If you’re new to this series…here’s the skinny.  If you need a banner for these posts, use the one above…thanks to Josh.

In the spirit of this topic…here’s some pandemonium and what we can learn from it.

We run hazers for our weekend services (along with our student ministries, college services, etc).
This is a huge benefit to intelligent lighting and the impact it has on the worship set.

However…and this is a big however…we’re not quite up to speed on having it fully integrated into the DMX setup. Which means that it’s running on manual mode (set via dip switches on the back…controlling fan, amount, etc).

This is not the best setup, because it’s not something you can turn off easily if something goes wrong.

And it does go wrong.

Nothing is more distracting than a hazer gone crazy and ours checked itself into a mental institution and started pouring out haze. Not really sure why it decided to do it this weekend but what once was a great amount of haze…quickly turned into waaaaay too much haze.

Several people had to scramble to run backstage and pull the power and put a straitjacket on the hazer.

The lesson learned here is that lighting and hazers should never ever be run on a “manual” setting if DMX is available. The odds of something going wrong is pretty low, but when it does happen…the ability to fix it usually resorts to ON or OFF.

There is nothing more frustrating than being stuck in the middle of the service when it’s out of your hands.

Also, haze is something that should be nearly seen but not felt.

Nothing sends people over the edge like too much smoke. They react as if the building is on fire and their lungs are filled with smoke. It’s a psychological switch when there’s too much haze.

The message it sends is “There’s something wrong!“….instead of “That worship was amazing!”

You’re not really altering worship one bit…but you’re making it a more enveloping experience.

How was your weekend?