How To Make Your Own Countdowns

A lot of people have been asking us lately, "Can we make our own countdowns?" The answer is yes and we can help. We're excited to be able to offer you a clock that you can use to make your own countdowns. Now you can use your own Announcement Slides or video or whatever for a countdown. All you need is a little technical know-how and our clock. Check out this video tutorial on how to use our clock and what you'll need to know before you do. Click here to purchase your own and start using it this week.



Click here to purchase this video.

Two Great Short Films

Check out these shorts by Hallmark. The cinematography, acting, writing, direction. Man these are good. I want to be able to pull of shorts like this, to tell stories this well, to move people this much in our space. Man.





If you're reading this on a feed, here are the links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRX7tdh1Ww4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-rMgkctHPo

These are two of my favorites, but you can find lots of these great Hallmark spots on YouTube.

Back to the old drawing board.

The Editblog

I've had some feedback that folks reading our blog would like some more information on editing. If you're an editor or are interested in editing, I wanted to point you to a blog that Lee and I try to keep up with. It's called The Editblog (click here to jump to it).

The Editblog keeps up with all the latest updates to programs like Final Cut Pro, Premiere and Avid (all the professional editing apps). It also points out good places to see film and video clips on the internet and handy little applications like the cool little widget posted about today:

VideoSpace is a dashboard widget from the good folks at Digital Heaven. According to the Digital Heaven Freeware section it is:

“a free widget for Mac OS X Tiger which calculates the disk space required for a given duration, codec, frame rate and audio setting. It works in both directions so you can calculate time to space or space to time as indicated by the direction of the arrow between the two input areas.”

And one of my favorite recent posts points you to where you can check out some of cinema's most famous long takes:

If you are looking to kill some time this weekend the check out The Long Take post over at the Daily Film Dose. They’ve put together a huge collection (thanks to You Tube) of some of the “greatest long tracking shots in cinema.”

There may be some questionable content in these clips. I didn't have a chance to watch them all. But you can definitely learn a lot by watching long takes done by some of cinema's greatest storytellers. My personal favorite is the shot from Goodfellas. I know it's a really violent film, but the shot they've chosen is one I've studied in film school and in a Steadicam workshop I attended in CA. It's one of the most famous shots ever committed to film. Watch the shot and check out how much is conveyed about the character played by Ray Liotta by this single take. I've embedded the clip from Youtube below. Magic.


For those of you on the feedreader, here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=666F4QWgjpU

I'd love to hear what you think about the Editblog and let me know what your favorite long take is.

The Cutting Edge

We had a reader send us a request for more posts/information on the how to of editing. How do you edit? That's a really big question. The answer is simple and complicated all at the same time.

Editing in film or video is sequencing images or clips into a timeline. Choosing to place one moving clip after another in a certain order. In the end, editing is story telling. I had an editing professor who said the editor is the person who tells the joke. Someone thinks up the joke. Someone writes it. Someone records and/or captures it. And then the editor decides how it should be told.

One of the most eye opening assignments I had in film school was to edit together a scene from raw footage of the TV show Highlander. Anyone remember that show? Adrian Paul as Duncan MacLeod? Anyone? It wasn't a very good show, but I'm getting way off point. Everyone in the class was given the same raw footage to work with. We all spent a couple of weeks working on our cuts. And then we watched them together. Same footage. Totally different scenes. Everyone in the class told a totally different joke.

And so... You can learn how to push the right buttons, how this software works and that software works. And you can debate the merits of Final Cut Pro vs. Avid vs. Premiere. But before you get into any of that, if you want to be an editor, you need to study and think and watch and decide how you want to tell your jokes. Anyone can learn how to cut images into a sequence, but it takes a lifetime to learn where to place those cuts in order to have the impact you want. Every frame counts. Every moment matters. Where should you cut?

There's an excellent documentary about editing called "The Cutting Edge - The Magic of Movie Editing." It's a feature length documentary about the art and craft of film editing. You can order a DVD copy through Amazon. It was recently available online through Google video but it seems it's been taken down. I'll let you know if I find it somewhere. I also highly recommend Walter Murch's book "In the Blink of an Eye," also available through Amazon and other fine book stores. In the Blink of an Eye is the best book I've ever read about the philosophy or thought process that goes in to editing. Walter Murch is a long time editor for Francis Ford Coppola and edited, among other things, The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. More recently, he was the editor on Cold Mountain, one of the first big budget features to be cut entirely with Final Cut Pro.

We'll post more on editing in the near future (something more hands on and practical :).

Click Image Above To Watch our Easter Worship Video, I Will Remember

We Remember

With Easter approaching, I've been thinking about our video, I Will Remember. The video is a simple illustration of a song that means a lot to us here at eleven72. It's a song written by the Music Director of our church, JJ Plasencio. JJ recorded it on an album of praise songs that he wrote for our church (you can get the CD at gatewaychurch.com). The album was recorded with and by Gateway's volunteer praise and worship band members. The singer on this track is a guy named Scott Leger who is the singer for what I think is the greatest unsigned band I've ever heard, WideAwake (you should check them out).

When our church first started out, we were meeting in movie theaters and hotel banquet rooms, loading in and out before and after the services, completely portable. At one point, we were moving around so often that our pastor joked, "if you can find us, you can go here."

Each week, as our little body grew and as more and more seekers became true believers, we would sing this song that JJ had written. We will remember your name! We will remember your grace. We were seeing Him do mighty things among us. Redeemer. Prince of Peace. The Lamb Who has Died in my Place. Lyrics from this wonderful song.

The video for I Will Remember was really a labor of love for Lee (see our about page to learn more about Lee). He put his heart and his considerable talent to work illustrating this beautiful praise song. And I think the love he put into it shows through in the work.

Over time, I Will Remember has become one of our most popular videos, especially at this time of year. It's a great piece to use as you give the congregation time to reflect on who Jesus Is and what He has done for us. It's a great video to use to end a sermon with. Build up your sermon about Jesus' life, death, resurrection and sacrifice and then let this video make a powerful ending statement that moves people closer to Christ. We've also heard that the video is really useful during the celebration of Communion as the congregation reflects on the body and the blood of Christ.

However you use it, know that it means a lot to us and we pray that it might mean something to you and your congregation as well.

Cut It Out

Steven Spielberg. Ron Howard. Martin Scorsese. Mel Gibson. You heard of these guys? Of course you have! They're famous Directors of big time feature films. But what about Walter Murch, James Haygood, Zach Staenberg or John Wright? No? They're pretty famous in the movie biz too. They're actually the editors of movies like The Godfather, Fight Club, The Matrix and The Passion of the Christ. We don't typically hear about them because they are behind the scenes (most likely locked in an editing room for weeks on end) But they are just as integral to what we see on the big screen as the Directors are.

Editor Walter Murch, (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, Cold Mountain, Jarhead) says "Film editing is now something almost everyone can do at a simple level and enjoy it, but to take it to a higher level requires the same dedication and persistence that any art form does." Yes. Anyone can purchase a computer and some editing software and get to work, but the best editors are great story tellers. They can take hours and hours of footage and beautifully piece it all together into a 90 minute film. This is what is so great about editing! Taking a vast amount of information (ie. footage, photos, music, etc.) and putting it all together to get your audience to feel something.

There tons of resources out there for editors. Lots of books, videos, schools & training. You can learn a lot about how to place a clip in to a timeline or how to set keyframes on your music selection, but the biggest art of editing is in the story telling. When should I cut? How long should that shot be? Should I use a close up here? Should we pace this faster to illustrate that the actress is frantic? All of these depend on what you're conveying to your audience and what you want them to take away from that scene/video/movie.

If you're making a video for your church, youth group, small group etc. continually ask yourself "How does this fit in with our story?" Understand what you're trying to accomplish BEFORE you sit down at your computer to start cutting. And then see how each shot and scene adds to what you want your audience to see and feel. It's not that much different than writing a sermon/message...just a different way of communicating.

Here's some good resources to keep you busy if you're interested in editing:
In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch
American Cinema Editors
Videomaker.com
The Digital Filmmaker

I'll post again soon with more resources on editing ideas, tips and tricks.

Lee