I posted a while back about an awesome project that we are a part of.  It’s called The Quench Project. This project is in collaboration with several other media producers like us.  We all came together and decided to create a “Best Of” DVD for one fantastic cause: Water.  1.1 Billion don’t have access to clean water.  That’s a real problem. Read the previous post here.

The official launch of the product is still a few weeks away, but you can buy it now in the WorshipHouse Media store.  Click here to buy yours now! Get your copy today and start helping water wells get drilled tomorrow!  You cannot buy this anywhere else, so tell everyone you know to go check it out.  The media on the DVD is some of the best, most popular media ever created in this industry.  And 100% of every dime made with this video goes to Living Water International.  All of it.  Hence 100%.  So the producers are giving their media away so all the money goes where it needs to.

If that ain’t putting our money where our mouth is, then I don’t know what is.

Faith Visuals was kind enough to interview me a couple of weeks ago about what we do here at eleven72. We talked for quite a while and so it’s a pretty in depth piece (thanks to Tyler Charles over there for doing and editing the interview). If you have a few minutes and want to learn a little more about us and our process for making the films we do, you can check out the interview HERE.

We are so proud to announce (to the few of you who read this blog) a project that eleven72 is part of. It’s called The Quench Project. It’s the first ever of it’s kind. The most popular and successful church video producers in the world have collaborated to create an incredible DVD. We talked with many of our friends in this industry and decided to make a “best of” type DVD for churches. It includes some of the post popular videos ever made for churches from 13 different producers. The value is incredible because if the media was all purchased individually, the cost would be over $700. The final price isn’t set, but it will most likely be under $100.

And here’s the BEST part! All proceeds go to a company called Living Water International. That’s 100% of everything made on this project goes to helping the 1 billion people around the world who don’t have ACCESS to clean water. I capitalized access because that’s such a crucial word. It’s not that they don’t have inexpensive clean water, or that it’s kinda hard to get to…No access at all. People are literally dying everyday. Water is the most essential part of every humans life. This particular company teaches people how to build wells and then they go and build them. Then they teach the villagers to maintain the well and go back often to make repairs…All in the name of Jesus. It’s so fantastic.

So be on the lookout on all our websites for the announcement. The big unveiling will be at the Echo conference in Dallas in August. And thanks so much to our wonderful friends at Floodgate for heading this up, spurring us on and creating the art and DVD itself. They are truly fantastic people.

For the last week, we’ve been running all over Guatemala to capture the stories of various teams of missionaries down here. We’ve been all around Guatemala City and all over the mountains to the east and west of the capitol city. Out shooting for twelve or thirteen hours a day. It has been quite an amazing experience. Check out this slideshow that chronicles our adventures so far:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Lee and I are in Guatemala for two weeks shooting videos for ten different missionary teams in and around Guatemala City. We got into town Friday and we’re loving every minute of it. Right now, I’m getting ready to head out to the Christian Academy of Guatemala, a school here in Guatemala city that teaches locals as well as missionary kids. We’ll be profiling a couple of the teachers there. If you want to keep up with our trip, check us out on Flickr, I’ve got a Guatemala set posted on my account and I’ll be updating it as often as possible. Here’s a link:
www.flickr.com/photos/13027226@N03/sets/72157604757936423/

And here’s a quick video we shot with our Canon Powershot G9 on Saturday while we were shooting Broll at a local church:

Stay tuned for more updates from the field. Hope you’re all doing well.

My feet hurt. We’re waking up to our last day in Las Vegas at this years NAB conference. We literally hit the ground running on Tuesday, our flight pulling into the gate a few minutes after 10AM and us having to pick up our bags and get across town to the Hilton by 11:30. We made it but we haven’t stopped waking since.

Yesterday started with Greg Atkinson’s panel “Church 2.0″ at the Technologies for Worship Conference. Greg is working on a book of the same name but this was his first official talk on the subject. There was a good turnout and the discussion went really well. One of the coolest things that Greg did was do a live poll during the class where folks texted in their answers and we could see real time results on the screen. What a great idea for a way to get your congregation involved in the sermon on a Sunday morning.

Greg talked about all the usual suspects, Facebook, Myspace, Orkut, blogging, etc. I was also glad to see him talk about my new favorite social media tool, Twitter. I thought it would be cool to have someone on Twitter interact with Greg to show the class what a cool tool it can be and how it’s much more than just answering the question, “what are you doing right now?” So I through it out there to my tweeps and @gregdavispsu and @jimwalton responded with questions and comments for Greg that I then raised in front of the class. That was fun and hopefully was enough to bring a couple of new people into the Twitter universe. Thanks @gregdavispus and @jimwalton!

After Greg’s class, we wandered around the NAB exhibit universe. Two highlights for me were getting to shoulder and handhold/mess around with the brand new hi-speed Arri 416, and getting to fly the Steadicam Merlin around the Steadicam booth on the vest and arm that are designed for it. I need to get that arm. It’s awesome.

And my favorite moment from yesterday… Lee posing for a couple of pictures with a Borg at the Star Trek Experience Casino in the Hilton. Check out that picture and some others from our trip to NAB here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/13027226@N03/sets/72157604571438537.

Later today, we head for Los Angeles where we’re meeting up with some other producers in the church video business. Should be fun. Hopefull there will be time to catch a flick at Mann’s Chinese.

Lee and I are out in Las Vegas at NAB. We feel very priviledged to be sponsoring Greg Atkinson’s (Church Video Ideas) talks out here at the Technologies for Worship portion of the big event. We had a great time meeting people and hanging out yesterday. Here are just a few of the very cool people we finally got to meet: Dave Daniels of ChurchyMedia, Tom Rice of Eight20Eight, and Matt Mangum of FortyOneTwenty. All the church video producers with number names. Check out  few pics I snapped on Flickr (I’ll add more tomorrow): www.flickr.com/photos/13027226@N03/sets/72157604571438537

Greg’s panel on “Choosing the Video Presentation Software That’s Right for Your Church” was awesome. Reps from ProPresenter, MediaShout, and EasyWorship were all on hand to demo their respective software. I videotaped the entire presentation and we’re going to figure out a way to make it available for all the folks out there that couldn’t be here at NAB.

Wish you were here! I’ll post more later about the show. But right now, I gotta get back in there :).