Let's talk lighting with Matt Mills. Matt has worked with Motley Crew, Korn, Sammy Hagar, 3 Doors Down, Disturbed, Linkin Park, Michael Buble and more!
techartspodcast.com can attest to the AND MORE part of that statement, as we have worked with Matt on a couple Church Theatrical productions that had thousands of people turning out to see an amazing show of lights, video and sound. Plus we worked together on a few worship concerts, including one that produced a top 5 live worship album in the church market.
Listen to this podcast and start getting answers to questions like, when you have a limited budget, what lights do you start with? Should you automate? What do you look for in a Volunteer? Matt also goes over the powerful follow me system! That's this month's church tech tip. Plus, we talk to Tone Stevens about his In ear Training events.
Tons of content and a fun show! Check it out today!
[00:00:00] Welcome to the TechArts Podcast.
[00:00:18] My name is DL so glad to have you joining us today.
[00:00:22] Today's podcast revolves around lighting.
[00:00:25] We interview Matt Mills. digico, go to digico.biz. These guys make the best consoles on the market. Once again, that website is digico.biz. All right, I wanna stop right here and do just a little bit of a family thing. So I'm a parent, my son is 16 years old, he just turned 16.
[00:01:41] And for his birthday, I thought,
[00:01:42] hey, son, what do you want for your birthday?
[00:01:45] And of course he gave me a list,
[00:01:46] but one of the that he's done. And he's really proud of him. I'm really proud of him. So go to his YouTube channel at Mythic Studios Films. Subscribe to it. Wish him a happy birthday and check out some of the films. You know what? If your
[00:03:01] son or your daughter is wanting to get into animation, you may be able to see
[00:03:05] something there that inspires them because Justin, my son, has done all of Yeah. Man. So where are you at? I'm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. That's awesome. And you say 70 degrees? Yeah, it's like 67, 73 right now. Oh man, you got it sweet. Tell our audience who doesn't know who you are. Kind of tell us a little bit about yourself. So my name is Tony Stevens. I started out in the industry doing some extracurricular
[00:04:21] activities in studios in New York. I got the had to have all the original and then we picked a crazy cover for them. That's a brief overview. Oh, I worked for a church called worship center for six years right before the pandemic
[00:05:41] and then I launched out into this real massive passion for community.
[00:05:45] You know what's like, I always believed you'd be a pastor. I'll never be a pastor, but I'll be pastoral. Yeah, it's cool man to hear that testimony. But Tony, it's brought you here today where you now have some cool events that are helping the church market. And on the Tech Arts Podcast,
[00:07:02] we like to point out these cool things that are going out there that people may not know about. um host the event and actually co-present the an event in these different regions. Um so we're starting here in rock litits at on the rock litus campus using studio a and mikki's black box um which are two amazing venues for once for rehearsal and once an actual theater that was built by michael tate um and it's only been open for like a year now um but october ninth and tenth
[00:08:20] will be here in rock litits and it'll be d&b's doing their mix kitchen um for audio is going to be like you who have a heart for sharing their wealth of knowledge. So that's the journey. Well, you know what's really neat about this event and other events is a lot of churches that I visit say, David, we don't know where to turn to get education. We don't know where to turn to help understand and navigate some of these complicated things. You know, when you're a small church
[00:09:42] and boom, all of a sudden you get in years thrown on today, man. Absolutely, thank you for having me. Our next guest's resume will blow you away. He has worked with Motley Crew, Corn, Sammy Hagar, three doors down, disturbed, Lincoln Park, Michael Blue Blay, and more.
[00:11:03] I can attest to the and more part of that statement
[00:11:07] as I have worked with him You've got me into a lot of concerts over the years. Pretty much anytime I'd roll through Dallas, you know, if I had time, I'd hit you guys up and say, come on out. Yeah, I think the three doors down was in Orlando, Florida. That's where we first met on, what was the production? It was Gabriel's Christmas story, right? Yeah, it was at a Calvary Church there.
[00:12:22] I hope I'm saying that, right?
[00:12:23] Yeah, it was a production going on over there
[00:12:25] and you guys had did a couple years of that together. I think so. I think it was back to back. Yeah, that was fun. That was a fun time. And then I brought you out to Dallas to work on Gateway Church. You did several of our live recordings. Like I said in the intro, one of them placed in the top five in terms of the church market sales. That was fun too. And that's when
[00:13:43] I started to really see, I think you were in the kitchen. But I thought it was really cool how you kind of flowed with things and helped tie it all together, ultimate professional that you were. But before we get into some of the lighting stuff, talk family, man. Where do you live? Where are you at? Tell me a little bit about yourself.
[00:15:03] So I live in Winter Garden, Florida, which is a sure a show is good and all that and just you know kind of helping them out. And he saw, whenever we were working together, he saw a picture on my desktop that pictures changed, you know, every couple minutes or whatever. He saw a picture of my son focus in Aliko. He's 14 years old and he's done a couple high school productions.
[00:16:23] He's in the theater theater production group at high school. And, but then everybody was really cool about it. You know, all the people at front of the house were high-fiving them, tell them, yeah, man, you got this, you got this. And whenever the time came, you know, he ran a song called Five Minutes Alone. And he killed it. And yeah, that was pretty proud. Proud dad moment. Yeah. Proud dad moment. You nailed it there.
[00:17:40] That's so cool.
[00:17:40] Yeah, I heard that story.
[00:17:41] And I wanted to make sure you got a chance to tell it
[00:17:43] because it just, it kind of made me think of,
[00:17:46] you know, I started volunteering of assault, or actually throughout one of the songs, he's just throwing flames all over the place.
[00:19:00] So yeah, you, you were Nikki six's flame throwing
[00:19:03] bass guitar.
[00:19:05] I will never forget that moment.
[00:19:06] I didn't really console, the intensity, the color changes, the fade-ins, the fade-outs, all that stuff.
[00:20:20] And what's great is we just have people sitting at a concert, whether it be a theatrical production. And honestly, in the church market, they've just eliminated. They don't have follow spots on a Sunday morning because they just weren't reliable or it was a circle and just kind of looked weird.
[00:21:42] And so what intrigued me about this
[00:21:44] is how it could revolutionize the church market at the stage. And it's got four or four or five calibration points where you put this dot downstage center, downstage right, downstage left, upstage left, upstage right. And then you tell it, you enter into the follow me system, how far away from downstage center is downstage right.
[00:23:00] And the same thing for downstage left,
[00:23:01] then how far upstage and left and right. So, you know, if a church wants to figure this product out, buy it, maybe even, I don't know if you do this, but bring you in to train them like, what's the best way to get ahold of the follow me 3D tracking system? Can they contact you or do they need to do something else? No, they can contact me. And in fact, I recently went out to a country artist used it. Plus talk what we should look for in a lighting app. We're going to talk about all of that with Matt right after this message from our sponsors. Hang on everyone. Thank you for listening to the Tech Arts Podcast. Be sure to tell all your friends about us. Give them the audio, video lighting.com. That's audio, video lighting.com. Welcome back everyone. We are talking with Matt Mills in how to get a lighting system that rocks. So Matt, let me start off with this question.
[00:27:02] What is the most important piece of the lighting rig?
[00:28:04] So that's why you heard Matt just say, hey, the wash because you want to be able to see face
[00:28:07] First and obviously you want to be able to do backlights But the Mac kind of what order should people buy things in because there's a lot of pressure especially on the music side
[00:28:14] To do something that looks cool
[00:28:16] And when you say hey buy wash lights and like that doesn't look cool
[00:28:20] So kind of lay out a path that gets somebody to the cool lighting rig that they want
[00:29:28] option as well. Another easy way to make things look pretty cool on stage is get some vertical truss in there on stands and you can set a light on top of it and you can throw a simple LED
[00:29:34] light inside the base of it and tone the truss and you can move that around every week and
[00:29:40]