One really big accomplishments was capturing the voices of our three elves, Jingle, Jangle and Elf Judy. They completed nine voice overs that will lead us through the show. And not only will you hear them, we’ve captured a representation of them for all to see. Here is a picture of our elves at their recording session (from L-R Jangle, Elf Judy and Jingle) followed by the way you will be able to see Jangle.

Now comes the task of sequencing the elves’ voices so the Jangle above, and the other two elves, along with a surprise guest, will actually move their “mouths” to coincide with the words you hear. Should be interesting.

116 days

until the lights go on, I’m feeling some pressure to get things in a higher gear, since we were out of town for 20 days in July.

All that aside, I’ve tested all of the LOR controllers, including a new one that wasn’t anticipated, but necessary if I plan on getting the elves to “talk” correctly, and they work perfectly. So now I’m up to 176 usable channels. I don’t think I’ll use all of them this year, but I’m ready if need be. I’ve tested the new DC board and the MR16 LEDs that will be run off them, and I’m pleased with the brightness of the lights. I’ve got red, green, and blue lights that will be used to wash the house with color. And in conjunction with the MR16s, I’ve soldered a 22 ohm resistor to one leg of each of the connectors which allows the MR16s to dim. They do dim differently then the mini-lights, so that will have to be considered during the sequencing phase.

And the good news is that I’ve finished sequencing my first song, The Holidays Are Coming, sung by Melanie Thorton. This song is the basis for the Coke commercial which I’m sure everyone has seen over the years. This will be the first song of the show after the introduction by the three elves. The bad news is that I’ve got 8 more songs to sequence, as well as sequencing the elves. But I’ve still got 116 days to get it accomplished, plus a lot of other odds and ends.

Back to it.

163 DAYS BEFORE THE LIGHTS GO ON

At this point, I have only a little over 40 hours expended toward this year’s Christmas Lights Display. That doesn’t count the time I stood out in front and visualized what things were going to look like. Or reading up on the many Christmas related forums. And as my friend Jim keeps reminding me, November will be here before we know it. So far:

• The voiceovers for the three elves, Jingle, Jangle and Elf Judy, has been written, but not yet recorded. Elf Judy was just added today.

• The playlist has been determined and includes:

• Introduction
• The Holidays Are Coming
• Wonderful Christmas Time
• Jingle Bells
• Carol of the Bells (mix)
• We Need A Little Christmas
• White Christmas
• Wizards of Winter
• We Wish You A Merry Christmas

• One frame for holding the coro has been completed and positioned on the roof to ensure it is sitting at the correct angle. Here is a picture of it:

• One song is in the sequencing mode, but not yet completed. Since adding Elf Judy to the cast of elves, I have to reconfigure the channel distribution. Not a biggie, but four of the channels that were assigned to Grounded Lights are now going to be used to power Elf Judy. Glad I didn’t have several songs sequenced at this point. See Jim, not being the fastest may have paid off.

More as things progress.

196 days or 28 weeks

until the 2008 version of our Animated Christmas Lights display is open to the public. While there has been a lot of head thinking since the unveiling of the 2007 show about this year’s show, the actual time spent on making it happen has been less than 25 hours. So I’ve got to get on the stick and do more to make it happen.

At this point, here are the anticipated changes to be included in this year’s display:

• Double the number of computerized channels used, from 80 to 160
• Add one controller that controls DC voltage which will power several MR-16 LEDs used as wall wash lights
• Add more lights. Not sure how many, but probably 10,000+.
• Reposition and reconfigure the mega-tree.
• Add 5 more mini-trees, bringing the total to 21. They too will be repositioned this year (or at least I have a picture of them in my head that I will have to test this summer)
• Make three animated figures, using coroplast (fluted polypropylene) and mini-lights. Two will be Jingle and Jangle, the two elves that stared in one of the shows last year, and the third of Santa. I envision these sitting on the roof.
• Reposition the angel and snowflakes
• Add more icicles on the house eve
• Reconfigure the red and white lights on the two oak trees
• Add ten grounded lights

Songs

The song selection hasn’t been determined at this point. I know how the opening will go and I’ve mixed five separate Carol of the Bells versions into one 5+ minute song. I’ll probably bring back Jingle Bells, since that has been a favorite the last two Christmases, but the rest is open. I do have several that are good candidates, but nothing definite.

Do you have any suggestions? What song or songs would you like to see included in this year’s display? Can’t promise anything, but any input would be appreciated.

That’s the latest. As new things happen, I’ll make more posts.

Last night we had snow and today the temperatures are only getting into the low 20’s with a wind chill around 10º, so it’s a good day to be posting videos of our Christmas lights display on this website.

As mentioned in an earlier post, two shows were developed to run on alternating nights. And each song in both shows was connected with running dialog. So they are best viewed in sequence. To watch the two shows, click on the links below:

Introduction

Show #1

Scene 1 - O’Come All Ye Faithful/O’Holy Night (4:30 minutes)

Scene 2 - Mad Russian’s Christmas (4:29 minutes)

Scene 3 - Christmas Eve Sarajevo 24/7 (3:47 minutes)

Scene 4 - Wizards of Winter (3:07 minutes)

Scene 5 - An Angel Returned (3:08 minutes)

Show 2

Scene 1 - Jingle Bells (2:18 minutes)

Scene 2 - Deck the Halls (2:51 minutes)

Scene 3 - Kansas City Christmas (2:45 minutes)

Scene 4 - Jingle Bell Rock (2:38 minutes)

Scene 5 - We Wish You A Merry Christmas (1:32 minutes)

Closing (0:44 minutes)

And there you have it. For our out-of-town friends, the videos are OK but not as good as when seen in person. And for our KC friends, hope you got by to see the real thing, but if not, hope you enjoy the videos.

Very positive comments have been received about this year’s display, and if you would like to add to those comments, please do so below. If you would like to pick a favorite,please include that in your comment.

It was a most enjoyable experience, being able to bring a symbol of the light of Christ during the dark December nights to those who passed by, as well as providing joy through the seeing and hearing of our Christmas lights display. May you keep Christmas in your heart, hands, and mind each and every day of 2008.

The lights went on Thanksgiving evening for the rest of the world, but not exactly when planned. I thought I had the controller programmed for on at 6 and off at 10:30. But at 5, Mary comes to me and tells me the light show has started. So I run out to the controller and take out the SD card to stop the show. Then I reset all the timers and sequences on the chip, so it is now coming on and going off when planned.

Here is a picture of the display with all the lights on:

To see a bigger version, go to the photo album link in the right column on this page. You can click on a thumbnail to see bigger version.

There have been some minor glitches where the final product doesn’t exactly match what I thought I had sequenced and had been looking at in the animation display on the computer. Not sure why that has happened, but am working on correcting it.

Two nights ago I tried to take some video. The best time to shoot Christmas displays is at twilight, which is around 5:15 here. So I set up the camera high up on a ladder like I did last year and started to shoot. After less than a minute a car drives up and stops right in front of our yard, blocking out a good piece of the action. There went that opportunity. Last night I did some experimenting to see if I could still get a good shot and avoid the cars. I think I have the solution, but tonight will tell.

Since the last post, all of the sequencing has been completed. Night two is comprised of five songs plus voiceovers and took only 24 hours to sequence. But the songs are shorter than for the first night. Reflections of Earth will be the opening number each night. Here is a list of the songs that you will be hearing and the length of each show:

November 22 and alternating every other night - runs 20 minutes

Reflections of Earth

O’ Come Al Ye Faithful/O’ Holy Night

A Mad Russian’s Christmas

Christmas Eve/Sarajevo

Wizards of Winters

An Angel Returned

November 23 and alternating every other night - runs 14 minutes

Reflections of Earth

Jingle Bells (last year’s favorite per your votes)

Deck the Halls

Christmas In Kansas City

Jingle Bell Rock

We Wish You A Merry Christmas

And to listen to the 21,000+ lights, turn your car radio to 91.1FM.

This weekend, Mary and I have been hard at it installing all of the extension cords to the 16 mini-trees, and erecting the tri-mega tree. In all we have spent 37 hours over the last three days and almost everything is complete. In all we have 119 extension cords that would stretch our 2,550 feet, if connected end to end. The only thing left to do, except for reattaching the snowflakes to the tree 30′ in the air, is to finish the last quarter of the tri-mega tree with green and red lights. The trick will be to figure out how to do it since we have to attach the red lights to the hooks 9′ up while still using a ladder. I think there is a way without getting killed, so I’ll know if it works tomorrow. Then we’ll run a test to see how it looks in real life. Up until now, I’ve only seen it on the computer. Hope it looks as good in real time.

And speaking of seeing the programs run on the computer, I’ve had a weird side-affect from all this sequencing. The October 16 post included a picture of the computer screens that I’ve been staring at for all these hours. Kind of hard to see but the screen is made up primarily of cells, like an Excel spreadsheet. The side-affect I’ve experienced is that when I get up from the computer and go into a dimly lit space, I see those cells. Looks kind of like a screened door. Or I see the cells when I close my eyes. Just black with dim white horizontal and vertical lines. Very strange.

Hope you can stop by this Christmas season to see the 2007 computer animated Christmas lights shows. The lights come on at 6pm beginning Thanksgiving night, and off at 10:30pm, with the last show on New Year’s Eve. Our address is 7909 Fontana in Prairie Village. Fontana is two blocks east of Roe. And after you have seen a show or two, please come back here and let me know what you think of this year’s versions by adding a comment. I’ll post some pictures when things get up and running along with video for those out of town that won’t be able to see it in person.

THE LIGHTS GO ON IN ONLY

12 DAYS

The last two days were spent putting up some of the outdoor lights. We had beautiful weather days and were also able to take advantage of help from our long-time friend Jim, who was in town from St. Louis. This included hanging the animated angel and thirty twinkling snowflakes 25 feet above the ground, wrapping our two big oak trees in bands of red and clear mini-lights, hanging icicles along the front eve, and placing the large star on the chimney. This phase of the actual installation took 25 people hours to complete, longer than anticipated. Next weekend, weather permitting, is when the remainder of the display goes up. This will include the installation of the tri-mega tree, the 16 mini-trees, and hooking up the five controllers to all the lights with several hundred feed of extension cords.

Sequencing of night one has been completed. In total, the show will run about 20 minutes and took 42.67 hours to sequence. We still have to record the voiceovers with the grandkids for night two, but two out of the five songs have been sequenced.

Stay tuned for more information as we move closer to Thanksgiving night and the reveal.

Song Title                                    Length (min.)   Time to Sequence (hrs./min.
Reflections of Earth                      1:42:40            4:35

O’Come All Ye Faithful/o’Hoiy Night 3:35:40           10:40

A Mad Russian’s Christmas            3:36:73            9:45

Now it’s on to the third song in the story set, which is Christmas Eve/Sarajevo. The good news is that I’ve edited the length of the song down to 2:52 minutes, so hopefully it will go faster than the other songs. However, there are some detailed riffs included, which means more detail in the sequencing.

Stay tuned.

24 days, 22 hours

before the lights go on.

So now it’s on to sequencing. For one night there will be six songs in all, and all have been edited to be shorter in length. Then I have recorded the voiceover for an introduction, a story line to connect five of the songs together, and finally a closing. I didn’t keep track of the exact amount of time it took for the audio editing, but estimate it is somewhere around eight hours.

Before I started sequencing the songs, I elected to reconfigure my computer to accept two monitors, with one in a portrait mode so I could see all 80 channels at once, and a second one in a “normal” landscape mode where I can watch a representation of the display in an animation as the sequencing progresses. I also had to modify the animation as there was a last minute change in the light set-up. Here is the set-up of the computer screens.

But the preliminaries are complete and I just finished 35 minutes of sequencing the first song, Reflections of Earth. That 35 minutes accounts for 20 seconds of the song, which is 1:42:15 in length, which is one minute, 42 and 1/2 seconds.

Now that we are getting some much closer to the lights going on Thanksgiving night, I’ve really got to buckle down and get moving. After all, there are only