That’s me with a couple of the stars of our newest Mother’s Day video. We shot all day today and it went well. It’s all “in the can” so to speak or in this case on the cards (P2). The video is a fun salute to Moms and visually highlights the many roles that a mom plays throughout the day. I won’t give it all away right now… We should have it posted some time next week. In the meantime, enjoy this brief look behind the scenes of an eleven72 video shoot:

In the check us out, we got talked about in a cool magazine category… Greg Atkinson has an article in the latest issue of Collide Magazine which features “The Top Producers of Church Media (see pg. 30). Guess who made the list? We did! Yeah. eleven72 has the honor of being listed among great media producers like Floodgate Productions, Highway Video and Igniter Media Group, among other distinguished producers. How cool is that? A big Thank You to Greg of Church Video Ideas fame for including us on the list.

And the hits keep coming. We also made the list in Collide’s 2007 Holiday Media Guide (pg. 58), where they recommend our Christmas video “The Nativity: All Too Familiar?” and also mention our other Christmas videos “Breath of Heaven” and “Peace on Earth.”

And the icing on the eleven72 cake? Check out our very cool ad on page 13 of the magazine. We’re really excited about our new “Get Creative” campaign that brilliant Austin based designer Scott Edwards of Bright Grey Studios helped us come up with. It ties in with our brand new website. What brand new website you ask? You’ll see. We were hoping it would be live by now, but it should definitely be live in the next week or so.

Kudos to Scott McClellan and the fine fine folks at Collide headquarters for putting out a fabulous new issue. Issue #2 is stocked full of great features, columns and assorted goodies. I’m really excited about this magazine y’all. If you don’t yet subscribe you should, right now. Click here to do so.

This is the first short film I ever Directed. I shot it in film school circa 1999. We shot with an old CP-16 film camera and recorded the sound on a Nagra reel to reel recorder. Man I miss shooting on honest to goodness film. Maybe again some day. Maybe. The woman in the short is my lovely wife Rachael. The soccer player in the short is Alejandro Gomez Monteverde. Alejandro recently Directed his first feature film. It’s called Bella and it won the People’s Choice Award at the prestigious 2006 Toronto Film Festival. After that, Focus On The Family gave it “Picture of the Year” honors. In other words, he’s a really really talented young filmmaker and Bella is a really really great film. Look for Bella to hit your local theaters some time soon. Until then, enjoy Alejandro when he was just a run of the mill film school student helping a brother out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSBAws8vxLk

Ahhh yes. It’s an editor’s nightmare when someone says they want a video and they’d like the music to be “Cool. You know, kinda like that song that does that thing? Know what I’m sayin’?” Or how about when the church asks you to create a video with a popular/licensed song, but you know that it’s not legal to do so. You want to make a great media piece, but you don’t want to break the law. What’s the answer? Oh thank Heaven for Royalty Free Stock music!

Of course, I must start out by saying that a lot of the royalty free music out there isn’t that great, but there are a couple of sites that have some pretty good songs. This can greatly enhance your production/edit and without breaking any laws. Here’s some great sites that can get you started:

1. Revostock (I previously posted about this site)
2. Shockwave Sound
3. Massive Tracks
4. Unique Tracks
5. Studio Cutz
6. Opuzz

All of these sites offer music for a very small price. You’ll need to read the fine print if you’re doing some mass duplication of your media, but other than that, these licenses will cover most productions. They have search terms, keywords, genres etc.

I have personally spent thousands of hours looking for the right music for our productions. These sites are a great help for quick, easy turn around for a small price.

Lastly, I want to stress that music is an extremely important element in your production. Each and every time Storme and I create a project, our music selection is taken very seriously. We have been fortunate enough to have some scores done that are created by a musician specifically for a particular video (for example, listen to the music in Jesus Is and Pray Where You Are). This is an enormous help to filmmakers because there are times, when the stock music world just doesn’t have it. So make good friends with a musician if you can, because if you can think ahead just a little bit, they can really add value to your media.

While Storme is on vacation in the mountains of New Mexico, I thought I’d share some post production resources and tid bits with you this week. Esta bueno? Cool.

One resource that I’ve found to be a post producer’s dream is called Revostock (short for Revolution Stock). They have thousands of backgrounds, video, visual effects and…get this…music & sound effects! It’s really amazing! There are many music bits on there that are only a few seconds for loops and such, but there are lots of full songs to purchase. They even have a worship category to search through.

This resource is truly incredible because you can find many different elements for most productions, for an extremely low cost. I’ve searched for timelapse photography and there are hundreds of clips for $15-$35 each. Time lapse is really a big investment (time-wise) for a filmmaker and finding something worth while for around $20 is fantastic. If you’ve ever attempted to get time lapse footage, you know exactly what I’m talking about. And the music really is usable. There are some we like and some that aren’t so great, but to find a song or a piece of music that can be licensed, purchased and downloaded for such a low price is just awesome. (I do feel for the musicians at times because this might start to devalue their talent and time. That’s for another post, though.)

So if you’re creating a media piece and you have a very limited budget, time and/or experience, you can make some very high quality media pieces with the stock media and music available over there.

Be careful though. If you’re like me, you might get ’stuck’ over there for hours just looking at all the amazing content you can get for almost nothing!

For you Feed Readers out there, here’s the link:
http://www.revostock.com

Lee

Thanksgiving is Right Around the Corner

We’re really excited about our brand new Thanksgiving content. We’ve just put up a Thanksgiving Volume (pictured at left), three Thanksgiving themed Sermon Illustrations, two Thanksgiving Countdowns, and three great Fall themed Still Backgrounds. All conveniently located on our new Seasonal tab.

The Thanksgiving Volume features a brand new Sermon Illustration entitled Pray With Thanksgiving, our Thanksgiving to the Lord Countdown, and three new Still Backgrounds. Download or buy the Volume for $25 and you’ll have everything you need for a great Thanksgiving service.