Xtreme Living

One of my favorite things ever is leaving off the E in words to emphasize the X! How ‘in your face!’ So Xciting and Xhilarating!

Anyways, aside from my sarcasm, this will always be one of my favorite bumpers. Obviously I would do this better now than I did 3 years ago. But it helped me learn some things in after effects and has the Xcitement I was aiming for. And I found good, well, usable stock footage.

Yes that is Jeff Griffin in the last shot and graphic for the series. Him and Dave Griffin skydived for a funny opening video to the series.

Kings

New series we started this month. This is the bumper I created for it in after effects. This is one of the most successful packagings for a series that we’ve had in a long time. We handed out a playing card with the timeline in the video as a study guide. The classic images of bicycle playing cards and the four suits really adds a neat element. I feel like this bumper added excitement without hype and brought the logo and playing card to life. I’m looking forward to this series since I’ve been studying the books of Kings and Chronicles on my own for a while.

Deeper

This is a bumper I created for New River Community Church in South Carolina. I was hooked up with them through my buddy Cleve. Freelance is a beautiful thing. It allows some fresh creativity and I was able to play more with particular. Very happy with this project. I feel I was able to get the particles to look like they were shot through the water. I also like the way the reveal worked on the text. Also love any opportunity to use an Andy Burns special in a video.

Student Ministries

I feel the need to express my love for the student ministries here at the chapel. If you are in junior high or high school you should be attending these ministries. I recently have been moved by books like UnChristian by David Kinnaman and Jesus Wants to Save Christians by Rob Bell and have bought into this idea of missional living and reaching this and the next generation for Christ and the evolution of the church. Well our student ministries is raising this next generation to live every ounce of their being for Christ. It is exciting to spend time with Dave and hear what he is teaching these kids and to see the great results. The students in our church do a lot of leading and showing the adults what it means to follow Christ. They show a maturity in their understanding of Christ and what it means to love God by serving others.

I have been working a lot with them helping them with all their videos, which includes a lot of video teaching.  This video is a long one for that reason.

The Infamous Barrington Run

A short video we showed to illustrate how intense it is for the teacher to teach a 9 o’clock service in Grayslake, a 10 o’clock service in Barrington and an 11 o’clock service in Grayslake. We were literally hitting 80 mph on back roads. At one point I said, “I don’t think you need to over do it for the video.” They replied, “We aren’t doing anything different than usual.”

Pamela’s response to our speed was “That’s ridiculous.” And I think that was the response we were looking for in this video.

What I’ve been doing lately

We are neck deep on some curriculum for our children’s ministry right now. This is a rough edit/sneak peak of what we are doing. When all is said and done we will have over an hour of finished video. This is curriculum for Easter and will be piloted in 9 churches in an effort to one day publish curriculum. This is not quite ready for prime time as this is our first real attempt at doing this well, and we have learned a lot about scheduling and actors and what not. It’s intense and there are still some impossible deadlines coming up, we’ll see how it all goes.

You are Here

Bumper for the most recent Zone series (Junior High). A series all about decisions and how they affect the outcome of our lives. The extensions are supposed to be the paths coming from the feet of our man and all of the decisions that he has to make. And as overwhelming as that all is you are still here. You have the ability to stop and look at all your options then ask for God’s guidance and walk in His path.

Student Ministries Missions

Took a new approach to an old project. Every year we do promos for the kids and adults for their upcoming missions trips. Usually we put everything out there, tell the kids every detail, and take away all mystery. I like that this is strictly a hook, slightly inspirational and cool. I love the line “Be inventive in hospitality.” Find new ways to serve others, that is how we stay aflame with Christ. That is what 2009 will be all about, finding new ways to serve others. I’m very happy with my work on this one.

Holiday Food Box

Yes I know this is a rip off of the HP commercials and it is a little more complicated than you expect. While scripting you forget about some aspects and hand interactions. So this is what I have been doing the last half of this week.

After weeks of just going, going and going alone I relearned the pleasure of extended pre-production. Now that we have a team of video producers we were able to script and plan this one out. Granted we found out about the request Friday, shot Tuesday and edited Thursday and Friday. We’re getting there.

Storm

This is a comp I threw together in 10 minutes. I liked it and I’m a little disappointed that no one told me sooner how easy it is to work with clouds. Since I posted the video it has been cleaned up and made a little more cohesive.