Thursday, April 28, 2011

Lights, Camera, Action, Easter!

The last few weeks before Easter were extra busy ones for us. For a variety of reasons, we got a late start on our Easter production and so Steve and I, along with our music/drama team, basically ended up writing (and endlessly editing) a script, working out music and video elements, building a set, putting into place fairly complicated lighting, getting fog machines geared up, training the dance team for their number—all in the space of about four weeks.

Steve went up and down this ladder . . .

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. . . at least forty times as he was getting the lights into place. And for a man who doesn’t care much for heights, that was quite an accomplishment!

There were meetings with different teams . . .

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. . . and the pondering of various gizmos and gadgets.

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Steve also worked with “Jesus” in planning out some of his movements.

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The lighting for the tomb had to be looked into . . .

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. . . and the resurrection itself planned.

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After the resurrection scene was done, one of our team members performed a sign language number to the Nicole C. Mullens song, “Redeemer.” It was absolutely gorgeous (And it was made even more special by the fact that it was taught to her by Meagan, our fabulous future daughter-in-law.)

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Sarah was a part of the dance team which she loved.

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After one of the rehearsals where we were experimenting with the fog machine, I took some random pictures of the floating fog and later saw what looked like a bird floating through the air.

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A few final photos . . .

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The production turned out very well which we were glad about; however, more importantly, we have heard many reports since Sunday of how it touched people’s hearts.

We have such a wonderful story to tell and we are honored to have the chance to tell it in a fresh, creative way.

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Comments

Ericka said, As a follow up to the question somebody asked about photo storage, I have 2 more questions:


How do you deal with the impermanence of electronic media? Do you print photos/blog entries so that your grandkids and great grandkids will still be able to see them even after CDs or thumb drives are no longer used?


I often worry about this. If we never print photos and online writings, there will never be boxes in the attic for our great grandkids to look through and I hate that. The electronic media will be lost as the ability to access each type of storage device dies, which tends to happen rapidly.

Ericka, wow—that’s a great question.

I agree with you that we have lost something in life when there are no longer boxes in the attic of precious things for grandkids to rummage through. Looking at pictures on a digital device just sort of loses a little something when compared to taking actual pictures out of a box and passing them around to siblings or parents and sharing all those wonderful memories encompassed in every shot.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with online companies that will scan your extra special photos for you and print them out. I’ve yet to use this company called Scan My Photos but when I get some extra money gathered up, I already have some pictures set aside that I’m going to send in to have them turned into prints. I realize that it is possible to scan photos at home but if you have 500 or 1000 that you want to make into prints, it gets a bit time consuming.

As for printing out blog entries—that’s something I’ve not thought about a whole lot. Considering the fact that I’ve written over 700 posts with an average of 600-1000 words per post, that would be a whole lot of printing and too big of a job for my home printer. And yet I sure do hate the thought of ever losing all that.

If any readers have any ideas you’d like to share on answering this question, Ericka and I would both love to hear from you!

12 Had Something To Say (Just click here!):

Abigail said...

I think this is the best series of photos you've post so far. Dramatic lighting, interesting angles, and a good story (production of large project with a lot of emotional investment) told. Well done.

Jessica Kramasz said...

Blogger will turn your blog into a book, but I don't know what it costs.

Jessica Kramasz said...

Heres more info on creating a book from your blog:
http://www.bloggertipsandtricks.com/2009/10/make-blog-into-book-including-photos.html

Sue G said...

This looks like it was a magnificent production. I am sure your congregation was touched by its content and marveled at the talent and creativity that went into presenting it.

Thank you for sharing that with us.

momto3 said...

Please remember Nick Franca and his family, they were told today that there is nothing else to be done and that he only has days left.

Debbie Waters

Miss Judy said...

For those interested, Nick's address is: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/francafamily

Hugs & Blessings,
Judy

becky m said...

I send all my pictures over to snapfish. i had lost a lot of photos awhile back of my 1st when he was a baby because of a comp crashing. they hold on to them and you can get prints whenever you like. Ive even done notebooks,t shirts and collage photos as gifts with my photos.

Anonymous said...

Beautiful, beautiful photos, Becky; what an eye you have! As for photos, make sure that you have your hard drive backed up by a service like Carbonite; that way, regardless of computer crashes, hurricanes, or other unforseen events, you can retrieve those precious memories. As for blog printing, I had the first 100 posts on my old blog printed by Blog2Print. It was somewhat pricey but invaluable. Perhaps a Google search will turn up some promo codes for good deals... I know that Adam LOVES looking through my blog book.

Denise said...

These are gorgeous photos, Becky!

For the issue of archiving photos: a number of years back, after 9/11 (I'm a New Yorker) and Katrina, I decided to digitize everything. I scanned about 2000 photos, old yearbook pages, documents, articles I'd written, even awards from school. I put them on an external hard drive, on CDs and on flash drives. My rationale was that in an emergency I couldn't take all my photo albums, but I could put a flash drive in my pocket. A number of my yearbooks/etc. were stolen last year when they were being mailed to my new home, so I am especially glad to have all those things digital!

And yes, scanning 2000 photos and about 300 documents did take a while, but I tackled it an album at a time.

For making those photos tangible, I like putting together photo books with Kodak Gallery and Blurb.

Karen said...

Becky,

Take those pictures you need scanned to your local Target store. You can scan them on Kodak's Rapid Print Scanners they have attached to the Kodak Picture Kiosk....you can put up to 200 pictures on a CD for less than $20. It only takes a few minutes to scan hundreds of photos...really.

The Pennington Point said...

Great pictures! I hope it all went well. I'm reading backwards through your last couple of weeks of posts. How fun! Lisa~

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