Interview with an Alumna

Emily Kelly is in a unique position for this New York BattleCry. She's in New York for three reasons:

1) She came up for vacation.
2) Along with Alex Clark, Adam Overfelt, Cody Greeley and Ron Ordonez, she, as a former CCMer, is coming along for our NY Professional Encounter.
3) As a current School of Worship intern, she's around here not to work with CCM but to man the SOW booth.

So she's currently pulling something like double-duty for Teen Mania. On top of all that, she was part of a team of seven CCMers who contributed to writing content for "The Encounter" tour, so she's now seeing things she helped create come to life in a spectacular new venue, through a live broadcast manned by a young and fresh CCM staff, all from the vantage point of someone now on the outside.



Oh, yeah, and, by the way, attendance numbers have now passed 16,000, making this Teen Mania's largest event in four years.

That's pretty awesome.

We're Kind of a Big Deal

One more quick note, just to give you guys a sense of the scale of this event...



This screen is set up behind everything. It gives people a view of what's going on onstage, even when you have to sit directly behind the stage itself.

This is the venue...


With chairs filling the floor like so...


And we have people sitting behind the stage.

This. Event. Is. Going. To. Be. Huge.

Interview with a DP

Joelle also shared a little bit about her job… though, as she said, contents of this video are always "subject to change."



Less than four hours to go! Even as I type, Hillsong United is soundchecking all of 100 feet away.

Video Time...

I don’t know about all of you guys, but I love it when I can watch videos on a blog.. Tyler has posted a couple interviews from our fellow CCMers and so I thought I’d join in and show you some more of CCM..

With only hours until the event starting we are all awaiting in anticipation to see what God has in store for this weekend..! I can’t wait to see the faces of all the teens when they see the drama, the videos, and everything that so many people have put their time into..!

And now.. For your entertainment here is a little interview with my friends Bree Lester and Cody Greeley..

Interview with a January

Here with a personal account of what this weekend should look like is one of our newest CCMers, Phillip-Michael Fletcher...

Today is the Day...

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, today is the day the event goes live, and CCM -- as well as the ATF support crew, ministry team and School of Worship, have spent the last day getting everything set up!

To give you just a little sense of how much is going on, we made sure to get a few pictures.


Cody and CCM graduate (turned School-of-Worship intern) Emily lend a hand to ATF setup, sorting and tagging merch.


Linzie takes care of sorting out some merch for ATF.


Texting station setup: Getting ready for shoutouts from around the world.


Event setup: Thursday afternoon...


Dolly setup: Checking the motion along the track.


Jib Setup: Attaching the camera to the crane.


Jared surveys the crow's nest setup, where GodTV's Emma Owen will host the introduction to the event.


Logan starts the long trek to the crow's nest, this time with a tripod.


Logan was busy setting up a tripod taller than he is. Jared... supervised.


CCM graduate Ron Ordonez gets back into the habit of over-under cable-wrapping.


Our fearless leader talks shop.


Keshia takes a moment to get logistics taken care of
(Also, I love the whiteness of this hallway.)


Getting the interview room set up...


First pass at a click track for opener rehearsal


CCM Graduate Adam Overfelt, who returned for the NY Professional Encounter, helps out ATF by going a little Crazygonuts with a price tag gun.


Ministry Teamer Curran Rappe, who plays Zack Brahinsky in the drama, watches setup


The IZOD Center's "Winner's Club," now a base of operation for CCM runners.


The jib, towering over the fully set-up venue.


Bright lights on the School of Worship soundcheck, featuring bassist Lucas Milbrandt, a former roommate of several CCMers


Working on the click track for the NOW-COMPLETED OPENER!


Margo and Michael, aka "Texty McGee" and "Texting Magoo," apparently


Cody gets B-Roll of setup during the School of Worship soundcheck

Ready to Rotoscope, Pt 2: This Time, It's Jersey

First up… welcome Anna Crowley to the CCM Blog! And thanks for the masterful sum-up of our mission here on ccmbts.blogspot.com.

We've both been busy on the road up here, so, for just a little more detail, let me just say that New York, N.Y., is a heck of a town.

Some people call it "the city that never sleeps."
Sometimes, our GFX team never sleeps, either.

After two days of "Professional Encounter," we've arrived in East Rutherford, N.J., ready to jump into event setup with both feet! Except, possibly, for a team of fearless individuals who have gone above and beyond to make the coming event a success.

That's right… getting notes back on the opener meant MORE ROTOSCOPING.

For most of CCM, it meant going back to the drawing board on some clips, cleaning up others, and re-doing the effect we're layering on top of the masks.

And, once again, CCM is getting it done.

Some photos of our youth-hostel turned edit bay probably look chaotic…


Yup, that's a set of lockers turned on its side as a desk


Three workstations on one bed. And the top bunk was, I believe, for quick naps.


Also, cardboard boxes make excellent workstations.

But the work that went on there was a frighteningly fast turnaround on fixes and re-workings that were finished to a professional caliber.

As Anna, our newest intrepid blog contributor, posted a moment ago, this weekend is going to be jam-packed with work, fun, and awesome opportunities to touch this generation. And you can watch it all go down on your satellite provider with GodTV, or streaming live at God.TV.

In the meantime… Our professional encounters are flat-out amazing. So far, we've had sessions with an actor/acting coach, a dance and stage movement teacher, and a producer for CNN's "Joy Behar Show," as well as a tour of NBC Studios, which means pictures at 30 Rockefeller Center. Not to mention that we've now seen Times Square, Broadway and a diner with a spectacular singing waitstaff.

(And props to Hell's Kitchen Pizza for the best deal on New York pizza in the Hell's-Kitchen-to-Times-Square area -- a prize our group actually had a little competition to find.)


CCMers show up in Times Square, ready for those flashing lights


And unlike, say, the Saturday Night Live set, this is actually BIGGER in person.

Stay tuned for more from New Jersey! "Dress rehearsal" is up tonight, with just over a day until the event goes live!

New York BattleCry...

One goal has been set for this weekend. Just one. That goal is to change the lives of thousands with an event that’s so amazing, that it can be summed up in three words. NEW YORK BATTLECRY!

It sounds simple enough, I know, I would go to these events and think nothing about what it actually took to put them on. That’s where we, Tyler and myself, Anna, come in. We are here to take you behind the scenes and show you what it takes to actually put on an event like this. Not just that, but also what it takes to put on a live broadcast of the event!

To begin with, I am one of the fellow bloggers, Anna Crowley, and here is the first of many blog entries that I hope will let you see into the world of the Center for Creative Media. As Tyler had said before we have been busy getting a few, but important, projects done. Such as the rotoscoping for the New York BattleCry event opener. From what I’ve heard we might actually be done with it! Which is quite exciting to hear, since our wonderful graphics team has been working nonstop to get this finished and also working in some unusual places to get it done, Mcdonalds and the bus being just a couple places.

Just take a second to thank those guys and gals that have been working so hard to make it possible for this Battlecry to be the best! THANK YOU!

So now what? What does it take to put on an event and live broadcast? I’m glad that you asked. I guess we could start with load in. For us this is the rehearsal time. We come to our venue, which in this case, IZOD Center, and start setting up. There are others that are here during set up that do things like, getting the stage, lights, seating and merchandise set up. As CCMers, we’re here to set up for a broadcasted event.

Things that are needed for broadcasting, a live interview room, ENG crews, B-roll camera operators, tape runners, make up artists, PAs, and of course bloggers! You might not know what some of these things are that I just listed, but hello! That’s why I’m here. The interview room is where we’ll be interviewing bands such as Unhindered and Salvador and also speakers at the event. An ENG crew is a group of 3 people (producer, camera operator, and audio technician) that go out during the event and interview teens, parents and youth pastors that are meeting with God! B-roll camera operators are the people getting camera shots of the crowd. If the speaker says something funny, sad, or just downright awesome, the B-roller is there to get the reaction of the audience. Tape runners are the people that will be recording the event so when we go back to Texas we’ll have a recording of everything in our library. Makeup artists are there to make the bands and speakers look good on camera, PAs are assistants to the people in charge, and of course the bloggers are there so you can find out what’s going on during the event!

We’re in set up mode so I’ll have to depart now and see if there’s anything that I can do around here. Maybe I’ll take some videos and pictures to show you what’s going on! Don’t worry though I will be back soon and so will Tyler. I’m so excited about this event and so ready for it to get started so I can show you the lives that it’s changing! Until next time.

Anna

Are You Ready to Rotoscope?

A rotoscope frame without the video footage

In less than 12 hours, we'll be fully loaded on a bus and headed out to New York City, with less than a week to go until the live broadcast of the Greater New York BattleCry! So how do CCMers prepare?

Well, some, of course, are doing laundry, so they have clean clothes to last the time we'll be there. And some are doing last-minute runs to WalMart to buy new socks, since the dryers in our houses and dorms seem to eat those more than most.

Some, who have been busy planning a few secret projects for NEXT YEAR'S ATF tour, are getting notes back, for refining scripts.

The rest of us? We're finishing a project.

It's been a hectic three weeks as we try to clear production enough for travel--in addition to everything new we'll have in New York, we also have pieces for Global Expeditions and Extreme Camps to finish, as well as promos for the Honor Academy and next year's tour--and at the end, we have graphics work to finish on a piece for the BattleCry opener.


A frame, zoomed in, showing the masks being applied

Have you ever wondered what it takes to make the background of a video suddenly become animated? It's a process we call "rotoscoping," and it's a process that can require attention from EVERYBODY. Basically, in Adobe AfterEffects, we go frame by frame through a clip of video, and build a mask over things we need to overlay with animation--or things that can't be covered.

In this case, we're masking the wall, so we also have to cut around the person in front of it, so that she stays all the right colors.


And we have to do this for EVERY FRAME.

Parts of the crew have been at it for days. Some of us got pulled in as last-minute reinforcements this afternoon. All told, it's looking great. Look for the finished product Friday at the New York BattleCry.

More updates coming from the road! Keep watching.

It's Coming...

April 14-15...

Are you ready to show the world that God belongs in your city?

Are you ready for The Encounter?

CCM is ready to take you behind the scenes of our broadcast yet again as GodTV brings you the Greater New York BattleCry live from the IZOD Center in the Meadowlands! Stay tuned to ccmbts.blogspot.com for more.



Promo made right here at CCM by Tyler Whetstone (producer), Dean Roelant (editor), Michael Gallardo (GFX), Caleb Lennie and Margo Kittok (Voice-Over Technicians)