricks do you ahve for Christmas sets?

CREATIVE CHAOS--The Walmart $1 Fabric

One of the best resources that we've found in our move to staging and set design in our church has been the Wal-Mart $1 fabric bin. Yep! You heard it right. I am a regular customer of the fabric area when we're doing a set design or a set change. I'm constantly on the look out for new colors and textures that work well on stage. I'm always looking for those stretch fabrics that work as shapes and objects on stage. Althougth they come in small quantities, you can usually find more than one of the same bolt, or complimentary colors that can fill out your needs.

The picture below is of our set last May where we bought out the bin on these two colors and h

ung the materials from ceiling to floor in our worship space. It actually worked better to stretch it from top to bottom than from side to side.

I've become such a regular customer of the fabric area, they are constantly asking "What are you making this time?" And since we've purchased so much in the past, we have a storage closet now where we can pull materials for displays and events without having to purchase over and over again.

This post is part of Creative Chaos over on Ragamuffisoul.

Watercooler Wednesday-- Necessity: The Mother of Creativity

Nothing like being the last one to the watercooler on Wednesday (and in the evening when everyone has gone home!). It's VBS week here--and we're working all day and serving all night. Most evenings I've seen the early morning before hitting the hay. I haven't had much time to blog and something went really screwy with my blogger template on Sunday night. I won't have time to fix that until this weekend. So, yes, I know that my blog is whacked--any help would be greatly appreciated you XML-CSS gurus.

Before and After Shots!
Here are some shots of the set up for this week at VBS.

We have to set up everything--everyday.  They use the Boys/Girls club for activities during the day.  We arrive @ 4:30 to set up and get it ready. I titled this NECESSITY: The Mother of Creativity because we had something else planned for the week and only learned like last Thursday of our set up/take down schedule.  So, we punted--used some pole and drape and a stretch shape for the projection and reused the tarps from an old series for deco (JVO--you like our tarps--they were inspired by you and will be reused for family camp in the later summer)

It takes less time to take down--as usual, but it has worked well, better than I expected.

So-let creativity guide you when you're stumped.  Necessity is sometimes the greatest prompter of new ideas and work arounds.

This post is part of Watercooler Wednesdays

Creative Chaos- Google Sketchup:The Tool of Pros

I was excited to see in the latest issue of LIVE DESIGN magazine that the Set Designer for American Idol, Adam Walmsley, uses Google Sketchup for his intial drawings and presentations for his set designs. These are a few examples from his site.

I found Google Sketchup last fall and have done some preliminary planning and drawing with it for our set design.  That post is here.  I'm most impressed with it's ability to model situations using Google Earth (you can look up your site and model your building given the parameters of Google Earth's information for your location).

You can learn the tutorials at the Google site or the www.go-2-school.com portal which has excellent teaching resources.  The two DVD's from Go-2-school would probably be worth it since individual classes for these courses are $300 or more.

Just passing along to others where I've found the goods.

This post is part of Creative Chaos on Ragamuffinsoul.com.  Thursday's are the days that creatives share the tricks of the trade on Carlos' site.

Backdrops

These are our backdrops for our series WINDS OF CHANGE... you may think it odd that we have windmill and wind turbines in the church--but we sit in the midst of some of largest Wind turbine farms in the US (sorry California!) Our metaphor for this series is the wind (same wind--different uses); how the same God is still doing amazing things and changing lives today like he did in biblical times. These backdrops came from BACKDROPS.US (www.backdrops.us). They are airbrushed on to light weight muslin and have a hemmed pocket at the top for shearing on to a pole (we just clamped them up.   I sent them two High Res pictures from our series graphic and they got them back to me in 9 days from the time I ordered. Amazing. We have people come and stare at them. Had a funeral in there this week--they wanted them left up (that's a change since we've taken everything down before for funerals). We're very pleased with them and will use them as a resource again.

We built two light boxes with backlit paper from HP (re: large scale printer post back in February). We used leftover light fixtures that were taken down from an office (thanks JVO for the suggestion) and basically built a frame and blacked out the sides. These will transform for our summer camp later this year. It's given me an idea to do some taller ones or different shapes and use the backlit material or fixture covers painted to give a neat effect.

This post is part of CREATIVE CHAOS over on Carlos Whittaker's web site RAGAMUFFINSOUL.COM