Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Sunday service, graduation, checking out auditorium, fixing lens

Woke up a bit later on Sunday. Li Soon brought Matthew to Sunday School and at and I went to help Phil who was doing sound for the Cantonese service at 10am. Had a chance to see if the video system was working alright after Friday's re-wiring. Found out that the mother's room TV had sound but no video. Finally traced it to a cable that we did not plug in in the machine room. Found the cable and plugged them all in and got picture, got sound. Went back to the sanctuary to sit with Phil at the sound booth to understand the very nice Soundcraft MH3 mixer and loads of outboard gear. Add one more thing to the list - need to set up the audio levels for the CD recording so that it is more normalised for ripping to wma for the website. Currently, levels are too low. Will try to do it this coming week.
After Cantonese service, went back upstairs to the control room to standby in case there were any problems. They have a crew, so I didn't have to man anything. Realised that the Scan converter was set to zoom and the text was too large. Fixed that. Otherwise, everything went smoothly. Had a chance to talk to Dennis about any other problems he was facing.
In the afternoon, we brought down 1 camera from the studio to the sanctuary for the kindergarten graduation. Had lunch with the tech crew and then helped to man the remote controlled cameras for the graduation ceremony. Was interesting, having 3 remote cameras and 1 "live" camera with Alex manning it. Made for an interesting video overall.
I've seen too many kindergarten graduations in my life already. What with Cornerstone, Bethesda Frankel, and my son's 2 kindergartens, I've probably seen more than 50 by now!
After the graduation, went back to the room for a short nap before going out with Li Soon and Matthew to Stonestown mall for dinner. Food court food in the mall is more expensive than buying take-out at the Chinese restaurants near the church!

Monday morning, we all woke up kinda late. Made breakfast for Matthew. At 920am, got a call when I was in the toilet from Phil. I called back and he said he was waiting for me outside the sanctuary to go out. I totally forgot that we were going to the Scottish Rite auditorium to check it out for their ChristmasSing program in December. Hurriedly went down to meet him where he drove us to the Sunset district. Quick 10 min drive.

The hall is quite grand, but the first thing that hit us as we walked in was the musky smell. CEBC used to rent this hall back in the 90s, but has stopped for almost 8 years as they had stopped renting it out until now. The lighting system had just been recently replaced, which was a delight to Raymond, the tech crew head. However, the sound system was still of 1960s vintage, but with an older Mackie 1604 mixer. Talked with Phil about how to cover the whole hall sound wise. Probably will need pretty high scaffold or genie lift to bring the speakers to sufficient height to cover all the way to the back. The hall seats around 700+.
They will have to rent the entire sound system. May be good to use a small line array to cover the long depth. Also checked out the lighting system and tried out some effects with the scrim. Pretty cool. However, the muskiness of the place is going to be a problem as all of us developed some allergy symptoms after leaving the place. Think it might be a fungus problem. However, the guy there insists that he doesn't smell it...... right.

After returning for lunch, Phil and I checked out the camera lens problem on camera 4. After changing and checking, found that the servo for the zoom control was kaput. Changed the lens and got it to work with another lens he had. Praying that it will continue to work.

Thereafter, we rewired the inputs to the switcher and tried to get the computer graphics to key into the video properly. However, by this time, I was totally out of it as I was very sleepy. Will continue today.

1 comment:

Isaac Ong said...

Heh, Harry, could it be that the guy was too used to the smell and therefore not notice it already? =)