Our Workshop at the National Worship Leader Conference

Our workshop yesterday went awesomely. I don't think that's actually a word but it went really well. We had about 75 people attend and only about 60 seats, so it was standing room only. We talked about making your media matter and the big idea for us is that all the media you use should serve the message and shouldn't be used simply because it's cool. When used properly, media can work hand in hand with all of your programming to build a theme for your service that perfectly sets up the pastor's message. We ran a mock Creative Team meeting. We gave away a free Programming Pack to everyone who attended. It was great.

We also kicked off our session with a video we shot on the first day of the conference. It was a Man On The Street Video where Lee asked people at the conference what they thought about eleven72. It was our fun way of introducing ourselves. Check it out:



Feedreaders, here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7rWjnp7p7g

Live from the National Worship Leader Conference

Here's Vlog #2. Still getting the hang of this little camera and wrapping our heads around the whole concept of vlogging. We did shoot a really funny little bit today asking people, "Who is eleven72?" It's a little Man on the Street from the conference. We're going to use it to introduce ourselves tomorrow, but once it's done, I'll drop it into the blog here for your enjoyment. Until then, here's Vlog #2:



Feedreaders, here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a94r9MRQsuU

Our Very First Vlog

We got a new little camera and it's perfect for vlogging. So, heads up and look out. We'll be running around with it at the National Worship Leader Conference next week. So look for a couple of vlog posts from the conference then. We hope to see you there. Until then, here's our very first video blog. Enjoy!



If you're reading the feed, here's a link to that vlog post on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcuoVlPhtwY

P.S. The thumbnail that YouTube put up is less than ideal. Oh well.

The Sound of Music

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