The Catch Fire Blog Has Moved!!!

Hey all, we ported our blog to Wordpress and slightly changed the url. So if you're reading this on a feedreader or just stopping by because you had this address bookmarked, click here to check out the blogs new home. Once there, we hope you'll subscribe to the new feed.

http://www.eleven72.com/blog

Giving Birth to a New Idea

We're in the early stages of a big project here at eleven72. It's called Come and See TV. And it promises to be a place that invites people from all walks of life to Come and See what Jesus is up to in the world, where He's living, how He's moving, and how He's using those willing in His church body to communicate His love. The idea comes from the Gospel of John, Chapter One, verses 35-46. Read it and you'll find two instances where the phrase is used. In the first instance, Jesus invites his first disciples to join Him on his journey, to come and see for themselves where He's living and what He's up to. In the second instance, it's used in response to the question of a skeptic, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" The answer, "Come and see."

A big element of the vision for Come and See is a series of videos about people from all walks of life who are passionately seeking after Christ. We've recently wrapped what we hope will become the first video of thousands in this series. Episode 1 is about a band called Rumor of Glory. It's about how their band and first album, "The Story" came to be. Here's a sneak peak of Come and See TV:

eleven72 World Headquarters - 4:30 PM CST

Thought you all might like to take a look around. You know, see where all the magic happens.

(Above) Lee kickin' it in Edit Suite #1, as in we have one Edit Suite


(Above) My workspace, etc. Featuring a drafting desk my dad made for my
sister in 1983. I rescued The Virgin from the dumpster outside our office.

(Above) Check out the killer big screen where we watch movies
on Monday mornings.

(Above) What's in the fridge? Nothing good, that's for sure.

New Easter Video In the House

We just finished and posted our latest Easter video, "The Cross: A Curse For Us?" We also posted some new Cross Stills that make great backgrounds for songs, Scripture slides and other text. Check out the video and let us know what you think:

New Easter Video Coming Soon...

We're working on an Easter video that I'm really excited about. It's a poem, read by this really great slam poet spoken word dude, set to some fantastic piano music, and backed up by high end HD footage of a cross. Did you get all that? Anyway, I know we're a little late to the Easter party with this one, but I'm really pleased with it nonetheless. Here's a still I took while shooting footage for the video (keep an eye out for some of these stills going up on the website):

For God So Loved...
We just put up a new Easter video. Check it out:
You can find it on our website HERE

Have you surfed the new site?

I haven't been blogging very regularly for a number of reasons. A big one is that we were having a lot of trouble integrating the blog into our new website. I'm still not 100% happy with how the blog looks on the site, but we'll figure it out. I am, however, really happy with the new site (www.eleven72.com). I love the new design. More than that, I love that we finally have a solid shopping cart and customers are able to reliably get their downloads. I'd love to hear any impressions from you guys on the site, what are your impressions, how does it function, what are your likes or dislikes? We're getting ready to roll it out to our email list. We wanted to make sure it was working properly before we formally introducted it.

So I'm hoping to get back on the blogging train. Find some useful stuff to talk about. Etc.

Come follow me... on Twitter... where I Tweet or something... www.twitter.com/storme

An Apology

Some friends of ours, the guys who are Floodgate Productions, have put together an interesting new website called www.anapology.org. Basically, Gary Molander and the guys at Floodgate were really convicted about the way a lot of us in the Body of Christ have treated the homosexual community over the years. So they put together a site where Christians can go and post a personal apology to the gay community or specifically to gay and lesbian people who they feel they owe an apology. Here's how they explain it on the site:

Gay and lesbian people are more than a topic. They are more than political agenda items differentiating one Party from another. They are beautiful people, created by the hand of a beautiful God.

The creators of this site recognize that Christians have, in their fervor to stand for truth, acted in ways that are completely against anything Jesus taught or modeled. Acknowledging this, we have designed a simple website for Christ-followers to do one, simple thing.

Apologize.

It's as simple as that. Click Here to check it out.

Finally... The Blog is Back Up

Hey all. You'll notice the site at www.eleven72.com is all new. We finally have the new site up and running. It's awesome. We're really pleased with it. But up until today I wasn't able to blog because we were having a lot of trouble integrating the blog into the new site and somewhere in the process of moving it, I lost the ability to update it. But that's all fixed now. For the time being, it's embedded here in this eleven72 page, which means you have to scroll in this window within a window, which isn't the best set up, but at least it's back up.

Thanks to all of you who helped make Christmas and New Years great seasons for eleven72. Our Christmas video, Breath of Heaven was a top 5 video at all the various distributors sites and our New Years video is currently the number one video on Sermon Spice and Worship House. We feel so blessed. Thank God and thank you :).

We're looking forward to an amazing, exciting, surprising, fabulous 2008.

Storme out.

Atemzug des Himmels

That's Breath of Heaven (or Breath of the sky) in German. We had some guys in Germany contact us. They want to use Breath of Heaven at their church for Christmas so they translated the text for us into German and we made a German language version. Pretty cool stuff. So, Breath of Heaven is one of the best selling Christmas videos in the world (currently number 4 of Sermon Spice and number 3 on Worship House) and now it's being translated into other languages. God is good. If you know anyone who could use a German language version of Breath of Heaven, let us know :)!

What do you think of all the hubbub over this Huckabee ad? I actually don't know much about Huckabee or what I think about him, but all this buzz definitely makes me want to figure out what I think. Thoughts?



Check out this funny response in an interview with Huckabee:

We're moving... the blog... to our new site.

Things look a little different, not that you'd panic or anything. We're in the process of launching our newly designed site. It will most likely go live next week some time. Anyway. We're integrating the blog into the new site and that's the reason for this transitional look on the blog. The only thing I immediately regretted while reformatting the blog is/was that I lost the blogroll over to the right there. But, I'll rebuild it. No big deal. So look for the new site any day now. We're really excited about it.

FLASH!!! Jesus Is from eleven72 is the free video of the day at Worship House Media. That's right, they're giving it away (with our permission of course). Just go to the homepage at Worship House and you'll see it featured there at the bottom of the page. They also have a daily video blog where they talk about the free video they're giving away. Check out what they had to say about us:

Most fans paid $0 for Radiohead Album. This according to an AP Business article I came across at Brietbart.com. Google radiohead rainbows and you'll get hits on other articles about the same. The stats say that a little over 60% of the folks who downloaded the album opted to pay nothing, while about 38% of the folks paid an average of $6 each. So , a majority, when given the choice, chose not to pay anything, even though what Radiohead was doing was so great, so cool, so revolutionary. But with all the worldwide publicity they got, and at $6 a person for the remaining 38%, and with the site getting 1.2 million visitors, I'm sure they're glad they did it nonetheless.

I've been following all this Radiohead stuff, trying to figure out what to make of it. Just to catch you up on a few things you might not know about the whole affair.

• Radiohead, in a move that was considered revolutionary decided to bypass the record industry and release their album themselves, telling fans they could come and download the album from a special site and pay whatever they like, including nothing.
  
• The tracks up for download were not high quality audio files. They were low quality/low bitrate/whatever MP3s.
• In conjunction with the downloading stunt, Radiohead offered a collector's edition release of the album with all kinds of extra goodies for something like $80.
• A couple of weeks after making the album available online, it came out that Radiohead would be selling a CD at Big Box retailers like Best Buy come 2008. And no, the CD, with the high quality sound files, would not be pay whatever you want. This angered some folks and they began to say that the whole download the album thing was just some kind of publicity stunt and it wasn't entirely sincere and, with it on its way to the shelves of Best Buy, it was no longer revolutionary.

And now, here we are. 1.2 million people visited the download site. 38% of the people who downloaded the album paid $6 on average. 62% of the people opted to get it for free. What's all this mean? I'm not sure. I've thought about all this in relation to the way that we sell videos. It would be cool to try something like this with our media library, for a short period of time, see what kind of results we got. See what people were/are willing to pay. But we wouldn't get the press that Radiohead got to drive traffic to our site, we don't have nearly nearly as many fans or potential customers, etc, etc.It's not apples to apples when you compare us to them. But it does cause you to think. And so it goes.

Brand New Website Coming Very Soon!

Here's a sneak peak at our new design. The redesigned site will have a new, reliable, shopping cart. It will be fully searchable. It will be much better organized. We're really excited about it and we can hardly wait for you all to see it!

Rockin' the NWLC

I haven't blogged this week because I've been wrapped in thought about how to best sum up our amazing experience at the National Worship Leader Conference last week. Finally, with a lot of help from my trusty friend Lee, I figured the best way to sum it up was with a video. Remember, no one made you watch it :).

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

Happy Birthday America

I know the 4th is still a few days away, but I wanted to send out this birthday greeting. What a blessing to live in a country where we are free to worship God and to follow after Christ. It's my prayer that we would take advantage of that freedom and allow God to work in and through us to reach people with His life changing message of true freedom. The freedom found only in putting your life fully and completely in the hands of Christ.

We have some great 4th of July resources on our Seasonal Tab. Jump over there and check them out. We made a 4th friendly version of our very popular For Freedom video and we've also got a couple of great countdowns for your 4th of July festivities. Click here to peruse our 4th collection. We hope you find something you can use.

I'm going out of town next week, so keep an eye out for some brilliant blog posts from my partner Lee. I'm retreating to the mountains of New Mexico and will be without an internet connection. Although I'll be spending time with family, I also hope to find time to connect more deeply with God in His beautiful creation.

Happy 4th and God Bless!

National Worship Leader Conference

Have I told you that Lee and I are presenting a couple of sessions/workshops/whatchamacallits at Worship Leader Magazines' National Worship Leader Conference? It's true, we are. You can scroll down through all the presenters to see our ugly mugs and bios here. That proves it.

Seriously, though. We are honored to have been asked/invited by Worship House Media to present a couple of sessions at the conference. We're calling our session "Stop Substance Abuse: Make Your Media Matter." The basic message will be style over substance. We'll be talking and having a dialogue about using all the media in your service to support the overall theme. How all of your media can work together to set up and support the message that the pastor has for everyone. We've got a basic outline, but we're still working on the details. Whatever happens, I know it's going to be a lot of fun and I can't wait.

The conference is July 23-26th right here in river city. That's right here in Austin, TX, where we live and love and play. We're looking forward to having such a great event right here in our hometown. And we're really really excited that we get to be a part of it. If you're going to be in Austin for the conference, let us know. We would love to have a chance to meet any and all the folks who happen by this blog and who happen to be coming to the conference.

For more information on the conference, click here to go to their site.

Better Off Rock'd Debrief

I had a great time shooting video this past weekend for the Better Off Rock'd Tour. It felt so good to be behind the camera again, finding those shots, trying to capture those moments. I really love shooting life. Along the way, I got to meet some fabulous people and listen to some awesome rock n' roll.

Some highlights:

You may not get me on this, but the way the lights hit people onstage, the contrast, the lights coming into the lens and washing the picture out, getting those extreme close ups... I just dig it so much.

The performances. In their own way, Stephen Speaks, Nevertheless, Everyday Sunday and Seventh Day Slumber all gave fantastic performances. It was so refreshing to see good bands playing good music and sharing their faith, love and passion for God.

I wasn't really familiar with these bands before this weekend, but now I'm a fan of each and every one of them. Being out on the road isn't easy. Being away from family and friends. I really respect what these guys do and how they represent Jesus Christ in doing it.

I picked up a copy of Everyday Sunday's latest album, Wake Up! Wake Up! after the shows. The album is fantastic. I'm digging it and find myself worshiping and crying out to God along with the lyrics on tracks like Wake Up! Wake Up! and Take Me Out. The whole album is just plain good. I got a chance to talk to Trey Pearson the lead singer on Saturday and we had a good conversation. We talked about video, what I do, what he does. There may even be some kind of music video collaboration in our future. That would be very cool, but it was great just to meet and talk and share the experience of doing what we do.

I also really dug and respected the way Joseph from Seventh Day Slumber works his testimony into their set. He has an incredible story of how Jesus Christ saved his life quite literally and pulled him out of a world of drug addiction that had led him to jail and to life on the streets. The fact that he is up there on stage sharing that story and playing great music... Our God is so awesome.

Anyway. This post is rambling. I just wanted to share a little bit. Check out the bands, buy the music, go see them if they come through your town. You won't be disappointed.

Better Off Rock'd

Backstage for Better Off Rock'd. I'm hanging out backstage at La Zona Rosa here in Austin, TX. I'm waiting for things to pick up, shooting some video here and there and anticipating a great show and a great night. I've been asked by my good friend Eric Klein to shoot highlights of the first ever Better Off Rock'd shows. Tonight we're here in Austin and tomorrow night we're at the Ridglea Theater in Ft. Worth, TX.

The lineup includes some really great Christian bands. Seventh Day Slumber, Everyday Sunday, Stephen Speaks and Nevertheless. I'm really excited. And it should be a great night. If you happen to be in Austin or Ft. Worth, you should come out and check things out. Nevertheless is coming in now to do a sound check, so I better run to get some footage.

The proceeds for the Better Off Rock'd shows go to benefit suicide prevention. It's a great cause. Check out the Better Off Rock'd myspace page for more info.

Evan Almighty Screening

Thanks to Grace Hill Media and Universal, Lee and I were able to attend an advanced screening of Evan Almighty last night. I could definitely pick some theological bones with the filmmakers, but overall we really enjoyed it.

The film, if you haven't heard, is essentially Bruce Almighty II. This time around, the story focuses on Evan Baxter, who was the co-anchor in Bruce Almighty that acted as a thorn in Bruce's side. In this go round, Evan gets elected to Congress on the broad campaign promise to "change the world." Desperate to succeed in this new office, Evan figures it can't hurt to pray about it. But, of course, he doesn't know what he's asking for. In answer to Evan's prayer that God help him "change the world," God gives Evan the job of building an Ark ala Genesis 6:14. I won't spoil it with any further explanation. Suffice it to say, Steve Carrell gives a funny, touching, fantastic performance and the supporting cast is equally great.

For me, the film succeeds, in spite of missing it on some Christian doctrinal issues, because it tackles the big concept of faith and following God. And in doing that, it can't help but hit at the truth sometimes. And when it does it makes you smile, it makes you laugh, and it even makes you think.

So I'd recommend checking it out when it hits the theaters in a couple of weeks. It's a great date night kind of a flick.

If You Can't Say Something Nice...

My father used to tell me, "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." That may be over simplifying things, but in light of some of the criticism I see flying around in Christian circles, I think it's something we need to think about. There is a disturbing trend in culture that I see infecting us as Christians. It's this need to be critical, to tear people down, to be just downright mean. In our space it shows up in the comments and reviews left about videos on sites like SermonSpice and WorshipHouse. People going as far as to say things like, "there's a reason why it's free." And here are a couple of comments pulled off WorshipHouse... "pretty lousy." That was all they said. This one might be the worst I've seen: "Really stupid. Not deep, not funny, just stupid.." And here's my favorite comment that one of our videos has received, "Nice concept, but it's been done. And better. By others." By who? When? What am I supposed to do with that?

This is just a small sample of the comments out there. You can surf around and see them for your self. I'm not trying to whine or cry about it. I just think we need to have a frank and open conversation about this. Why do we, as Christians feel a need to tear down these films and videos (and here's the important part) without offering anything constructive to put in their place. Let me explain what I mean by way of a C.S. Lewis quote. Everybody loves Lewis, right? Once, when Lewis was criticized for oversimplifying the Gospel, he responded to his critic:

[He] would be a more helpful critic if he advised a cure as well
as asserting many diseases. How does he himself do such
work? What methods, and with what success, does he employ
when he is trying to convert the great mass of storekeepers,
lawyers, realtors, morticians, policemen and artisans who surround
him in his own city?

All I'm saying is that if we feel the need to say something, and sometimes something needs to be said, let's be sure we're coming at it with a spirit of wanting to help, to encourage, to see our criticism used to further God's Kingdom and not just to tear down. And if we don't have anything helpful or constructive to offer, then why say anything at all?

Ya feel me?

Up Early With The French New Wave

If you're ever in our neck of the woods at 5AM on a Monday morning, you can join us for a movie screening at our office. Yes, I said 5AM. For years, Lee and I have been wanting to find more time to watch and study classic and influencial films. But with running the business and keeping up with our wives and children, it's been really hard to find the time. Thus, "the 5AM" was born. If you're willing to get up at 5 in the morning, you'll find there are far fewer demands on your time.

For the last couple of weeks, we've been checking out films from the French New Wave. Here's a blurb from Wikipedia about the movement:

The New Wave (French: la Nouvelle Vague) was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced (in part) by Italian Neorealism. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and their spirit of youthful iconoclasm. Many also engaged in their work with the social and political upheavals of the era, making their radical experiments with editing, visual style, and narrative part of a general break with the conservative paradigm.

So far we've taken in, Truffaut's 400 Blows and Godard's Band of Outsiders. Interestingly, Band of Outsiders in French is Band A Part, and that's where Tarintino's company that produced films like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction got its name. If you watch Band of Outsiders and you know Tarintino's films, you'll definitely pick up on some of the influences there. I really liked both films, but Band of Outsiders was my favorite of the two. I just love the way these films feel real and alive and stripped down. The way that you can sense the filmmaker behind the camera. There is a joy in them. The joy of filmmaking and of storytelling and of trying to say something that matters.

If you have any suggestions for films we should definitely see, let us know what they are and we'll add them to our list. I get to pick the next film and I think I'm going to switch us over to an Italian track and pick up a copy of Bertolluci's The Conformist.

Best Wishes for Memorial Day

We wanted to wish everyone a happy Memorial Day. We hope you enjoy the day with family and friends. And don't forget to take some time out to reflect on and remember those who have given their lives so that we can have the freedom to enjoy days like this. Thank you to all the soldiers past and present who have served and are serving.

And thank you to everyone out there who helped make our Memorial Day video, For Freedom, our best selling video ever. We are so humbled and honored that our simple tribute video resonated with so many people out there. To think that we were a part of so many of your Memorial Day services all over the country just blows us away. We thank you and we thank God for his inspiration, for his blessings, and for the freedom he has afforded us all in Christ.

For Freedom and Other News

We're really excited that our brand new Memorial Day video, For Freedom has been received so enthusiastically. We're setting daily sales records with it on our site and it's also selling really well with other distributors. It's always really gratifying to make something that so many people can use. It's humbling to think about and we're really grateful that God is blessing the video in this way. You can check it out by clicking here.

I'm also really excited about the reponses we've received on last Friday's post, Been Caught Stealing. Check out the comments we've gotten and jump into the fray with your own. I'm thinking we need to talk some more about what actually constitutes a parody. So, that will be food for a new post some time soon.

In other news, it's been a busy week here in eleven72 country and that's kept me off the blog. It's mostly personal stuff, but I'll let you in on some of the what's goings ons...

I wrecked my car a couple of weeks ago (no serious injuries but the car was totalled) and so I'd spent the last 10 days or so hunting for a replacement. Yesterday, after much research and agonizing, I became the proud owner of a 2003 Ford F-150. There was much rejoicing as I can now get back to work and eleven72 now has a work truck to haul around production equipment, props and what not.

And earlier today, I helped Lee and his family move into a new place. So, their family is in transition to a new house today. And this should be the start of a great new chapter in their families history. So that's exciting.

Talk to you later.

Office Space

We made a short (silly) video to show off our new office space. It's just a sublease, but for us, it's a big step forward in the life of our little company. Here's the video:



For those of you reading the feed, here's a link to the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvvFzN8yhGk

Enjoy!

eleven72 is moving

We are moving into a new office today. For the past year and a half, Lee (the other half of eleven72) and I have been officeing out of our homes. Recently, we decided to take the big step of moving into an office. We've got a sixth month sub-lease in a nice area of NW Austin. It's just a run of the mill business park, but it's a big deal for us. Anyway. I just wanted to post that little bit of good news. It is our hope and prayer that this move will foster and usher in a new era in our young company. Whatever the case, we're really excited about it. I'll post a couple of pictures soon.

My Friendship Connection

I am fired up. I had a great conversation yesterday with a guy named Vernon Brady who used to be the Vice President of the Church Growth Institute. He's spearheading an evangelism initiative called My Friendship Connection. And here's the awesome part for us: He wants eleven72 to help produce a series of videos for this oh so cool event (more on the event itself in a second). First a little background: Did you know that according to research done by the Church Growth Institute a full 86% of the people who trust Christ as their Savior do so because of the simple invitation of a friend. By way of contrast, only 2% come to Christ through the use of advertising. Wow. That is an amazing stat. The single most effective way to evangelize the people you know is to simply invite them to church. We didn't realize that the idea behind our video Just Ask was such a powerful one! But it makes sense when you think about it, because God is all about relationship.

Twenty years ago, Vernon was part of a program called Friend Day. The program, asking people to invite a friend to church, was used successfully by 47,000 churches. Since then, God has been growing up in Vernon a desire to see millions of people's lives forever changed through nothing more than being invited to church (and, of course, being reached by the Spirit and prompted to turn their lives over to Jesus). And the time is now. The seed that God planted with Vernon is poised to start a flood with My Friendship Connection.

What is My Friendship Connection?

My Friendship Connection is a strategy designed to mobilize your church for a great day of outreach. Synergy comes by connecting churches across North America on the same day with a single focus. Therefore, we seek to engage the masses into the largest army ever assembled for the purpose of reaching, evangelizing and winning friends to Jesus Christ through the local church.

Go to their website and check it out. Tell your church about it. Right now about 500 churches in Virginia are on board, but that number is quickly growing. They've had inquiries from other countries and big groups like the Southern Baptist Convention and the North American Mission Board are expressing interest. Just hearing about it, I could tell that God is in this. Imagine what might happen if tens of thousands of churches get involved with this in the next few months. Imagine all the people who will walk through the door of a church on November 4th (that's the day when all of this culminates). My friends. Your friends. Tens of thousands of people. Imagine all the people who will come face to face with the life changing reality of Jesus Christ. What a great day for rejoicing that will be! All because friends simply asked their friends, "would you come to church with me?

I'm so excited that God brought this to Lee and I. So humbled that we might be used to serve God's Kingdom in such a powerful way. I have never met Vernon Brady face to face. We connected because of our media on the internet. He could have called anyone. He called us. God continues to amaze me daily. This life of following Christ is truly a great adventure.

I'll have more to post on this as things progress. For now, check out myfriendshipconnection.com. And get ready friends!