This is over a week old in getting posted. I created the post title last week and then realized today that I never posted anything. What would you call that, blogheimers?
It was my weekend to be the service producer at GCC last weekend. From a producers standpoint it was a pretty low key weekend. Well, on Saturday anyway. Sunday was a different story.
I arrived Sunday morning around GCC. It was pretty chilly so I opted to ride the shuttle in from the parking lot. Just as I had sat down, Dustin, the programming director, entered the shuttle and said that he had bad news. I couldn't imagine what kind of bad news but I bit and asked what it was. Stephanie, the media operator for the weekend was sick. I'm not sure who put them there, but the words I can run the slides for worship and the song special fell from my lips. It was like one of those out of body experiences where you see yourself saying or doing things. Apparently Dustin didn't see me float up and separate from myself and was good with me running the slides. I just hoped I was good with it!
Not long ago we changed from a pc and Power Point to an apple computer and a new program for song slides called ProPresenter...or something like that. I can get around in Power Point pretty well. I hadn't done much with ProPresenter. We were about to see what I could do, however.
Fortunately we had rehearsal to go through first so at least I'd get a trial run before going live. I know our worship songs really well so running those slide went well. I had only heard the song special we were doing once on the radio (and of course twice the night before at the Saturday services) and wasn't really sure about the flow of the song or the tempo. It was time to rehearse the special and Trace started singing and the words I was running didn't match what he was singing. I panicked at first. I thought the slides were in the wrong order and Stephanie just knew the song well enough to click on the right slides then night before. I finally got caught up to where Trace was in the song and was able to follow through the rest of the song.
When they finished rehearsing the special the band was going to do a run through of the prelude so I was writing down what I thought the first slide was and was getting ready to run down and see Trace to find out what the correct words should be. For some reason I clicked on the screen and the song jumped to the top. It was there I saw the words Trace was signing at the start of the song and realize that when I brought up the word ProPresenter was brining the song up 1/2 through. I was so relieve that the song was right and I made a mental note to make sure to scroll to the top of the slides when that song started.
Everything went pretty well for all three services. I only made two errors that I was aware of and both of those were during the worship songs that I claimed to have known so well. The song special gave me no problems at all.
Having to step in and run these slides may sound like no big deal but to be quite honest I was a little worried when the first service began. Running the slides takes a lot of concentration, especially if it's not something you do regularily. Not only do you have to pay strict attention to the words but you have to know the timing to advance to the next slide all while listening to other operators talk in your headset and the IMAG director communicate to shots to the camera people on the floor.
I guess it could have been worse for me. There could have been medias to run and message slides to work through as well. I had it pretty easy really. Just the same
I was pretty tense the first service because the potential to screw up was looming over me.
Media operators I've always had respect for what you've done to help make each service the success that it is. But after being thrown into the trenches I have a new respect for what you do.
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