The 7th Annual Interpreter Foundation Dinner and Fireside was held Saturday, August 10, 2019. Thanks to Tom Pittman and Russ Richins, the following video of the presentations is available. Our thanks to everyone who helped make this event a success.
Agenda:
- 00:00 Dan Peterson: Welcome
- 00:30 Russ Richins: Witnesses film production update
- 03:35 Dan Peterson: Introduces Royal Skousen
- 04:10 Royal Skousen: The King James Bible in the Book of Mormon
- 21:55 Dan Peterson: Introduces Noel Reynolds
- 22:28 Noel Reynolds: Introduces Bruce and Marie Hafen
- 28:25 Bruce and Marie Hafen: Faith is Not Blind
- 01:03:35 Dan Peterson: Book presentation, closing
Insights
First from Spencer W. Kimball message from the First Presidency Oct 1977 Ensign: The Lord is not trying to convince his children that this is the true gospel, He is trying to convert them that this is the true gospel. The former would be easy for Him to do, but would be damaging to those not ready to receive it. He doesn’t force Himself upon us.
I personally see progression like water flowing over its first course. If you get close and watch as it cut its way along an uncharted path and forms separate waterways here and there, you will see many eddy currents and distinct varied water flows created by objects and obstacles creating resistance, upturns and downturns, even causing some water to flow in the opposite direction a short distance or a longer distance occasionally. As the flow gets momentum and it’s observed at a greater perspective, the water is definitely progressing forward.
Do we rejoice each day of the things we can do
Of improving ourselves and helping others too
It is not what we have that counts
It is what we give that accumulates and mounts.
by Dan R Berkabile
FairMormon Sustaining Member
August 2019
Brothers, just quick constructive suggestion: Wondering, if anything deserves hi def 1080p video, it is these things. But then there is the bane of budgets! Thanks so much for capturing this meeting on video and making it available. This whole hour of delight thrills.
Cheers,
P.S., The ethereal cross-fading of speakers approaching/leaving the pulpit is a stunning visual effect. Sound is marvelous. The ‘Interpreter’ logo watermark is beautiful. 🙂
Glen, thank you for your feedback; I genuinely appreciate it and hope you will continue to offer it.
The event *was* recorded in “hi def 1080p video.” If it isn’t showing in 1080p on your end, then click the gear in the lower right hand corner of the video and see if YouTube is giving you a lesser resolution stream. If so, then you can change it to 1080p if your connection speed supports it.
Also, because I’m just one person on the site, and I have so much to juggle in the moment to make sure both the live venue and the video and audio recordings are going well, I use the auto mode on the video cameras to simply everything I’m monitoring. Auto mode’s picture quality isn’t always the best.
Specifically, the things I’m keeping an eye on during the even include:
• I had to tend to 5 mics for the venue so the people attending could hear well. We had a mic on the harpist so she could be heard throughout the building, including in the cultural hall, foyers, and hallways as people moved from the dinner into the chapel. We had a mic in the cultural hall for announcements during the dinner. We had a mic on the metal plates Brother Richins set next to the podium so everyone could hear them as he set the plates down and rustled them during his talk. We had a mic at the podium mic for the speaker (of course). And we had a cordless handheld mic at the ready for questions and answers at the end, if there is time.
• I also had to tend to the audio levels of 3 mics going into a mixer then out to an audio recorder for later use with the video. Believe it or not we made 6 audio recordings of the event so we would redundancy and failover if something were to go wrong with the primary audio recording. In this particular instance, we had batteries die unexpectedly, so we ended up using one of the backup audios for the video.
• I tended two 1080p video cameras recording the event — one of which happened to fail just minutes into recording the vent, so its footage didn’t make the final version which was uploaded to YouTube. Normally we don’t have a camera and the primary audio fail, but this time it happened and thankfully we take the trouble to set up redundancy so we don’t just lose capturing the event.
• I was also making a video recording of everything happening on the laptop screen so it captures whatever the presenters do with the slides as they speak, including capturing any animation they may have in their presentation, and capturing any going forward or backward of slides, and capturing any embedded video and audio in the presentation if the presentation has it. The video and audio from the laptop is then edited into the final version video you see on YouTube.
• I had to tend to the room’s lights, which Elder Hafen asked to be changed brighter and dimmer depending on what they were doing at the time.
• I tended to the operation of the presenter remote (which at this particular event meant helping Elder Hafen when they wanted to display song lyrics on the screen).
• I tended to the projector in the room which thankfully is basically set and forget.
• And I tended to the presentation laptop in the room running PowerPoint or Keynote and made sure the file from their flash drive displayed correctly with no unpleasant surprises.
At any rate, I’m sure no one wanted to know all that, but I mentioned it so I can make this point:
I know I can get higher quality video if I could record in manual mode and sit right by the video cameras, but I have too much going on to do that so I put the cameras on auto and hope it will do a good enough job.
I actually used to tweak the cameras an use them in manual mode to get a better picture, however more than once people attending the events have either deliberately moved the cameras so they could sit where they wanted, or they’ve accidentally bumped the cameras as they went by them. Using auto mode settings assures things like focus are still going to work, especially if I didn’t happen to notice that someone had disrupted a camera.
That said, I’m not really happy with the video quality (even in 1080p) myself, so I’m looking into what I can do better next time.
Again, thanks for the feedback; I’m glad to know someone out there is noticing things like the Interpreter Foundation logo watermark and the crossfading.
BTW, the crossfading was more to cut dead time from the recording so it wouldn’t be needlessly longer. 🙂
Cheers,
Tom