Those of you who know me well understand that I’m not really at all a gear head. However, I know that sometimes an upgrade is necessary. This went in earlier in the month. Quite a Christmas Gift!!

I’ll explain the project and the why behind it all in an upcoming post. The story will be a good addition the portfolio, I’m certain.

And we’re only getting started with the capacities. Tune in on Christmas Eve to see how incredible the experience translates with our clear, natural audio and the epic cinematic visual capture!

A combination of strategies I choose to utilize in my work as a Creative Director is creating algorithms for human intuition to be maximized as I help coach and reveal beauty to enhance story and experience. This is a key part of the "process architecture" that I put in place for our teams to use in our planning process: A series of questions and process guides to begin with as well as a timeline with both back burner space for peace as well as checkpoints and prototyping deadlines that each can yield an "eureka idea" to add to the plan. It’s a magical thing when both both logic and instinct are allowed to team up as part of the creative process.

So I was just consulting one of my clients about gobo choices for a design I coached them on. I’ve been asked about gobos a lot over the years. See past posts (such as http://egwolfe.com/post/some-of-my-favorite-gobos or http://egwolfe.com/post/gels-and-gobos or http://egwolfe.com/post/a-note-to-producers-about-the-lighting-cue-sheet) for further thoughts. You can search by hashtags such as #lightingdesign on the right side of the page to make searches through old posts easier. Anyway, I just gave the following advice:

Great tool for creating proposals and reports; for managing and delegation of tasks and projects; and for collaboration and ideation with live editing by multiple users both inline and with comments. It’s simple, clean, and intuitive. I love the assignable tasks. The mobile apps are good.

I wish it had a computer app instead of simply web app. I wish the filing structure was better. I wish there was a handwriting/drawing feature for note-taking, diagramming, and annotating. I wish to-dos integrated with Siri/Reminders.

Venue Creation and Lighting Design

A few years ago a friend came to me with a dream of creating a space for artists to present their music in an unique, distraction-free, beauty-filled, environment. He took me to a run down old building that literally had dirt floors and birds living in the rafters. It was freezing and dirty. All I could envision was the magic that would be. We began ideating out loud. We walked the space, and in the actual space we paced out where we would put the stage, and have people sit and enter, and where the green room for the artists would be. We used our hands to visualize what our design aesthetic would be.

I napkin sketched some ideation and kept the dream simmering in the back burner of my mind. Months passed before I got a call that the venue was approved and that we would get to take our dreams forward with reality. We put on some temporary concerts in the dirt and construction zone along the way. This was great for us as we got to braintrust our concepts by interviewing people who would be customers and investors. After many months, we finally got to integrate our V1.0 design. We were remarkably frugal with our choices so that we could open up; and at some point, we’ll upgrade to our dreams of 2.0, but it feels so great now, that we may just live with the budget version…

You should really take in a show there. It’s an unique experience found no other venue in the world! We’re really proud of it.

A couple years ago I was introduced to a talented young man at a conference. Like a lot of us in this community, Don wears many hats in his responsibilities preparing for and supporting weekend services at his church. He’s a bit of a jack-of-all-trades and has a particular aptitude and curiosity for creating beauty and helping communicate through the discipline of scenic design. This I’m sure is a big part of why we were connected. Anyway, it has been great to get to know him as we get together for coffee a few times per year. In spite of being in significantly different life stages, our conversation always flows beautifully and is rich in mutual encouragement. Not only does neither of us like to settle for a mediocre cup of coffee; but we segue that thought into dialogue of our passion for preparing a quality storytelling environment for our guests.

During one of our meetings, we were discussing everything that goes into a stage design. The next day, Don emailed to ask me if I wouldn’t mind typing some of the things out so he could chew on them further. I sent him a stream of thoughts that covered what I remembered us musing about along with a few other ideas to consider... The next time we got together, he shared the document that his leadership team uses as a guide every time they plan an event. He had reworked my thoughts into a list and he was excited to share with me stories of the fruit of our coffee meetings.

I was humbled and honored to have been useful. I hadn’t really thought about it since sending the email. For him to have taken the time to separate them into bullet points and create a document from them that was used as it was really struck me. We all want to be helpful. I think that is perhaps the most common trait of production artists. Yes, we’re all a bit geeky, but mostly we want to help people. It was a real gift to me for him to thank me in the way he did.

When I started writing this post, I thought the story about my coffee with Don was simply setting up the list that I’m including. Perhaps the list is a helpful tool. If so, cool; here's the link: egwolfe.com/post/thoughts-to-remember-when-creating-a-space-for-worship

However, I realize the greater challenge comes in at least one of the following:

Realize the genius you have to offer someone else and share it. I think that far too often, we fail to realize the unconscious competency we have in our unique areas of expertise. Especially those among us who have been working in our craft for a long time have wisdom to share in how to we make the most of our situations. It is a crime to not share the ideas we have. These "simple" ideas will likely be a profound blessing.

I encourage you to seek out (or at least seize the opportunity when it presents itself) the person you can meet with to either pour into or draw insight from. We all have busy schedules; and the thought of taking an afternoon to do something that doesn't directly accomplish a task on our todo list is difficult to justify. In the short term, perhaps so; but in the bigger picture, the mutual sharpening from the new friendship will pay off in unseen dividends.

Ask the Lord to show you who you should meet with. Commit to the building the relationship. Share with a posture of open hands and receive with an open mind.