For the last couple years, I have been helping out at church with the video slides and lighting cues during service. First at Willingdon Church and now at our new CrossRidge Church. I have always sat beside the person controlling the audio mixer the whole time. Every time I looked at that thing, it always scares me with all the little buttons and dials and channels. I never understood any of it, and it looks like something you can easily just mess up with one touch of a dial! Last weekend I had the opportunity to help out with the sound mixing at our church service for the first time. Pastor Andy (who leads our music team) gave me a quick run-down on how the equipment worked. Tony, who is well versed with these equipments (as he does repair for audio equipment as his profession) also showed me how the system works. And with a half an hour quick tutorial, I was on my way to doing the service.

I was always worried about doing anything with audio, since my wife thinks I might possibly be tone deaf (especially when it comes to me singing). But I found it, if I had concentrated hard on listening to levels on each instrument, I can decipher what was too loud or too soft and if anything was causing strange feedback.. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the service last Sunday! I’ve learnt a lot and now I’m not as afraid of using the sound board!

SoundBoard at CrossRidge Church

Thanks again Andy and Tony for showing me how to use it!

So last week was my last time working on Men in Black 3. Animation has pretty much wrapped up and the lighting/compositing team is on its way to be finished! The film comes out May 25th, 2012! They just released a new trailer, which actually shows a lot of the movie… so watch at your discretion!

Today I begin my journey working on the movie ‘Oz: The Great and Powerful’ to be released spring of 2013! The plot of the film pretty much entails about how the great wizard of Oz, played by James Franco, got to where he is. It is a prequel to the famous story of ‘Wizard of Oz’. With tons of FX shots and a lot of work this is going to be one helluva production!. But from what I’ve seen already, it is looking pretty cool! The only picture I found on the internet of Oz is this one that seems to be on set material. It shows a glimpse of what the logo might be.

IMDB: Oz, The Great and Powerful

So the last few weeks I’ve finally got around to creating a new website for my wife. The new site entails the use of WordPress just like how mine is set up. She decided on a different template, so it was just a matter of tweaking the template to suit her needs. The color scheme and imagery was all hers, I was just there to facilitate all the technical issues!

Take a look at her new site here at www.calistopolis.com

Today my wife made me a card which I thought was super awesome and creative. She created a card with a hand drawn pixelated heart surrounded with the words “I <3 you more than Pinterest". Ha, Take that pinterest! Not only did she make me a card, she bought me two miniature WWII model planes that go with the new board game I bought, Wings of War: Fire in the Sky. Aaannddd she got me sleeves to protect the cards.. wow I’m such a nerd =) In return, I know my wife hates flowers but loves stuffed animals, so I sent her a small teddy bear delivered to work. Now she can hug it all day!

Then my sister-in-law brought us these amazing chocolate covered strawberries in mini tuxedos that she made all on her own! They are super delicious and look great. Thanks sis for those yummy strawberries! I know you’ve put a lot of work into them.

As a final valentines thing, Calista found this cool idea someone posted on Pinterest on giving ‘Free Compliments’. So she got me to post one outside of Yaletown skytrain station, and 2 at our Sony Imageworks Pictures Studio on each floor. It seems like quite a success! Glad to see people handing out free compliments!

Over the weekend I had the privilege to photograph my friend Jan Zgiet for his future online web business. We had an awesome time with our photo shoot and I got to try this new location (Surrey Central SFU Surrey) that I have been eyeing for a while. After choosing 3 locations in the building, we already felt we have taken what we need! So we didn’t get to the other locations I had in mind. I’ll save those for next time!

Here are a few shots!

The last month or so I’ve been working on a title intro for the new Anime convention that will be held in Vancouver’s Convention Centre. Anime Revolution (Not to be confused with Anime Evolution of past events, for they are run by different organizers) is coming to town August 17 – 19th. As I was fairly busy the last few months moving into our new place and working on Men in Black 3, I had to keep this intro fairly simple. Thanks to my wife, she found a way to make the logo 3D without modeling it in 3D!

This year, Sony had selected a couple of us to go up for an Annie Award Nomination in the category of “Character Animation in a Feature Production” on The Smurfs movie. Although we did not get chosen for nominations, we were signed up to take part in casting our ballot for this years awards. The voting ends next week on the 25th leaving me with a little less than a week to catch up and see the rest of the films/commercials selected for nominations. Congratulations to all who have been nominated this year!

So I have been working on MiB3 for the last 2 and a half months and it has been pretty fun! So far the movie is looking pretty good. It might possibly be my favourite MiB of the series. I’ll be looking forward to seeing the final version when we wrap up in end of March! Check out the teaser trailer they just released:

My friend Andrew Marcus has just released his new Christian album titled ‘Our Conversation behind the Veil’. We helped him shoot his introductory video for his album.

You can find out more of his music here at www.andrewmarcusmusic.com