Steadicam Merlin in the Wild

Friday I got to break out our shiny new Steadicam Merlin and use it in an actual real life shoot. The video features our good friend Josh Riebock. We'll post the whole video when it's done. In the meantime, Lee did a little (very low res) side by side comparison of the Steadicam shot we pulled off and a handheld shot of us pulling off the Steadicam shot. The Steadicam shot is on the left and that's me operating the Steadicam, backing away from Josh, on the right. Notice how smooth the Steadicam shot is compared to a walking handheld shot. Pretty cool.

Three Reasons Church Videos Help to Deliver a Powerful Easter Message

Easter is a big deal. Palm Sunday. Good Friday. Resurrection Sunday. These are seismic events in God's redemptive storyline. Add to that the fact that tons of people who aren't regularly in church are in church on Easter and you have a situation where, as a pastor or worship leader, you feel a great deal of pressure to deliver great services that powerfully reflect the Gospel of Christ. So what do you do?

Using video in your Easter services certainly won't solve all your problems, but church videos are what I know, and so I would like to give you a few reasons why I think using video can help to alleviate some of the pressure you feel to deliver powerfully at Easter.

Video...

1. Meets people where they are. You've heard it before but it’s worth repeating: We live in a visual culture. Incorporating video and other forms of visual media into your service will put people at ease, so they can settle in and prepare to hear the message. For example, starting the service with a funny clip is a great way to put the congregation at ease.

2. Connects emotionally. Video operates on an emotional level and provides you with a great tool for getting the congregation emotionally prepared to hear your message. Using a Sermon Illustration video is an excellent way to set up your message. The video you choose can illustrate one of your points, demonstrate a situation where people need to hear your message or raise questions that you can then deal with in your message.

3. Gives people space to reflect. Using video is also a great way to guide the congregation into a time of reflection and also helps focus them on the things you want them to reflect on. Use it to start the service to prepare their hearts for what they will hear. Use it during a special time in the service such as Communion to guide them through what you would have them reflecting on. Use it at the end of your message to give them space to think about and respond to what they've heard.

In all these ways and more, video provides you with a powerful tool to help do the most important thing at Easter" connect people to the life-changing message of Christ.

Shooting Interviews

There are a lot of good, high quality church videos to be had out there. But sometimes there is no substitute for telling the stories of what God is doing in your home congregation. Video testimonies/interviews can be a great way to tell those stories. Here are some tips and things to think about to help you get the best results shooting interviews.

1. Don't Use the Camera Mic. The Camera Mic is terrible. Forget about it. You should never use the camera mic for interview audio. Your first choice should be to use a lavalier microphone, wired or wireless is fine, whatever you can get your hands on. Secure the transmitter on your subjects pants or belt and run the mic cable up under your subjects shirt to hide it. Then clip the lav on their shirt, test and adjust your audio levels and your ready to rock. If you don't have access to a lav mic, use a shotgun mic. Aim the shotgun mic at your subject, get it as close to them as possible and test and adjust your levels. As a last resort, you could set up a mic on a stand and place it on a table or something like that to interview your subject. It might look a little odd, but I promise looking odd is better than getting poor quality audio. And please don't tell me you'll fix it in Post. Lastly, always use headphones to make sure you're getting good audio. Just looking at the levels isn't enough, because the levels don't tell the whole story. That loud air conditioning unit or bug chirping isn't going to peg your levels, but it is going to be annoying on your audio track.

2. Lighting is important. A technique called Three Point Lighting is the foundation of all film and video lighting. If you don't know what it is, check out this brief tutorial at mediacollege.com. You won't always need or have all three lights, but knowing what they are and how they work will give you the foundation you need to think about and talk about proper lighting. Here are some quick tips to help you in the trenches:

• Avoid placing your subjects in front of window or sliding doors. Unless you have a Hollywood lighting package, it's really hard to compete with the sun.
  
• Use soft light. Soft light makes everything look better. Your subjects will thank you. If you're using a film video lighting kit, try putting some diffusion in front of the lens. You can buy diffusion in the form of gels (hit this link if you have no idea what gels are) from most photo/video stores. Diffusion spreads out hard light and softens it. For a great low cost soft light, you can use Chinese Lanterns or Paper Lanterns. They use household bulbs and you can find them for a few bucks at places like IKEA or order them online. Some Hollywood cinematographers actually prefer and use these low cost lanterns to light their films. Alternately, you can bounce film/video lights off a white surface to spread and soften the light. Point your lights at a wall or ceiling or pick up some white foam core at an arts and crafts store.
• Place a house or practical light in the background. This looks nice, creates a sense of 3D space and provides a backlight to give some added definition to your subject.

3. Focus and Exposure. Don't trust the flip screen for focus and exposure. If you do, you'll get burned, especially when you're shooting in a particularly bright environment where the sun obliterates the image on the flip screen. Use the flip screen for framing, shoot with it open, but don't trust it for focus and exposure. For focus and exposure, you would ideally use a properly calibrated professional video monitor located in a light controlled environment (read a black tent) and operated by a professional engineer. But this is the real world and you work for a church. Unless that church is Willowcreek, you probably don't have a professional field monitor. So... Use the viewfinder. Close the flipscreen, zoom all the way in on your subjects face, preferably eyes, focus, adjust exposure and then zoom back out and find your frame. Then, open your flip screen, get comfortable and you're ready to rock and roll.

4. Check your footage after the first take or two. It is a good practice to shoot a little and then check and make sure you're getting good audio and video. I was just shooting an interview the other day and, after the first question was answered, I rolled back and checked the video. Much to my dismay, the image was completely pixelated and the audio sounded like an alien signal in a Sci-Fi flick. Luckily, we hadn't shot the entire half hour interview and returned to edit it only to find it entirely unuseable. We made some adjustments, replugged some connections and tested it again. It worked the second time and it was smooth sailing from there. Check it. But, if you check takes after shooting for a while, always remember to que the tape back up to the end. Otherwise, you're going to be surprised and upset to find some shots missing in the editing room.

So, with a little bit of care and some basic equipment, you can shoot great interviews in house. If you have any questions about any of this or ideas or thoughts, feel free to comment. I'd love to keep this conversation going.

Tips For Outdoor Videography/Photography

We've been shooting a lot of people outdoors and on the fly lately. So I thought it might be helpful to offer some tips and thoughts on what I do to get good quality photos and video when I'm shooting outside in uncontrolled circumstances.

1. If possible, shoot either in the morning or in the evening when the sun is not directly overhead. The harsh overhead light from the sun in the middle of the day makes for hard top light and ugly pictures and video.

2. Position the sun behind your subjects and not in front of them. If it's really early in the morning or late in the evening and the sun is low, you might get some unwanted lens flare from this. Lens flare can be very cool, but if it's not what you want, you should be able to position the sun behind and to the side of your subject to eliminate this problem. Or, you can always hold something like a piece of cardboard up and in front of your lens to block out the unwanted light. Putting the sun behind your subject gives you a great backlight which helps pop your subject out from the background and aids in giving the image more sense of depth. You should still have plenty of light on your subjects face to get a great picture.

To get an even better looking image, you can use a reflector (or some white foamcore board that you can buy at any art supply store) to bounce sunlight back onto your subjects face. These techniques will give you much better results than putting the bright sun at your back and right in your subjects face. Besides getting a much more appealing image, your subjects will be able to look at you or the camera without squinting!

3. When the sun is up overhead and you have to shoot, place your subjects in the shade and try to make sure the background in also shaded or dark. By keeping everything in the shade, you'll have plenty of soft diffused light to get good images and you won't have that harsh overhead sun casting terrible shadows under your subjects eyes and causing all kinds of contrast issues.

4. Try and create depth in the frame. Film and video are 2D, two dimensional. Filmmakers and Photographers create the perception of 3D by drawing your eye into the frame. They accomplish this through the use of depth. A background that draws your eye deep into the frame gives the illusion of three dimensions. If you place your subject right up against a wall, it flattens the frame and highlights a 2D feel.

I pulled the following photo from my library. It's a photo I snapped of my family a couple of years ago. It's not a perfect picture by any stretch but the circumstances under which it was taken make for a good illustration here:
The photo was taken out in the open, in direct sunlight at about three o'clock in the afternoon. By placing the sun behind my subjects as best I could, I was able to accomplish a couple of things. Even though the light is somewhat top heavy because of the time of day, I was able to give them a nice backlight, which helps them look pretty and pops them out from the background. And, maybe more importantly, I was able to get my kids to have their eyes open in the picture. Move the sun in front of everyone and they're squinting into the light and you don't have anything but a harsh, flat front light on them and big ugly shadows cast from their eyes, their noses, etc. In a perfect world this would have been taken later in the day and I would have had an assistant there to position a reflector to bounce some nice, soft fill light into the subject's faces. But it's not a perfect world and we often don't work under anything near perfect circumstances. When you're running and gunning as we all so often are, you've got to work hard to do the best you can with what you've got.

Let me know if you find these tips useful or if you have any questions about them. I would be happy to answer any questions or debate people on the subject :).

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.

Do The Right Thing

Storme blogged the other day about the copyright law podcast done by Creative Synergy Podcast. I listened to the entire podcast (about 1 hour) and it is extremely informative. From my perspective as a long time media volunteer, the issues discussed are very enlightening and somewhat disturbing. Anthony Coppedge and Greg Atkinson invited 2 copyright lawyers and the President of the Church Copyright Administration to discuss this very hot topic in churches. I realized that there were things I did as a part of the media team that were just outright illegal. I knew some of the issues and had the same feeling that Greg and Anthony discuss, but some were new to me.

If you are involved in any form or fashion with a church in media, music, arts, programming etc. then this podcast is an absolute must hear. The way they approach the topic, from Scripture's perspective and then dive into what our country's law says is very encouraging. Basically, we as Christ followers, must be above reproach in regards to all matters, not just ones of convenience or of seemingly "big" sins.

Three big ideas that jumped out to me personally:
1. Stealing is stealing and many churches don't know or don't care that they are infringing upon copyright laws in video/film, music and dramas.
2. YOU are liable for any law that is broken, not the church.
3. 1 Timothy 5:18

If you haven't had the chance to listen to this podcast, I really encourage you to do so. You will be very thankful that you did. Click here to download it now.

Lee

Breaking Radio Silence

I've done a terrible job on the blog front this week. Our time here at eleven72 has been consumed this week with the hurculean effort of finishing up a twenty minute industrial video that we were hired to do. It's good to finally have that off the plate and to be able to sit down with y'all (yes, I said y'all. we're in Texas here and that's how we roll).

By way of making up for a lack of interesting posts this week on our blog, I wanted to mention a few of the very cool things I've seen around the blogosphere lately (sure I'm working hard, but I've always got time for the net, right?). Anyway, here are some notes from my reader:

Hope For The Hokies

Greg Atkinson at Church Video Ideas posted a link to this site where the Passion folks are giving away some great worship tracks as their way of offering up hope for all the people struggling through the darkness reverberating from the terrible events that took place at Virginia Tech. You can see and download those tracks here.

Jott to Self

Have you heard of Jott? I heard about this one from Greg Davis on his blog Technically Speaking. Man, this Jott thing is really cool. I just signed up. From your cell phone, you can call Jott and leave a message for either yourself or one of your contacts. Then Jott transcribes that message and emails it to you or whoever you want it emailed too (emails it as text!). Check out their website for details. I'm looking forward to Jotting.

Brian Davis and Worship Tech Online

This is a new blog I read about on Church Video Ideas. I checked it out and it looks like it's going to be a fantastic resource for any of you out there who are in the trenches pulling off church services week in, week out. There was a great post on there a few days ago about using mics in your services and having back ups for your back ups. Brian Davis really seems to know his stuff and this looks like it will be a blog full of really good, practical, useful advice. Check it out here.


If you're a Gmail user, you should check out this Better Gmail extension that you can add if you use Firefox. I read about this on Lifehacker and I'm using it now. It does some really cool things like lets you save searches, has a filter assistant, gives you label colors, lets you preview conversations in your inbox and more. Read about it here on Lifehacker. The post includes instructions on how to download it.

Well that's what's happening in my corner of the blogosphere. I'd love to hear what you're reading. Leave some comments and we'll check out your favorite blogs and haunts.

PowerPlugs for PowerPoint

A big thanks to reader danlwil for pointing :) me to PowerPlugs: Video Backgrounds for PowerPoint. PowerPlugs from Crystal Graphics is a line of plugins for PowerPoint, and this particular plugin lets you (finally!) use moving backgrounds in PowerPoint. With it, you can take those awesome worship backgrounds you've been wanting to use, put them into PowerPoint and then key or put up the worship lyrics over the motion backgrounds. If you're using PowerPoint for worship, you need to check it out. This would open up a whole new world to you and your congregation. Moving backgrounds are a powerful tool for worship.

Here's danlwil's comment left on a blog post I wrote recently about how, as far as I could tell, you couldn't key text over moving backgrounds in PowerPoint:

We use PPT for our productions. There is a video player plugin by chrystal graphics that allows moving video in PPT... It is a memory hog, and a little clutzy... just this year they updated it to work in presentation mode... That helped alot... transitions are a bit sketchy and it (along with Microsoft is a bit unstable)... however.. I've learned to switch between multiple computers which gives me better flexability and stability.

So... I haven't used the PowerPlugs plugin myself, and danlwil does list a few caveats about the functionality of it, but if it lets you use motion backgrounds, it's definitely worth looking into. It looks like it will run you $149. So, it's not free but it's not as expensive as some of the other solutions and it looks like they offer a satisfaction gauranteed or your money back type policy. Check it all out for yourself here. And if you do end up using it, leave us some comments with your thoughts so we can pass those along to others.

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 :).

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.

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 :).

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:

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.

The Story's the Thing...

The single most important thing you can do is tell stories! Let me explain.

The Bible is the very Word of God. We read it to know Him. And He uses it to speak to us. It is His Story... History.

We just finished producing a video for a local missions organization called Mission Possible of Austin. The project will be shown this weekend as part of their annual fundraising banquet. In the process, we had the opportunity to meet and interview three incredible people. People whose lives have been transformed by the power of God, through the ministry of Mission Possible. There was a woman who found herself pregnant and on the streets. There was a well to do foreign business student at a major university, whose family had an emergency back home that used up all his money, and he too ended up on the streets here in America. And finally, a young man with a Father in and out of jail and a Mother addicted to drugs who found himself all alone. Mission Possible helped all of them find a relationship with our living God, as well as helping them meet physical needs. And now all three are actively serving the body of Christ and giving back because they've been given so much!

I know there are similar stories of radical transformation and the incredible grace of God playing out in your local body. Those stories illustrate how your church is living out its' mission. How you are enacting your vision. You need to tell those stories. Stories connect the body to what God is doing through us. They show us that we are a part of something so much bigger than ourselves. And our people need to hear them.

So I encourage you to find creative ways to tell the stories of what God is doing. - globally, locally, and personally. Help people to see. Inspire them to act. It's all part of HisStory.

If you need any ideas on how to tell the stories of your people, even if you don't have many resources, email me at storme@eleven72.com. I'd love to help you find a way to get your story out!

What Does That Look Like? Using Movie Clips to Make Your Point

We all know that movies can be powerful. And we all know that movies are huge cultural influencers. Because of that, we can use clips and scenes from movies to help our audiences see or get a mental picture of what we're talking about in our messages.

This last week, our Pastor showed a clip from Ice Age, the animated film that featured Ray Romano as one of the last Mammoths on earth. He showed a scene from the movie where a squirrel chases an elusive acorn. The squirrel just keeps chasing the acorn and he can't ever quite seem to get it. On the surface, it's just a simple, silly clip. The congregation loved it, laughed at it, and was entertained by it. The fact that it was simple and funny made it easy to remember. This made the clip sticky (more about "sticky" here) and, when attached to the Pastor's message, made his point stick.

The message was the first in a series called Ka-Ching-Enomics. The series contrasts God's Economy with the world's economy. Here's how the pastor set up and came out of the clip:

Pastor:

We live in a world that lies to us about reality. And the foundation of worldwide ka-ching-enomic theory is this falsehood known as If Only. "If only I could be that, if only I could do this, if only I could obtain that, then I’d be happy. It would be enough. I’d be full. There’d be contentment in my life." Watch this clip:

This is where he played the clip and then this is how he came out of it:

Did you ever feel like that squirrel? There’s this acorn and it’s so good that you can smell it but you can’t quite grasp a hold of it. Well, our story begins today not with a prehistoric nut but with a prehistoric fruit.

Then he went on to read from Genesis and talk about how the evil one sets us up just like he set up Adam and Eve. "Hey, if you just do this, you'll be happy. If only..." And for the rest of the sermon he could refer to that acorn and we knew what he was talking about and we knew how we can sometimes be just like that squirrel chasing that nut. It was so simple. And it worked so well.

The sermon was preached by Ted Beasley at Gateway Church here in Austin. If you're interested in hearing how he set up and wove the metaphor of the clip into his entire sermon, you can listen to his sermon here.

Sermon Illustrations, like the ones you can find here at eleven72.com and clips from popular movies can be such a powerful addition to your sermon. The power comes from how you tie the clip to your message. Set up the clip. Show the clip. And then tell your people what it means. This will give them a visual picture to attach to your message and that visual picture will help make the message stick.

If you're looking to use a clip or scene from a popular film, here are some great resources to help you find what you're looking for:

CVLI.org - A license from Christian Video Licensing International, just like CCLI for music, gives you the right to show clips from thousands of movies, including movies from a lot of the big studios, in your services and Sunday school classes. With the license everything is on the up and up as far as copyright is concerned and all that. To learn more visit the CVLI website.

Textweek - Textweek has a Movie Concordance that has movies indexed by title as well as theme. Along with the title of each movie, you'll find a brief synopsis of how the movie or clip mentioned ties into a biblical theme. Textweek was my first stop when I was the Media Director at Gateway Church. While you're on the site, check out their other resources like their Scripture Index, their Art Index and their Resources For Use in Times of Terrorism and War. You can find it all here.

IMDB.com - The Internet Movie Database a great site for mining information on movies. Who made them. Who's in them(shameless plug- I'm even listed in there). For our purposes here, IMDB is great because there is a drop down menu that let's you search specifically for Quotes and Plots. So if you know that you're preaching about X or you need a clip where a character talks about Y, you simply select the appropriate search criteria from the drop down menu and then type whatever you need into the search field and up comes a list of movies with the plots or quotes you're looking for. It's awesome. Click here to go to IMDB now.

I know there are many more resources out there that I don't know about. If you know about any, we'd love to share them with everyone. Email me at storme@eleven72.com or leave a comment on the blog. What are your favorite movie illustrations? Where do you find them? What do you think? Let us know!

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

And Now For Something Completely Practical (And Free!)

If you work with video and if you have ever had to compress and resize video files for downloading or for distribution on the web, you've had to worry about aspect ratios (the dimensions of the video). One big problem I've had before is when I'm trying to crop a video that was originally 4:3 (standard) to be 16:9 (widescreen), but I can't figure out what the 16:9 dimensions should be. It usually goes something like this for me: "Alright, so if I want the width to be 320 and in 4:3 the height is 240, what would it be in 16:9. 16 times what equals 320??? x times 9 equals what???" And I just start down that road with my questionable math skills and don't always like where I end up.

That's where this free Aspect Ratio Calculator from WideOpenDoors.net comes in. It does the math for you, so you can even experiment with different sizes without having to spend time refiguring each aspect ratio. Simply input one of the dimensions into the calculator and hit enter and it calculates the other dimension. So simple and so useful. Get it here!

Made to Stick
(www.madetostick.com)




I just picked up a copy of a book called Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath. Has anyone out there read it? Here's an excerpt from the jacket:

Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, accomplished educators and idea collectors Chip and Dan Heath tackle head-on these vexing questions. Inside, the brothers Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that “stick” and explain sure-fire methods for making ideas stickier, such as violating schemas, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating “curiosity gaps.”

The book warns against something the authors call the Curse of Knowledge. Here's how the authors explain the Curse of Knowledge in an interview they did on Guy Kawasaki's blog:

And that brings us to the villain of our book: The Curse of Knowledge. Lots of research in economics and psychology shows that when we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it. As a result, we become lousy communicators. Think of a lawyer who can’t give you a straight, comprehensible answer to a legal question. His vast knowledge and experience renders him unable to fathom how little you know. So when he talks to you, he talks in abstractions that you can’t follow. And we’re all like the lawyer in our own domain of expertise.

I haven't read that far into the book yet, but I know that in the area of evangelism and in how we do church, this Curse of Knowledge thing has a ring of truth to it. I'm all for any tool that can help us better communicate the good news to people who haven't yet heard it or clarify it to people who have heard it but don't yet understand it. I could definitely use help in better communicating some of my ideas, like clearly communicating what we're all about here at eleven72, and why we do what we do.

If you've read the book, please let us know what you thought. If you have any good book recommendations, please let us know what they are. And I'll go ahead and read the book and let you know if it sticks :).

What I'm listening To

More props to Greg Atkinson at Church Video Ideas for continuing to point the way to outstanding resources for all of us doing life in the trenches. His blog turned me on to two great audio assets this week, both of which can be accessed through his post titled Starving Jesus (which is the name of a really good short film by a guy named Blaine Hogan).

Church 2.0 from Wired Parish.com:

Church 2.0 is a six-part podcast seminar for pastors and ministry leaders. The seminar focuses on using technologies such as podcasting, blogging, and social networking sites to fuel effective ministry.

To subscribe to the Church 2.0 podcast for free, follow this link to Church Video Ideas. The free link to the Church 2.0 podcast in the BONUS section of the Starving Jesus post.

Francis Chan's message from Passion '07:

I listened to Chan's message this morning, "Passionately Loving God in A Lukewarm Church," and it changed my life. I know that's a huge thing to say but you've got to hear this message. Chan challenges us on our whether or not we really want God's will for our lives and then he paints a picture from Scripture of what should be the object of our desire. And the picture he paints is so compelling it made me want to drop everything and plunge headlong into the arms of God.

Here's a link to that message available from iTunes.

Church Video Ideas




Lee and I were in Dallas yesterday, where we had the great pleasure of meeting and talking with Greg Atkinson, whose blog Church Video Ideas should be a must regularly read for anyone involved with media or technology in the church.

Greg is a worship leader, a speaker, a teacher and an all around and down to earth expert on using music and media to communicate the gospel of Christ. He's also a great guy to hang out and eat Mexican food with.

Lee and I left Dallas with some fresh new ideas for eleven72. Most importantly, we left encouraged and inspired to keep doing what we love to do - create media that helps communicate the life changing message of Jesus. Thanks Greg!

I encourage everyone to surf over to Church Video Ideas and check out what Greg is up to and what Greg is about. And while you're at it, check out the podcast that Greg does with Anthony Coppedge (jump to the podcast). It's one of the best produced podcasts I've ever listened to.

Here is some of Greg's bio copied from the about section of his blog:

Greg has a degree in church music and has done graduate work in worship, leadership and communication. He helped create, develop and lead WorshipHouse Media, while serving as Director there until the summer of 2006.

Greg is a frequent guest worship leader and plays in the i55 praise band each Tuesday night, where young adults, college age through 30-something gather to worship. He enjoys songwriting, arranging, creating worship backgrounds and producing videos for ministry.

Greg continues to consult and teach at conferences across the country, including NRB, NAB, GMA, InfoComm, Moody Bible Pastors’ Conference, the National Church Music Conference, Purpose Driven Worship Conference and the Christian Musician Summit. He also writes for a number of magazines, websites and newsletters and works as a freelance consultant, teacher, and writer - specializing in areas such as music and worship, creative communication, media ministry and engaging the senses in corporate worship.

You can hear Greg, along with Anthony Coppedge, through their podcast: Creative Synergy. Greg writes regularly for Christian AV Magazine, Vision Magazine, Technologies for Worship Magazine, Worship Arts and Technology Magazine, Church Production Magazine, LifeWay’s “Let’s Worship