So the big event was last Sunday and it went incredibly well! We had the largest Sunday Soul Brunch ever with 225 people attending, but it required much more planning and organizing than a regular Sunday Soul Brunch.  The residential pastor, Kathy, called one of our strategies “Cheesecake factory-ing” where we would walk each group to their reserved table in order to avoid chair stealing, table mixing, and general chaos. It worked great!

The special poster we had created for the event was definitely tough to agree on, and I was the monkey-in-the-middle as each supervisor liked/disliked different aspects of the design. Eventually we did find one that most of us agreed upon, but there wasn’t a 100% satisfaction rate. The majority of the problems came from a branding standpoint. Collective Church is very stern (and rightly so) about keeping their brand and their look consistent. This means using the same type family and design style throughout everything I make, and has gotten me to be used to designing for the purpose of the brand. I won’t doubt that’ll be handy to mention in the future as I expand my horizons and enter different working environments.

For the rest of the semester, there’s not too much to do in regards to big events. There is the next Sunday Soul Brunch next month, and there are always Sunday Services to create Facebook graphics for! We’re starting a new series names “Badass Lady Preachers” and I’m focused on creating something that conveys a symbol of “badass womanhood” instead of just “being female.” We have this Tuesday off because of all the hard work we put into last Sunday, and even then I’m constantly on the look-out for something that’ll aid Collective’s brand for each Sunday to come.

This week I’m focusing mainly on backdating the gallery for the Digital Arts and Theater Arts Gallery. I’ve also included my own Profile that will be up tomorrow, and am working on a show post. The problem with the opening reception for the Studio Art show is that I don’t have the catalogue, pictures, or any information on who all the artists are so I can’t really write anything. I also don’t have the catalogue or name of the show. I’ve posted in Kappa Pi, so hopefully anyone who knows that info can give it to me, or Laura can send me an email with all the information.

**Update** I got a hold of Jasmine Ramos, who is creating the catalogue for the show, and she sent it over to me. I finished and posted an event for the show opening on April 17. I included the names of the participants (it’s only 6 seniors), the dates the show is open, and the Hand Art Center hours. I also added their picture from the poster, because it’s pretty fun.

I’m also struggling adding media into the galleries, it keeps trying to make me make a post so I think I’m doing it wrong. Am I supposed to be doing separate posts for each event? I did it for Unity of the Arts, so you can look at it before I do any more and let me know if that’s the right way to do it. If it is, I will continue to do this for the Theatre shows as well.

**Other Update** I figured out I could look at other galleries for help, and went through them all and figured out myself how to do it. I backlogged all the ones that I could find that were not already put in. There may still be more, as I only looked back until about 2015, but there is now about 7 more show galleries that didn’t exist before. Woohoo!

Last week was fairly uneventful as it was busy for both myself and Dr. Pras. The studio didn’t really need much in terms of tidying up or maintenance, and I had ended up with a ridiculous schedule on both Tuesday and Thursday. Over the course of the coming week I intend to use my studio time to record upright bass and do some mixing on my album. Something I’ve noticed is that every time I mix in the studio and then bring back to listen on my own monitors or headphones is that it just sounds entirely off. This might just be due to me going in between two different audio environments and being used to one over the other. I’ve read several articles saying that it doesn’t really matter how detailed or amazing your speakers are, as long as you’re 100% aware of how to get your intended results with your specific setup. Next time I go in I’m planning on bringing my AKG K712 headphones (which were designed for mixing) so that I have a reference.

These past few weeks have been a little hectic with figuring out what’s going to happen with Easter! We’ve already sold out all of our tables, and we’re trying to fit in as many people as possible. Plus, we were able to obtain a sponsorship with the finally-final version of my sponsorship packet! Currently it’s been a struggle to edit the poster that will go around town because it has to really amp up the Easter Sunday Brunch theme. A surprisingly simple poster has become an almost 3 person project with ideas coming out left and right. At the last Sunday Soul Brunch we had to get up about an hour early to be there at 8am, as well as compensate for Daylight Savings which did not work out great for me. At the very least I got some great sleep that night.

I also recently learned how to add slides to the ProPresenter program Collective uses during their Sunday services, which was surprising to me primarily because I had never heard of this program. It’s something like a very advanced Powerpoint that was intimidating, but easy to handle once I used it a time or two. One challenge I need to overcome at the moment is fitting time in my schedule to not only come to my internship hours (which, no worries, I do anyways) but to attend one of their weekly events. More often than not one of my classes or my job will get in the way of their schedule. It’s frustrating, but my goal is to attend something regularly before the semester ends and continue to be a part of the Collective community!

I’ve learned way more than I initially expected (and I was expecting a lot), and the internship is still weeks away from being over. I’m both excited and partially dreading the craze this Easter Soul Brunch will bring.

Today was was fairly uneventful as I did my usual cleanup and organization of the studio. As my senior research and computer music project deadlines are getting closer, I used some of the time to work on those things, doing a little bit of mixing and editing across several different Ableton sessions. One of my friends is taking over my position in the Hatter Media Network so the rest of the time was spent sitting down with her and explaining some basic podcast editing techniques. We went over gating, compression, and EQ, and how each of these are normally used in mixing and how those techniques might be tweaked when editing a spoken word audio project, as not all the same procedures always apply across the board. I gave her quite a bit of information at once so we’ll probably have another pseudo-tutoring session either on this coming up Thursday or sometime next week. I really enjoy teaching others about audio engineering techniques, although I don’t think I’m terribly good at it, which makes me really want to find better ways of explaining my understanding of the concepts I’m trying to get across. Goals for next week are to get the other rack set up in a more permanent manner next to the main rack.

I almost forgot to add in the Senior Digital Arts show, “Unity of the Arts”! But the article is up and running now! It’s hard to write for stuff like that because it’s just straight information about times, dates, and names. The SEO judger was not happy about it, but c’est la vie. I have also update McCoy’s article for “Othelo”,  I made it a featured event and removed Rhinoceros from featured events so that Othello can take over the banner. I figured since Rhinoceros is over and the some of the Exhibitions are still open, I would leave the exhibition openings post in featured over Rhinoceros. This way people can still see which spring exhibitions are in the Hand Art Center, but not be trying to find information for a show that is already over.

Finally, I updated Madison’s interview. I couldn’t find a better picture of her on her instagram or online, so I just put the picture from her faculty page. I also increased the size just slightly, because if an image is under 200×200 pixels it won’t get picked up by search engines or any social media. She should probably send me a new one because it’s kind of grainy, but if not it will work.

Also, I’ve realized that my posts from my own computer do not publish automatically on twitter, at least, this post about the Senior Show did not. So I’m wondering if I’ll have to download and set it up too. I’ll bring my computer Thursday and we can see.

Man! The week before Spring Break and this week have been the busiest of my entire Stetson career! Getting my senior show installed as well as all the other responsibilities I’ve taken on has been interesting. But everything is going to be great: it’s definitely teaching me to multitask and to delegate wherever possible, something I used to absolutely hate doing. It’s very humbling to ask for help, but ultimately it is growing me.

I got to sit down with Kathrine Pulling and talk about what it’s like to be a Stage Manager. She told me a lot about what it was like and how she got involved with in high school. It seems really interesting. We didn’t get too specific about Rhinoceros, but she did tell me a little bit and it was cool. I didn’t realize that the directors actually don’t direct backstage during a show: that’s what the Stage Manager does! Talk about pressure, especially for a new student. This will be cool for someone to see that it isn’t impossible to get involved as an underclassmen.

Madison Creech also emailed me her bio, I have scheduled it for next week to keep the profiles spaced out over two weeks. I just reformatted her picture from the faculty page, as it was too small to even use. If she wants a better/less grainy picture, she can email me another one. I’ll post this Pulling interview this week too, so people don’t forget all about the Rhinoceros play before it goes up.

On Monday  March 6th at 4:00pm me and Jacob was assigned to film the Stetson Women’s Lacrosse game using two different cameras. Before the game started David showed me how to use the camera for the lacrosse in his office. I learned that the gain switch is like the ISO for making sure that too much sunlight is not hitting the image sensor, so it needed to stay on low. The IRIS is like the aperture to decide if you want the camera to have more or less blur. Also there is a filter that is like sunglasses for the lens, but I had to keep it off. Before the game started I made sure to film the athletes walking to the field and them warming up.I moved on to the other side of the field while they were still warming up and not them stretching. When the game got started I made sure to get the hatters being introduced one at a time near the announcers. After the game started, I turned the camera on whoever had the ball while zoomed on the players. I made sure to zoom in on any of the Stetson Hatters that scored a goal and then zoomed out. As soon as night fall came, I seemed to have found things easier to capture whoever had the ball on camera because during the afternoon it was a little hard to find whoever had the ball. However, some of the things I wished for was that the cameras were both fully charged before I went to pick them up. Also, during the second half of the game one of the cameras immediately stopped filming because the media was too full and I could not go over to Jacob for assistance because the game was playing and I did not want to risk getting in the athletes way by going around the field.

On February 26th at 12pm I was assigned to shadow Paul for the Women’s lacrosse game. Some of the things that caught me by suppressed was that we were not using the live cameras for the game like at the basketball tournament. It was focused more on filming the women’s team playing against the University of Southern California and the Stetson Women’s lacrosse team. we used one regular cam corder and a bigger camera called the black widow that was a little more complicated. For the start of the game Paul let me film the whole game across the field. Wherever the ball was at, I had to capture the action of the game. I made sure to zoom in on the players from a far distance away including on the players for the Stetson hatters that scored goals. Also, I made sure to capture the Hatters that were being introduced before the start of the game. It was a little challenging for me to keep up with whoever had the ball because it was so small from a distance on camera. I thought it was interesting to be able to use different cameras for other games because it seemed to give me more experience with filming. However, one of the things I wished was that someone was there to teach me and Paul how to use the bigger camera, which would have help make things easier. W could not figure out how to prevent the camera from looking so grainy and I could not find how to adjust the aperture or the shutter speed.

It looks like stuff is going well. The Profiles are getting filled out, I’m still talking to some seniors who are going to fill them out and “still have them in their inbox.” I keep reminding them about it, but they seem to keep forgetting. Hopefully with my own helping to fill it in I can get at least three more to get us through the summer.

There wasn’t anything much to write about this week. I am in contact with Katie Pulling (Rhinoceros play’s Stage Manager) who wants to do a profile. I think I’ll make it more than a profile though. As a Sophomore having such an important role behind stage it will be a really interesting story. Hopefully I can meet up with her soon after Spring Break and get that story in too. I don’t want to wait too long after Rhinoceros or people kind of forget about things. Either way though, I think it will be a  cool story for prospective students to see the kinds of real life experiences they can get here at Stetson, even as an underclassmen.

Finally, I am still working on getting those faculty profiles. They aren’t really emailing me back about them. Grace just didn’t respond and Madison did, but I realized I didn’t give her a due date. For the future, I will definitely tell them a specific date to get it in by, otherwise it goes to the back of their mind and they forget about it. I emailed Madison and asked for her to finish it by the end of Spring Break, so hopefully that will work out.