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photo © 2010 audie (via: Wylio)

I’m sure the title of this post makes you think all sorts of things. But in reality, what I’m talking about is being able to try new things. I read a quote somewhere that said:

 

“Success is built on a mountain of failure.”

One of the great things about my job is that we’re given the freedom, and we’re even encouraged, to try new things.
New methods.
New procedures.
New ways of doing old things.

Just because something has been done a certain way forever doesn’t make it the right way to do it. It’s funny how if the wrong thing is done enough times it becomes the right way to do it.

That doesn’t work for me!
Here’s an example why…

Lately, the haze on our stage has been receiving considerable criticism. It was described as being spotty, it smelled, it billowed, it looked smokey. It just didn’t work as it should. It was distracting. We needed to come up with a solution.

The old way:

The old system (which was set up some time ago) had our Unique2 installed up in the catwalk above the front of our stage with two dryer vent tubes that were Y’d off of it. Each dryer tube was connected to an 18-inch high-velocity fan that forced the haze down to the stage. The problem with that system was that every time we started to haze, there would be this billowing effect at the front of the stage. It didn’t look good and, as I said earlier, it was distracting.

The New Way:

The new system took us quite a bit of time to nail down and get it to a point we were happy with. It started last Sunday with me and Thomas (one of our lighting volunteers) pulling the Unique2 down from the catwalk and putting it behind the giant back wall on our stage. We then ran dryer vent tubes to either side of the wall and put small fans to help distribute the haze throughout the stage.

Later on in the week, I replaced the dryer vent tubes with 6-inch PVC pipe and put 90-degree elbows in at the end to direct the haze where I wanted it. After running Unique2 at 20% for a while it filled the stage nicely. We had great coverage from left to right and even top to bottom. Our Source 4 PAR’s and PARnel’s had great beams coming off of them. I was a happy camper and thought the weekend would go perfectly…

That is until…. the a/c got turned on….

On Saturday we rolled in at 12 o’clock and started to set the stage for the weekend. During that same time, our two lighting volunteers were setting ColorBlasts and programming the Hog. I went over with them how I thought the new system would work: run the hazer at 80% for a few minutes then drop it down to 20%. Sounded like a solid plan, right? WRONG! The HVAC system sucked all the haze right out of the room! What looked great on Friday now looked horrible Saturday afternoon.

We tried running the hazer at 50%, 60%, even 90% and we couldn’t get it to hang. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

By this time I had to get up into the booth as I was running FOH for the weekend. Mike, Thomas and Daniel then proceeded to spend some more time tweaking. They finally just decided to grab our other hazer, the DF-50, and see how well and oil-based haze would look. Within minutes the results spoke for themselves. It looked fantastic. We had great coverage without the nasty billowing effect. All of our lights looked amazing in the haze.

After the Saturday night service, during the debrief, our Senior Pastor even commented on how the haze and the lights looked great. I believe he even said the changes we made were perfect.

So all that to say…
Don’t be afraid to experiment and try new things!

What’s the worst that can happen? It doesn’t work right? So what? At least you’re thinking and trying to improve. Personally, I’d rather know something doesn’t work than wonder if it does.

This principle can be applied to so many things… like if you’re mixing the service from the satellite campus and you can’t move FOH, try mixing on ears. Sorry, I couldn’t resist and just had to throw that in :-)

So get out there and see what you can improve by taking a new approach to old tasks. It’s all about working smarter, not harder!

-i