MadMania

Faith, Books, and Stuff

Category: VBS 2013 Development Diary

VBS 2013 Development Diary: #14: Digital Content Creation & Management

As I have previously mentioned, the first skits we started doing were entirely written by me an hour before we performed them. There was a single Microsoft Word document with all of that week’s skits–that was it. As the years have progressed, we have strived to do better, and as a result we have created […]

VBS 2013 Development Diary: #13: Experimentation & Doubt

VBS is over now. I hadn’t posted a VBS update in a while simply because we had reached that point in the project where we were in the thick of doing the heavy lifting–building sets, making costumes, creating and acquiring props, and rehearsing. Sometimes that can get kind of hairy, as we don’t often have […]

VBS Development Diary #12: Costumes

I spent 2 hours in a fabric store yesterday and it was awesome. Lemme ‘splain! We were shopping for fabric for costumes. I don’t know fabric–I have always avoided any kind of textile work because it seems tedious to me–except for that one time I made a Nightcrawler plushie. So we’re trying to find fabric […]

VBS Development Diary #11: Act 3

This week marked 4 months since we started working on this year’s VBS. Typically at the 4 month mark we are getting ready to perform, but we haven’t even created any props, sets, or costumes, and haven’t rehearsed a line. In fact, the performers don’t even have the script yet. The reason is this: despite […]

VBS 2013 Development Diary: #10: Gospel vs. Blues

Both gospel and blues are musical traditions rooted in the American South, both are based in tragedy, pain, and misery. But the difference between gospel and blues is that the gospel offers hope. The very nature of the blues is that there is no hope. Your heart is broke, you’re probably going to die from […]

Dropbox

I use a product that just caught my attention in the last month and has now become absolutely invaluable–Dropbox. It’s one of those products that I can’t see getting very much better–it’s almost perfect already. It’s like a folder out on the internet, accessible from all your devices (Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, Blackberry). Unlike […]

VBS 2013 Development Diary: #9: Chinese Language

As part of my ankle-deep immersion for his VBS I have been learning Chinese. I am using a number of apps, but mostly I am listening to podcasts from ChineseClass101.com. The podcasts are great for picking up the language and they have lots of notes about the culture, but they will email you incessantly, and you […]

VBS 2013 Development Diary: #8: Logo

This is a pretty graphic-heavy post. When I first start working on a logo, I trial several fonts in Linotype FontExplorer, then I try them out  in Illustrator to see which ones I like best, looking for things like readability, tone, and flavor. This lets me see which fonts I might want:       […]

VBS 2013 Development Diary: #7: Title

It can be tough picking a good title. You want something that communicates the overall theme of your production, and it needs to be able to reach kids who have only been reading for a year. Plus, while you, as the writer and director, have been steeping yourself in Chinese food, language, culture, and movies, […]

VBS 2013 Development Diary: #6: Sound

Starting in 2009 with The Quest for the Lost City of Gold we started incorporating a digital soundboard into our VBS skit. I downloaded a program for my Mac called Sound Byte that lets you set up virtual racks of sounds, customize options for each sound, and assign them to keyboard commands. I needed someone […]