I'm feeling a little bit under the weather right now; a sore throat and headache are threatening to break out into full-blown Man Flu, but haven't quite made the decision to yet.
Not enough to stop me from serving at both St Aldates's evening services tonight. The first was covering for someone cut off by the snow, and while running visuals for the service I noticed something odd about myself: quite a few times, and far more than usual, I felt like I needed at least an extra pair of hands. I dropped a couple of cues. I struggled a little to sequence in my head all the components of the service and how I needed to map that to button presses and takes. Not in a big way, and I doubt anyone else would have noticed, but it got me thinking.
When the Late Service I usually serve at takes a break over university holidays, I often find myself with a few weeks off the rota. Inevitably I'll end up covering for someone else in that time, but more than a week or two without being behind the A/V desk and I start to feel a bit rusty, and I'm not as on the ball as I can be. Again, I'm probably the only person who notices, but it always surprises me how quickly I can lose a bit of edge. I suppose that, just like any live performance skills, they do wane without practice.
Tonight, though, I'm not sure that lack of practice was what was affecting me - after a ridiculous run of services over Christmas and New Year, I had a single week off, so theoretically I was both practiced and rested. What I didn't have this week was preparation time.
Usually I put in at least an hour or two of prep for a service. I like to collate all the different orders of service and set lists that various members of leadership pass to me during the week, and create one document I send to the rest of the A/V team. If I'm running visuals I'll start to think about what visual elements might be appropriate, and maybe go looking for new material if my library is lacking. I might think about the lighting in church and how that can complement the other aspects of the service. If I'm running sound then I'll read through the set list with that and the band makeup in mind.
Today, of course, I had time for none of those things. That's okay, and I'm actually quite happy with how the two services ran tonight, all things considered. But it just highlighted to me how important both practice and preparation are to running A/V. Fellow techies, what do you do to ensure you have both?
The third thing I mentioned was, of course, being rested. Yeah, still working on that one... On which note, goodnight ;)
