Part 2 | Rockin Lighting | Matt Mills

[00:00:00] Welcome to the TechArts Podcast.

[00:00:18] My name is DL.

[00:00:19] We are so glad to have you along for the ride.

[00:00:22] Today we will conclude our podcast on rock and lighting with Matt Mills. of it comes with the mount for you. They also send this microphone with a few other things. I get the, well before I show you that, it's got a volume control right here. It's got a USB input. You can get the version with that XLR. It's also got a headphone jack on the back of it. They also send it, like I was saying a minute ago, with some other things like this mount.

[00:01:44] So you don't have to have a fancy one like I have. You can just slick, nice looking head for your microphone. The price point is amazing too. Go to earthworksaudio.com. That's earthworksaudio.com and check them out. They are a new sponsor of the TechArts Podcast. We're so glad to have them on board. We'll have that podcast microphone

[00:03:02] hooked up and in use next time we do the TechArts Podcast. Speaking of the TechArts Podcast, the founder of Notes Pro, Eric Stoutenberg. Hey, Eric. Hey, David. Great to be here. Eric, thanks for coming on to the TechArts Podcast. Before we get to your product, tell us a little bit more about what notes pro is and how it helps churches. Absolutely, yeah. So we like to say it's the best way to share note pages with your people. So thinking sermon notes, small group curriculum,

[00:05:40] classes, all those kind of things,

[00:05:43] growth track, just a way to really create engaging

[00:06:45] Very clean. I mean, I'm 10 seconds in and I feel like I already understand what I'm looking at. So kudos on that, man. A very clean layout.

[00:06:48] Really appreciate that. That means a lot. As a developer, I try my best to make the good designs,

[00:06:54] but sometimes it doesn't come naturally. So I really appreciate that.

[00:06:58] Awesome. Yeah. So HomeBage is pretty simple, but I think we can go ahead and dive into the note editor.

[00:07:03] That's kind of where everything struggle with that right there, just finding content to put in their different places.

[00:08:21] And then you've provided it for them right there.

[00:08:24] Absolutely, yeah.

[00:08:25] Integration is the name of'd share with their people and they'd always be able to find the current week's note. You don't have to copy and paste new links to your website every week, that kind of thing. So with that being said, I'll go ahead and dive into one of these note pages. I've actually pulled it up on a sort of mock iPhone here since this is probably what your people will

[00:09:41] see. So there's a few things to call out. I've already filled out the note but So during the week, if you're wanting to kind of look back at what you did or something triggers you in a good way, biblically triggers you to look back, it's all stored right there, kind of a profile driven notes system so that you can see what you were thinking when the

[00:11:00] pastor was talking and what you what you notated there. Is that how it works?

[00:11:04] Exactly. Yeah, we really want works anywhere that has a web browser.

[00:12:23] So your laptop, your iPad, any Android phones or tablets,

[00:13:24] So all of your people, if they're signed in, you'll see them show up here. And again, our rock integration, you'll be able to jump over to rock to view them in that platform.

[00:13:30] And we'll also send check-in data over to rock as well if your torch uses rock.

[00:13:37] So yeah, a lot of things we want to do here on this analytics tab.

[00:13:41] It is a work in progress for sure and a lot more great features coming here. offering an early adopter discount. Everybody likes some free stuff. Are you giving anything away? Totally, absolutely. We are in the building stages of Notes Pro and we love feedback. We want to really just help the church. We are currently offering 50% off to the first 50 people who sign up to become an early adopter and help grow and shape the platform

[00:15:03] as we build. There are still a few spots left Plus we talk MIDI and how you can use it to better your church services. All of that is coming up right after these messages from our sponsors. Hang on. Thank you for listening to the TechArts Podcast. Be sure to tell all your friends about us.

[00:16:21] Give them the website techartspodcast.com. That's audio awesome. I could see that being used, you know, a church may not use a follow spot, but I could see that being used for a church that needs to call cues to multiple volunteers,

[00:19:00] but say they only have, you know, a front of house,

[00:19:03] you know, engineer and a 4,000 seat building. And one of the things you did as you came in and did these like on the steps, you had lights and fingers just shooting up in the air. And I thought, oh my, that just took our rig with only,

[00:20:22] I think eight lights and made it look three times as big.

[00:20:26] So I'm just curious, like what's your advice I tell people to be aware of the cameras too. You know, everybody's streaming cameras now and you have these lights that are all focused at the audience or the stage. Be aware of the cameras. So these lights that may be fingers shooting up or lights that may be shooting at the wall. I have intentionally, I think you and I spent 15 minutes

[00:21:42] or 20 minutes during one of the shows you were on with me

[00:21:45] where I had them put is I like to get a monitor at front of house so I can see what the cameras are seeing. And then I can set levels. What I may think looks good in the church or at the stage or wherever it may be, whenever you turn on that camera and turn on that monitor, it's going to be night and day difference. And you're going to either have to pump it up or bring it down some.

[00:23:04] If you have to bring it down too much whatever, you should be able to fine tune

[00:24:20] that because it would also look a little funny walking into a Sunday service and the whole

[00:24:25] room is cloudy.

[00:24:26] It's not exactly what you would, you like to have just enough haze for you to be able to see that beam, but not enough haze in the room that it feels like smoke. And I think a lot of churches make that mistake. Here's Matt who does big time concerts all over the world

[00:25:42] for the biggest artists you can think of.

[00:25:44] And he's saying as little haze as possible, I guess it's mineral oil or something of that nature. It'll spit that a bit. You need to be conscious of that, especially if you're trying to sit it on stage where people are going to be walking. For a DF-50, I'll typically turn it opposite of the stage and have a fan behind it and just let it fill the room and let the air conditioning kick it around.

[00:27:00] It'll do its job.

[00:27:02] It's amazing to me, Matt, how many people it didn't feel like a bar scene to him. And he felt really comfortable with where the lights were at and what he was seeing in the room in terms of haze. So look up the D F 50 hands down. Still the best hazer out there for doing that.

[00:28:22] And the fact that it hangs for so long, which is the oil piece of it.

[00:28:25] Again, there's some things you have to kind of deal with with that.

[00:29:22] But is there any other hazers out there? I know the DF-50, there's some negatives to it.

[00:29:24] It can be a little noisy.

[00:29:25] It's got oil in it.

[00:29:28] Is there any other hazers out there

[00:29:29] that you'd recommend that you've worked with?

[00:29:31] I like the Radiance Haser.

[00:29:32] It's good.

[00:29:33] It's been around for a while and it's tried and true

[00:29:35] and you can control it via DMX.

[00:29:37] So it's, and you have different levels.

[00:29:40] It can kind of act as a fogger if you really wanted it to,

[00:29:43] but you can control it via DMX and dial it back You're saying, hey, we just use volunteers. I mean, what's the important traits to look for in a volunteer? Obviously, the volunteer is not going to, probably not going to make lighting their whole career. So what would you look for in terms of a volunteer that wants to run lights? I would look for somebody that's intrigued by it. Somebody that's kind of like a cool new technology that they want to get their head around and, you know,

[00:31:02] mess with it, that they enjoy, you know, being able to be creative with it.

[00:32:05] creative in the skill set of lighting is something I think you should look for. Now what that means is there's going to be more mistakes. Creative people tend to push

[00:32:10] the envelope a little bit and so you'll have to set boundaries for the creativity.

[00:32:14] You don't want it to be, you know, just fly off the hinge here and be super creative all

[00:32:21] the time. You've got to have some boundaries, if you have, let's just say, a viper, you know, it's not going to do that chase as fast as your visualizer showing. And some people have a hard time dealing with that, you know, grasping that. So, you helped me learn the limitations of the lights. Therefore, it also helped me pick the lights that I needed for different shows as to what I plan programming and all that. And most of the time they'll say, hey, for this song, I'd like it to look like this, like that. Sometimes they won't. Sometimes they'll just trust their programmer to to get the feel of things and do it, then come out and give them notes if needed. And then a board op would essentially be somebody that takes the designer's show

[00:36:06] who end up being your board ops most of the time set them up for success. So just kind of keep that in mind when you're thinking about different things, especially if you're going to hire somebody,

[00:36:11] you know, and they say, hey, I do mostly lighting design, then they may not be as good at board

[00:36:17] ops as what you may need down the road. So I just used a word visualizer that a lot of people went, hmm, what is he talking about? What is a visualizer? And tell us how it helps the lighting

[00:37:43] understand what they're about to do. So a visualizer they could have pre-programmed a lot of what they did. So I like to suggest to churches you know get familiar with visualizers especially for your big productions. Now you week to week services maybe you don't need it but for your big productions it can

[00:39:00] it can very much help speed things up and kind of get things to where they need

[00:39:04] to be. So when the gear comes in, you know, a lot of most churches, they put a big screen in the middle and it's behind the band and they've got all these different images going on.

[00:40:22] Like, what's the, what do you recommend you output that and send it to the video team and then they send it to the wall. Correct. Because then the video team can choose when it goes to the wall, when it comes off the wall. Like Matt said, they can put lyrics over it. If there's an issue or a problem, they can take it off of what you're sending them.

[00:41:43] It allows also for more creativity

[00:41:46] because your lighting person is in their bubble which quote unquote the final Motley crew tour in 2014 and 2015 because growing. It just looked like a really big show. Of course Motley Crew and the Let's see. I think of, you know, any, I actually last year at Wellcome to Rockville, I was actually with two artists. I did a corn on Friday night and then Perry Farrell, James Addiction, born of her pyros on Sunday and closing it out was nine-inch nails on Sunday

[00:45:40] night. And, you know, they only had probably half their rig in there. You know, a console, I think you need the ability to do some candy, you need to be able to do some things behind the artists that make the platform look big. You need key lights for video, you need back lights. So there's some things that are musts, right? And that's going to cost money. But at the end of the day, it's the artist behind the console

[00:47:03] who's either programming it or operating it

[00:47:05] that's going to make that show or that service shows where I plan for certain lights due to bang for the buck. Like, perfect example, that three doors down tour, I believe you saw it, three doors down they had a decent budget, but it wasn't anything crazy. But I was able to get more bang for the buck out of it because I had a moving trust system.

[00:48:22] And every three or four songs,

[00:48:23] I would completely reconfigure the ring.

[00:48:26] Yeah, I mean, simple things like that, to help you all the way through to the end. You definitely wanna reach out to him, find out how he can help you. Again, that's touchlx.com or Matt's website, which is lightingprogrammer.com. I think they can email you as well at matmattouchlx.com.

[00:49:42] One of the best lighting guys I've ever worked with