Palm Sunday Resources

If you're looking for media to plug into your Palm Sunday service this weekend, we've got a Palm Sunday Countdown and a Palm Sunday Worship Background that would work great. Count down to the service and then use our background for worship to continue the Palm Sunday theme. You can find both these videos, along with a ton of other Easter resources on our Seasonal page.

And don't forget, if you sign up for our email list on the homepage, you'll be emailed a link to download our free Easter Resource Pack. You'll get our Crosses on Hill Background, Praising Man Background, Jesus on the Cross Still and Jesus on the Hill Still. You can't beat free Power Point Backgrounds and free loopable backgrounds. And they're for Easter! Check it all out on our Free Media page. We give away stuff like this every month. So sign up already :).

End of plug.

Lifehacker and The Free Geek

This is a "what's in your wallet?" kind of post. I wanted to point out a couple of feeds that I subscribe to that aren't Christian per se, but from which I get a lot of useful information.

Lifehacker - Lifehacker is kind of a productivity blog. Tons and tons of posts. Everything from opinions on how to get the most out of Google apps to MacGyver tips like how to clean up gasoline stains with dish detergent. A good resource. Check it out.

The Free Geek - I just found this one through Lifehacker. It's new, but a highlight for me was a recent post on 101 Shareware and Freeware Programs Every Nerd Needs. The post is really well organized and points you to all kinds of great resources for things like encoding audio and video, photo editing, internet browsing, etc. Good stuff.

What's in your wallet? I'd love to hear more about the feeds and blogs that you keep up with. Drop us a comment so we can surf over and have a look.

Video Pocket Projector

TI is demoing a video projector that is so small it can be built into a cell phone! It's 1.5 inches in length and runs on DLP technology. How cool would it be to have your own personal video projector on you at all times? What if you networked a bunch of these little projectors together? Can anyone think of any cool ways technology like this might impact your ministry or is that a stretch? Anyway, I thought this was really interesting and wanted to pass it along.

Here's a blurb from the article I found on CNET:

The projector contains three lasers, a DLP chip and a power supply and measures about 1.5 inches in length. With the projector, the cell phone can beam DVD-quality video onto a screen or a wall, thereby allowing it to serve as a video player or a television. By using the projector, the actual "screen" size can be much larger than what a person would get by using the LCD panel integrated into the phone. The chip inside the phone, in fact, could drive images for a widescreen television.

To read the entire article, click here.

A Video Set Up for a Home Run

In my years as a Media Director at Gateway Church here in Austin, we spent a lot of time in Programming Meetings discussing the purpose of Sermon Illustration videos. That is, videos used to set up or to set up a main point in the pastor's sermon. In broad strokes, we talked about what our videos should do for the Pastor? How much should they say? Where should they leave off?

We came up with a pretty simple metaphor that we used as a guideline. The metaphor goes something like this: You're on a ball field playing softball. It's a slow pitch game where you pitch to your own team. The pastor is at the plate. You're the pitcher and the ball is the Sermon Illustration video. Your job as the pitcher (film/videomaker) is to throw up a nice slow pitch for the pastor so that he can knock that pitch out of the park.

So, let's break that metaphor down. First, it's a team effort. Programming and doing church on Sundays takes a team of people all working together toward a common goal. The big goal being to reach people with the life changing message of Jesus Christ. Each week, the pastor gives a message and that message is the anchor of the weekly service. Every element in the service should function to help set up that message, to set up that home run.

You are not the batter. The video is not there to hit the homerun. The pastor is the batter. The message is hopefully the homerun. What do I mean?

In the context of church, video Sermon Illustrations are not the message. Often times, when used well, they function to set up the message. In this way, they often raise questions that they don't answer. The videos can give voice to the thoughts, fears, doubts and questions that the people in the congregation have. Following this, the pastor can come up and speak to those thoughts, fears, doubts and questions. He can provide answers from God's Word.

Oftentimes, this means leaving things open ended in our videos. We need to leave room for the pastor's message. When viewed alone, one might think the videos don't give a strong enough answer, don't resolve enough, but we have to remember that in the context of Sermon Illustrations and church, these videos are not designed or created to stand alone. And they aren't designed to give the message. That is the pastor's job.

Remember, throw up a nice slow pitch and you'll be able to watch with joy as the ball sails out of the park.

Back from Baltimore, Working on New Series of Posts

We're back from Baltimore and resuming normal ops here in Austin. Our shoot went great. We got everything we needed and we even finished ahead of schedule. The highlight of the trip was shooting aerial footage from a helicopter. It was my first time shooting from a helicopter. I even got to put my foot out on the skid while shooting! Lee took the picture above while we were airborne.

In other news... Drawing from my experience as a Media Director at Gateway Church here in Austin, I'm going to start a series of posts on programming, creative teams and my thoughts on how and why we use video and multimedia in the church. Look for the first post later today.

We'll also be sending out a special newsletter later today. If you're not already a subscriber, sign up on our homepage. We use the email list to give away free videos and stills every month, to keep folks up with what we're doing around here and to make available special discounts and offers to our subscribers.

Greetings From Baltimore

We're in Baltimore... and it's freezing :). We left Texas in Springtime (Sunny and 80 degrees) and climbed off the plane to find ourselves back in Winter (33 degrees with snow on the ground). Lee and I are shooting an industrial video for some friends and we'll be in Maryland until Thursday. Since we don't start shooting until tomorrow, we got to spend the day out enjoying Baltimore. We had a great day, saw all kinds of cool things, and ate a great lunch (if you're ever in Baltimore, check out the Rusty Scupper for a terrific seafood meal). During the course of the day, I got to shoot a few photos. I've posted a couple of my favorites. Daises and Razor Wire. Good times:

Watch This: Two Sites With Top Notch Content

If you're creating videos. If you're a storyteller. If you aspire to get better at making, presenting, explaining things through video, graphics, animation... Then you have to be a student. You have to be checking out what other people are doing and what's being done by the best and the brightest content creators out there.

Below you'll find a couple of resources we really like. We hope you'll use them to learn, analyze, absorb, break down, emulate, critique, and get ideas from. Then you can go make your own great, informed, unique content!

Motionographer

(From Their About Page):

Motionographer (pronounced like “oceanographer”) seeks to be a source of inspiration for filmmakers, animators and designers by sharing:

• outstanding work from studios, freelancers and students
• feature stories that give readers a closer look at influential studios and individuals
• commentary that sparks discussion or introspection about the creative process
• miscellaneous items that Motionographer contributors find interesting

Boardsmag's Screening Room

(In My Words):

The Screening Room posts commercials, music videos and short films from all over the world. And the main Boardsmag site has all kinds of articles and other resources.

These aren't "Christian" resources, but these are films and videos made by really talented people. Sometimes the content or the message is questionable, but we can still learn a lot from the imagination, skills, and techniques that are being used.

If you know of other good places to tune in and see great things. Resources you use. Sites you're always checking out. Please leave a comment and let us know about them. We are always looking for more solid resources. And we love watching movies!

Pop Quiz: What's more important, sound or picture?

Sound. Now I am a visual guy. A cinematographer. I'm all about writing with light. So you can imagine how hard this is to admit, but it's true. I learned this early, through my mistakes, and it's been confirmed to me over and over again (through others mistakes). Nothing will ruin your film or video faster than bad audio. People will suffer bad picture quality. In fact, much to my chagrin, people often don't even notice what I think is bad cinematography. The image can be scratched, somewhat distorted, slightly over or underexposed, poorly lit, glaringly overlit, etc. But if the quality of the audio is bad, if it's noisy or distorted. If there's too much room noise or you can't hear the actor over that airplane going overhead, your audience will notice it. And it won't be easy for them to get past it. The lesson I've learned is don't skimp on the audio. Do everything you can to get the best sound possible. Buy good mics. Always use headphones to monitor your audio. Keep a close eye on your levels. You can only fix it in Post if you got pretty good audio to begin with. Bad audio can't be fixed. At best, if you really know what you're doing, you can use tricks to distract from it or minimize it. But you can't fix it.

(Stepping Off My Soapbox Now)

Why all this talk about audio? We got two new mics in yesterday and I'm really excited about them. I picked up a Rode NTG-2 shotgun mic to mount on our camera and a Sennheiser Evolution Wireless G2 lav mic. I love getting gear. Waiting for the FedEx guy. It's like Christmas. If anyone's interested in hearing more about different kinds of mics, what's a shotgun mic?, what's a good lav mic?, things like that, leave a comment or send me an email and I'll post on it. In the meantime, mind the audio :).

Living As An Ordinary Radical

Here's a great story that has inspired me. I just finished a book called The Irresistible Revolution: living as an ordinary radical. It's a book by a guy named Shane Claiborne who is part of a group in Philadelphia called The Simple Way. I've got to be honest, this book made me really uncomfortable. It is a book that raises the ugly issues of poverty, inequality, and warfare. But it's never about throwing the issues in your face so you feel guilty or bad or defeated. Instead, it seeks to bring these issues to light so we might have the courage to imagine a world where they no longer exist. It's about what it really means to follow Christ fully and completely, written by a guy who is doing his best to do just that.

At times, while reading the book, I wanted to dismiss Shane as a hippie idealist, as an over zealous activist, as some kind of left-wing nut... but I couldn't. God wouldn't let me off the hook that easy. Shane lives in voluntary poverty in inner city Philadelphia at a house where he holds all things in common with his community. It's a hospitality house, where the door is always open to anyone with any need. In college, Shane followed Christ to India, where he worked with Mother Teresa and ended up living, serving and loving his neighbors in a leper colony. Recently, Shane was led by the Spirit to journey to Iraq, where he worshiped, encouraged and communed with the Christians living there (while the bombs were falling!). This is a guy who puts his proverbial money where his mouth is. He is a voice calling us out of the complacency that so easily infects us in this American life. Shane may be a little crazy, but he's crazy for all the right reasons. And I know he's crazy about Jesus.

Here's what Rob Bell (NOOMA, Velvet Elvis, Mars Hill) says about Shane:

Be warned, my friends: Shane is a poet, a friend, a brother - but underneath it all, he's a prophet with a fire in his belly and a story to back it up. If you listen - or in this case, read - you will not be the same.

AMEN!

Powerpoint and Motion Backs
SPOILER: If you find this post boring you at any point or if you just don't have the time, skip to the end for links to presentation software sights and a couple of reviews.

Did you know that 90% of churches use PowerPoint in their services on Sunday morning? Wow! Now that's not an official number, but I got it from a reliable source. Lee and I had lunch with our friend Greg Atkinson of Church Video Ideas a few weeks back (click here to read about Greg and that meeting). We were talking about the ease and flexibility of being able to put your own text up over moving backgrounds and wondering why more people weren't doing that, when Greg gently reminded us that most people are using PowerPoint and you can't key text over video in PowerPoint. Flash Forward...

I got an email yesterday from a guy whose church wants to use moving worship backgrounds, but they're using PowerPoint. He wanted to know if there was any way to put words up over a moving background in PowerPoint? The short answer, as far as I can tell, is no. But I don't think that's the complete answer, because I've heard there are Plugins for PowerPoint that will let you key text over video. However, in searching, I haven't been able to locate any of these Plugins. Anyone out there know where you can get a Plugin for PowerPoint that lets you key text over motion? If so, please leave a comment and let us know where to find it and then I'll post about it.

So, what do you do if you want to put those lyrics up over a moving worship background. The only good answer I can give is you bite the bullet and purchase some software made specifically for use in worship settings. At first glance, price tags in the $300-$500 range seem prohibitive, but if you're using projectors and computers and trying to make your worship service dynamic with video and moving worship backgrounds, then you really have to have one of these programs. They're made for just such a purpose. BTW- The Standard version of Microsoft Office 2007 retails for $399, so it's not cheap either (we just don't generally have to pay for it because we already have a copy on the computer we're using or we get a copy from someone, etc, etc).

Most of the worship software companies offer a free trial on their product. So, I would encourage you to check them out, give them a test drive and see what you think. I know not everyone can afford these solutions right away, but if you start now, you can figure out what will work best for you and work towards finding the resources to make it possible.

Here's a list of the products I know about that are being used in the worship environment:

Easy Worship (PC), MediaShout (PC), Sunday Plus (PC), Pro Presenter (Mac) and Live Worship (PC and Mac).

Check out the websites and look for the free trials. Here are a couple of reviews I found online that you might find useful (both written by Greg Atkinson):

Announcing ProPresenter 3.0

Review of Easy Worship 2006

And, finally, here's a link to a post I wrote about this kind of stuff a while back, in case you want to see what I had to say back then. I know being under resourced is a huge part of the work we do and deciding what best to do with your limited resources is difficult. Please email me or leave a comment if you have any questions or concerns and I'll do my best to help.

Easter. Then What?

We just finished and posted our newest Sermon Illustration and we're really excited about it! So, what's the story? A few weeks ago, Lee and I sat down with the Teaching Pastor (Ted Beasley/Gateway) at our home church to talk about Easter. The conversation eventually got around to how a lot of people, Christians and non alike, can feel stuck and even depressed around this time of year because they aren't sure how to apply the message of Easter to their everyday lives.

Our Easter video was born out of that conversation. Out of a desire to give voice to that feeling, to set pastors up to take the podium and teach on the Good News that what Jesus did for us isn't just for "fire insurance." His sacrifice was made so that we could have a relationship with God now, a relationship and a freedom in Christ that can be a very real part of our everyday lives.

Click here to check out the video. Then leave us a comment on this post and let us know what you think.

Nike and The Art of Storytelling

Speaking of great storytellers, I think Nike does an awesome job of storytelling. I don't know if there's any other corporate entity that taps into our hearts, our dreams, our desires, like Nike does. They want to tie our longings and desires to their products. We know the only place we'll find satisfaction for those desires is at their source - God. It's easy to say that Nike is able to tell such great stories and do so much because of all the resources that their wealth provides. I often find myself using excuses like that. But sometimes, Nike does it so well and so simply that it lays my excuses bare. We can tell stories like this. Stories that inspire, encourage and point people to the Source. Watch this short video about Brazilian soccer superstar Ronaldinho and think about the stories you want to tell:

Bono, Bill Gates and The Art of Storytelling

While headline surfing this morning, I came across an interesting article in the online edition of the New York Times. Citizen Bono Brings Africa to Idle Rich details how Bono is guest editing the July issue of Vanity Fair. Here's my favorite quote from the article:

“We need to get better at storytelling,” Bono said, sitting in the 22nd floor of the office of Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair. “Bill Gates tells me this all the time. We’ve got to get better at telling the success stories of Africa in addition to the horror stories. And this magazine tells great stories.”

After digesting the surreal sound of "Bill Gates tells me this all the time," I thought about the need for better storytelling. I've mentioned it before, but I really believe that one of the big keys to breaching the walls and defenses that people have, to really reaching people at a heart level is good storytelling. But what is good storytelling? Bono makes another great point later in the article:

“We are trying to deal with the Sally Struthers thing,” he said... “When you see people humiliated by extreme poverty and wasting away with flies buzzing around their eyes, it is easy not to believe that they are the same as us.”

In this context, warning against what he calls "the Sally Struthers thing," good storytelling requires that we are careful not to give people an easy way out. Our stories need to do more than point out a need or guilt people into responding, they need to connect "us" to "them" in a way that makes everyone appear more the same than different.

Like Bill Gates says all the time :), we need to get better at storytelling. With Easter coming, let's use our God given imagination and talents to think of new, exciting and better ways to tell the most incredible story of all time!

Free Easter Worship Backgrounds and Stills

The March Free Media is here! Check out the add on the homepage. You'll notice the ad is now clickable. Click on it and you'll be taken to our new FREE MEDIA page, where you can preview the free downloads each month.

My hat's off to Lee this time. He has really created two awesome backgrounds and stills that are highly usable for Easter. And we're giving them away! We're so pumped about Easter and it makes our hearts glad that we can participate in your services by offering you this media. It's our gift to you because God has given us so much.

We also have other Easter content available on our Seasonal page. Check out Jesus Is and I Will Remember. We've got a Palm Sunday themed background and countdown, as well as some great Sunrise stuff (Sunrise Countdown w/Scripture, Sunrise Countdown and Sunrise Worship Background). Check out the Seasonal page to see them all!

We would really love to hear from any and all of you. Please let us know what you think of our stuff and how you're using it. We want to help share your stories with others and learn from you how to better serve God's church with our gifts.

God Bless,
Storme

Easter Freebies Coming Soon!

Be sure to check your inboxes tomorrow. Our latest newletter is going out complete with a link to the latest free stuff. Among the freebies will be two new worship backgrounds that will work great for Easter. Here's a sneak peak frame grab of one of the motion backgrounds:

If you don't yet subscribe to our list, get thee to the homepage and sign up. If you hurry, you can still get the free stuff from February and then, when the link goes out tomorrow, the free stuff for March. What are you waiting for :).