Daniel Johnson, Jr.

Some might say that working in the soundbooth at church has ruined the way I look at movies, TV programs, and any other productions. I never realized how much goes on behind the scenes at church until Chuck, my friend and brother in Christ, invited me to start working with him back in the A/V room at church. I hadn’t noticed lighting changes with scenes, for example. I had never worked with ANY mixing board before, much less the 40-track one we have. MediaSHOUT, the system we use to send content through the projector and mixing board was just as daunting.

In 2006 I had been creating content through my own podcasts and blogs, and Chuck was well aware of it. In September 2005, after podcasting for less than a month, I recorded and produced audio from a domestic violence awareness walk we participated in. Ever have one of those projects you’ve worked on that you felt just had to be told?  Chuck heard this episode and complimented me on it. He said it reminded him of something he might hear on NPR. You can judge for yourself The Cheryl Dawson Memorial Walkathon.

I’ve been spending time in this specific behind the scenes environment for five years now, but for as long as I can remember I’ve been fascinated by what it takes to tell great stories that resonate with others.

You might say it’s ruined my DVD watching. Well, not my DVD watching. I put the disc in and immediately go to the Special Features so that I can see the “making of” featurette. My family, on the other hand, would much rather I just play the film. Or I’ll look up the Trivia page for it on IMDB.com and share it with my wife, who then says, “Can’t we just watch the movie?”

Seeing how others create inspires me to create more myself.

Can you relate?

This post was written entirely on my Droid phone. Another experiment in content creation!

Why create something unless it’s to share with others?

I’m fascinated by how we can use technology to help tell a compelling story.

Since 2005 our church has been recording sermons and messages and posting them to the website. When the audio consists of just one speaker, producing it for the web is a somewhat straightforward process.  I emphasize somewhat because it’s still a little bit involved. Words like “straightforward” and “easy” are all relative, based on the level of experience you have in capturing the audio and editing it to produce a file that you can later upload and share with others.

Background – equipment setup

I only got involved in the audio-visual ministry in mid-2006. (more…)

I’ve been playing Starcraft 2 since August of this year. It’s my first-ever venture into massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) or real-time strategy (RTS) gaming. The game has many areas for individual players to enjoy as well as multiple players to have matches with one another.

Two features of the game that I love are (more…)

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In January 2002 I started my first blog. I’d read about Blogger for a few years and thought it was time to look deeper and see what I could do with it. I’ve been an introspective person for much of my life, so when it came time to come up with the title, I called it something that would signify the purpose for which it was created. I’d been journaling since I was in high school, and I saw blogging as an opportunity to do that. I named the blog “Journey Inside My Mind”.  It was a scary title. Even now, it still scares me a bit. What will I find there? What will others find there?

Even so it was fun. I remember the enjoyment I got out of figuring out how to get certain things done with the tool. I learned how to change my template, add features, and even had fun spilling my guts and letting the creative juices flow. I recall impromptu posts where I’d create a poem from scratch.

In 2005 I learned about audio blogging and started listening to podcasts. I learned how to collect podcasts in a single location to listen to as an alternative to the radio, customized for my personal listening experience. Ever since I was a kid, I thought I’d love to be a DJ. I also learned how to create audio blog posts and eventually spent many hours learning how to create my first podcast episode.

Five years ago this month, I released the first episode of the Journey Inside My Mind podcast. (more…)