Nick Trompeter

"It's Real"

11.26.14

If for no other reason than to help out, I believe we should give a portion of our resources to something bigger than ourselves. It could be tithing to a church with which you're affiliated, giving to an organization that stands for a cause you believe in, or just helping out another person by offering your time or money. We should be helping each other. We all share the commonality of being human, and with that, though we're all unique, we share a great number of common traits. I believe one of these traits that a vast majority of the population shares is the interest of seeing continued growth in our abilities to stretch our minds to the limit. Continue to think of things that seem out of reach and then set forth a will to achieved those dreams.

Most recently I felt the desire to help out a company that is working on designing a hover board. Yes, an actual hover board! The board itself is so amazingly out of this world, but it's the technology behind it that intrigues me. The ideas that can stem from the ability to make things hover and the endless possibilities of applications that can be used for good. Things that can help out—that were once dreams, and are now becoming reality.

"Swordfights Bring a Crew Closer Together"

11.02.14

Fun Fact: C.S. Lewis did not intend for "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" to be an allegory about the life of Christ (but that didn't stop it from becoming one). We just finished up with the 2014 Fall play at Peoria Christian High School, and as always it was a blast. They performed—as you may have guessed—"The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe", and did a fantastic job from the performance, to the set design, to the tech behind the scenes.

Per usual, I was the tech director in charge of lighting, and this season, we have started to build up our library of LED lights. For the past four shows we have been renting and borrowing lights, and it seemed that it was finally time to purchase a few of our own. In doing so, we should be able to rent fewer and fewer and in a matter of a few shows have enough to no longer need to rent any. How great would that be! As I said we have just started getting some of our own, and with a tight budget, we certainly can't afford some couple hundred dollar Par 64 cans, but we did have the resources to pick up a pair of Venue's ThinPar 38 LED stage lights. And, while they didn't have quite as much range as the lights we rent, they certainly did a nice job of helping fill out some of the background and added just a little more to the effects. In the future, I believe it will be best to add a couple of the ThinPar 64 as we replace some of the main cans, but for now we will continue to work with the resources with which God has provided us, to bring together a show that's sole purpose is to glorify Him.