Tag: video

  • Rickroll History

    You know you have a Rick Roll story to share. Come on, do tell!

  • I Am Second

    Talk about a site you need to check out. I am second may be the prettiest, most powerful site on the internet.

    What is it? It’s an online ministry designed around a powerful thought: If Jesus is number one in my life that means I am second.

    How does it work? There’s not a lot to the site. Very simple navigation takes you to amazing stories from some famous people and some not-so-famous people. I’m telling you, the stories are amazing.

    Who is behind it? It’s so incredibly done I have a hard time thinking it’s independently financed. So I haven’t figured out if there is a bigger organization behind it. But, thanks to twitter, I was able to find a couple of people who worked on the project.

    Trey Hill Photography

    Ditore Mayo Entertainment

    Apparently there are some TV spots and billboards that are drawing attention to this project. Very cool stuff. I love seeing sites that represent the Gospel message so well. Fantastic combination of message, beauty, and wonderful site navigation.

    Update: I got an email from someone involved with the project who provided me a link to the new I Am Second blog. Also, he shared an interesting LA Times story about American Idol Jason Castro’s faith. Jason’s story is also featured at I Am Second.

  • Open Ended Discipleship

    I’d love your feedback on this video post, please leave a comment below or post a video response on YouTube to the video.

  • The Chicago Edition

    Each week I have fun shooting the podcast. But this particular episode was special because we had the opportunity to do a Chicago special.

    The concept of a Chicago special really didn’t come to me until Cathy and I got off the plane in Chicago. We had Andrew Marin booked to do the devotional and I knew I wanted to shoot my parts at North Avenue beach… then it hit me. If we added Jason Raitz from Willow Creek we could complete the Chicago-trifecta. Thankfully, Jason was able to squeeze us in. And just to show us he was a pro he did his segment in one take.

    Some tidbits about this episode…

    We shot Andrew Marin’s part on the rooftop deck of his condo. Technically, we walked past his deck to the unfenced part so we could shoot the city in the background with no fencing. If you look carefully… behind Andrew is Wrigley Field. Cathy went up there with me even though she is afraid of heights. We were about 15 floors off the ground, Andrew sat down about 5 feet from the edge… and Cathy stayed back a good 20 feet taking pictures. She was a trooper!

    Then we drove over to North Avenue beach.     When Kristen and I first started dating this was a favorite spot. In fact, just 100 yards north of where I shot my parts Kristen and I had our first real date. Romeo students will recognize that spot as well, we always took our mission team photo right there.

    From there, we went out to Willow Creek to meet Jason. I’ve known Jason a few years and I really love his passion for middle school students. The thing a lot of people probably don’t know about Willow is that while they have massive middle and high school ministries, they are 99% run by volunteers. As Jason shares in the podcast, a big part of his role is setting up those volunteers to lead small groups. With a staff of 4-5 full time folks they lead something like 1700 middle schoolers. Think about that… 4-5 adults oversee an organization that impacts 4-5k people any given month, including parents.

    When it was all said and done, shooting this 11 minute video and all the travel time was about 12 hours of our day. Totally worth it. I hope we get to do more location-based podcasts soon.

  • Oops. A little over technology

    It seems my eagerness to spread the word about the YS podcast may have actually hurt our distribution a little. I think the right word is “counterproductive.”

    With the new format for the podcast I thought it would be helpful to cross-publish it a few places. So you may have seen it pop up on Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, and Blip. This is fine, and the numbers of viewers of the podcast have been great.

    The factors

    1. Blip.tv. Blip is cool because it has a great interface. As a content publisher I love the fact that I can upload a video, it gets published there… then I can select a bunch of places to crosspost. So I upload at blip and it does all the work for me to send it other places. (Facebook, myspace, twitter, and blogs)

    2. iTunes. Unfortunately, one of the places it sends the podcast is iTunes. And since we already use another way to publish podcast to iTunes the double feed gets both banned! (iTunes fixes the problem, but it is embarrassing and ends up making the show harder to find for th 24 hours it takes.)

    The lessons to learn.

    Being overeager sometimes has negative results. My initial reaction to “put it everywhere” had some negative implications.

    Good content will get found. To the core of my web-being I know this to be true. I know that less channels is better for content than more channels. This was just a case of trying to jump ahead of the curve… and in the end it hasn’t worked out.

  • 911 Fun

    HT to Mark

  • Making videos for ministry

    cameraIt’s safe to say that I make videos for ministry. On average, I make two. Generally I make the “bumper video” that comes just before the sermon and then there is a wild card project that comes up for one of the other things we are doing at Romeo. I’ve made videos for our kids ministry, student ministry, church services, marriage ministry, websites, on and on.

    So how do we do it?

    • It starts with the end result in mind. We ask the question: “What does this video need to communicate?” before we think of the ideas that go into it.
    • We brainstorm the concept. Will it be funny? Will it be dramatic? Will it be shocking? Will it be thought provoking?
    • We decide how much time its worth. Several months ago I spent 5 hours on a video that was less than 1 minute long and we used 1 time. It was awesome… but it wasn’t worth the time. So now we spend time time deciding the importance of the video. I spent 30+ hours on a video a couple months back and it was totally worth it.
    • We filter ideas based on time… including edit time.
    • We sketch out the videos time line. This is fluid when we go to actually shooting the video, but at this point it helps to do a sketch to determine stuff for the rest of the steps.
    • We agree on a time to shoot the video. Getting this scheduled is important so that it doesn’t happen the day before we need it!
    • I map out what I’ll need for the shoot. Video and sound equipment, people, props, permission, stuff like that.
    • We shoot the video. Once we get on site or set up… the video tends to change a lot. But agreeing on what to communicate and the sketch of the shoot ahead of time is pretty huge.
    • I edit the movie. The big decision is… to use iMovie or Adobe Premiere? That depends entirely on the type of video we’re creating. Most bumper videos are simple so I do them in iMovie. If I need a video with effects and layers and a lot of those details really matter… Premiere it is.
    • I publish the movie. 9 out of 10 times I publish it to YouTube so I can show it to a couple of people before making the final version for use in our ministry.
    • I premier it. There is nothing quite as exciting as an audience seeing your idea on the big screen for the first time.

    For those who do video in their ministry, how do you do it differently?

  • Spring Break: The Movie

    Film CameraIn Romeo, Spring Break starts today after school. And for the first time during my tenure at Romeo I will not be leading a group of high school students to Chicago to work with Inner City Impact.

    This creates new opportunities. Several families from Light Force are headed down to Florida to escape the prolonged winter. But the rest of us are not! And so when students started asking me, “What are we going to do over Spring Break?” I really started scratching my head… this is the first Spring Break in the last 7 years I’ve not had a mission trip, so I really have no idea what to do!

    Now Filming: 10 Things I Did While My Friends Were in Florida
    Next Wednesday, I have invited any student who wants to meet me at the church at 10:00 AM. From there we are going to brainstorm 10 scenes of a short movie that we’ll shoot later in the morning. As we’ll have all day to do this, the geographical boundaries are the Metro area… so I’m guessing we’re headed to the city, a couple Metroparks, a mall or two, a Taco Bell or two, and some other random places. From there, we’ll head back and edit our movie, drop some titles and effects on it and publish it to YouTube.

    I love unleashing adolescent creativity! I am positive that they have better video ideas than I do. Of course, in order to get to the good ideas you have to get past the initial creative desire to burn stuff, blow something up, jump off things, or otherwise break the law!

  • The highlight of the Oscars

    If you missed the Oscars last night, this is the can’t miss moment of the night. Kristen and I watched this film… great story. (A little too much music for me) But the song is incredible.

    HT to Kristen and First Showing