Failure
By Stewart H. Redwine

I distinctly remember sitting back stage at my Performance Art final when my stomach turned to lead and sunk to the Earth’s core. At least, that is what it felt like when I realized the intricately designed live switching between performance, remote camera, several audio feeds, and pre-recorded video was not patched correctly. I couldn’t figure it out; I had everything worked out perfectly just before the show. Then it dawned on me, that at the last minute one of the other students wanted to switch the order of performances so I patched her video deck into the projector. You guessed it! At the end of her performance I forgot to patch my master audio/video feed back in. I felt like I was going to throw up. But I couldn’t because my stomach was made out of lead and was now located in the Earth’s core.

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Reflections on The Princess Bride
By Mark Carroll

Recalling a movie I’ve seen usually brings back certain details: where I saw it, who I was with, my first reaction and where I was in the journey of life (including spiritually). My first experience with The Princess Bride was over a warm, sunny weekend in Seattle on September, 25, 1987, at a historic downtown theater. The theater had a pleasant musty smell, a large lobby chandelier and old crusty seats (to match the ticket-takers). Having never really heard of the film, and not knowing what to expect (the ideal way to see a movie, by the way), I was pleasantly surprised! It became an instant favorite, and definitely paralleled my spiritual condition. Fresh out of Bible College, I was looking for adventure, a reason for living, an honorable name, villains to dispose of, and true love to champion!

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Video Cables, Connectors and Common Sense
By Jay Delp

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for ministries to have quality media equipment (cameras, video projectors, editing systems, etc.) only to have its effectiveness diminished by the use of low quality or improperly configured, cables, connectors and signal types as the video or audio signal “travels” from its source to destination. Definitely, all a/v cables are not created equal. Ditto on signal types (composite, VGA, “S” video, component, DVI, etc.) It’s not exactly a news flash to say we want to try to maintain the highest quality signal each step of the way from an audio or video signal’s source (camera, DVD player, microphone, CD player, computer, etc.) to it’s final destination(s) (video projector, DVD recorder, speaker system, CD recorder, Internet stream, etc.) In this article we are going to take a look at some cable rules to help optimize your signal quality.

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What an Incredible Opportunity
By Steve Hewitt

I am writing a book for Thomas Nelson on using Windows in Ministry. Don’t worry they have someone else working on a book with the title Macs in Ministry. Frankly, most of the book has little to do with either OS, but rather how to use the wonderful technology tools that we all have available through them.

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A Look at the Mature Creative Family Known as "CS4 Master Collection"
By Terry Wilhite

Like a father who watches his children come into the world, form personalities of their own, grow up and develop an impressive array of talent, I have witnessed the Adobe family of products come of age. It seems like only yesterday that I brought home Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe After Effects, some of my first creative bundles of joy. But my goodness, that’s been more than 20 years ago. Later, I’d make room for Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe InDesign. I have even watched an adoption or two – when my favorite audio production software, Syntrillium’s Cool Edit Pro, became part of the Adobe family, taking on the name Adobe Audition, and Serious Magic’s DV Rack (a video recording and analysis tool) also joined the lineup as Adobe OnLocation. In fact, I fondly recall Version 1.0 of all of Adobe’s applications. All these many years later, I could not be more pleased how my creative family members, assembled in the CS4 Master Collection, have matured and contributed so much. At the risk of sounding sappy, they have formed “loving sibling relationships” and are now quite the team.

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Stock Up on Stock Footage
By Gregory Fish

Stocks may be down right now, but you can stock up on stock footage. Stock footage is a necessity in the realm of video. You may create your own footage, but every now and then you need a shot that you haven't actually filmed yourself. Stock footage that you use in your own productions should be royalty-free so that you won't get into any copyright trouble. It can get pretty pricey! That's why I stock up on freebies. There are weekly and monthly freebies out on the web; clips that I eventually will get to use in a video production. Let me show you where you can find these and stock up on other ideas as well.

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Slumdog Millionaire
By Martin Baggs

Sometimes golden opportunities get missed. Seeing Slumdog Millionaire at the movies was one of those. I had free tickets to see this movie at a pre-screening in Portland in December when it was an unknown, almost "straight-to-DVD" movie. Then the blizzard of 2008 descended on the Pacific Northwest and I missed the opportunity. Thereafter, the awards juggernaut took off and Slumdog started collecting trophies like a squirrel collects nuts in the fall. Sweep, baby! In fact, this is the first film since Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List in 1993 to collect the top three trophies, Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay, at the top three awards ceremonies: the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs (British Oscars), and the Oscars.

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