Random Act of...

On the com during service we have what we call RA_.  Typically the last letter is the first initial if whoever is committing the random act.  Usually it's our Senior Pastor Mike thus we have RAM, Random Act of Mike, though sometimes out Worship leader Karl pulls a RAK.  Before I go to far let me define a random act.  When someone says something that cold or should be followed up by "I don't believe I'da told that" we have a random act. Today we had a panel discussion, this introduced us to a whole new type of random act... the RAA.  That last A would be All, we had 6 people on the panel and most of them said something that would qualify as a random act.  One of our guys has a book on financial issues called "Get Naked: Stripping Down to Money and Marriage".  When you have a catalyst like that, and you just know someone is going to"go there" that is what we call a RAP, random act producer.  A book title like Get Naked is a perfect example, every service some reached out for that low hanging fruit and slapped us with a Random Act of...  To be honest these type of things are what really make my job SOOOO worth it.  Of course if my Senior Pastor finds this post and I am prolly going to have an RGE, but that's alphabet soup for another time.  

"I Heard You Whisper in the Wind"

I heard you whisper in the wind from Mark Hanna on Vimeo.

This is a song our worship leader wrote, I never remember to tell him enough how incredibly gifted he is and what a pleasure it is working with some who has such a passion for excellence and the chops to pull it off.  I think Mike sets the whole thing up pretty well.
This is the IMAG feed which we did in black and white to make it different, and in doing so gave it a more... respect for lack of a better word.  Based on the situation we thought it was a good fit.

Church Production article

I got interviewed a while back for church production.  I was asked to talk about IMAG, which I could pretty much do for weeks at a time.  So it was a great interview, I got to talk about my passion and even got to throw my FOH guy a bone.  You can read the article here.

Are you alone? Follow me!

One of my office mates stumbled on to this flow chart about two weeks ago, being a super talented web designer married to an even more talented graphics designer he found it very funny.  When he showed it to me, I immediately went looking for comic sans. I was not disappointed.  Fast forward to earlier this week it's 8:00 pm I am still at my desk frustrated, tired and I a little bitter that I am even working on a project to begin with, when this little voice says "hey you are alone.... come with me"  I changed the font to comic sans and sadly that got me moving enough to get it finished.  For the finishing touch I changed the typeface because .... well lets face it, I have live with myself after this project.

what a differance 6 years makes

2004 FxN Productions LLC is formed.  My most important piece of gear is my Canon GL2.  I edit in AVID Express Pro.  As a freelancer I worked rarely, usually alone, but when I want to.  Video was less a career and more a financially self-sustaining hobbie. I was married 3 years.

2010 FxN Productions LLC is still around, but just.  My most imporant piece of gear is my com.  I don't even own that GL2 or the 2 other Gl2s or the XL2 that came after it.  I have and XH-A1 which is getting dusty.  The rare days I man-up on a camera it's a Panasonic AG-HPX500.  I couldn't find my AVID dongle if I had to... I edit mostly in Motion, FCP if I must.  As a director I work sometimes 7 days a week, covering 2 maybe 3 peoples jobs, with a volunteer staff of 40 and I work even when I don't want to.  Video could not be a more serious to me.  My wife and I have been married almost 10 years and have 2 boys.

It's funny 6 years ago I never saw myself doing what I am doing now.  Which is kinda great cause what I do now is WAYYY cooler then anything I had in mind.  Over that course of time I have gone from just making it, to a road hardened pro, to....  I dunno what I would be considered now. 6 years ago I couldn't have been convinced this job I currently have really existed.  Now not only does it exist it's common place, I am even a respected professional in some areas.  I get calls to consult every so often, some people even value my opinion in my field.

So this begs the question what does the next 6 years look like?
Predictions 2016; based on the dramatic change in the past 6 years I think predicting anything about the next 6 would truly be futile. 
I hope when I shoot it's on whatever the new biggest baddest toy by RED is.  I hope I am still directing and editing.  I hope my volunteer staff is bigger, maybe I even have a paid staff.  I hope I am happier.  I think I have become so over the past 6 years, but today it's hard to tell.

Anita witness

Last night we had comedian Anita Renfroe at our church for a "girls night out".  First, let me say she is funny, VERY funny.  After intermission there was a panel about ...woman things.  the panel was our senior pastors wife, Antia a single woman from the church a married woman and one of the female staff.  While I am sure there were a number of women that really heard something encouraging and potentially life altering, for me it was really just more info then I needed.  What was heard cannot be unheard... and it may haunt me for a while.  I am not sure I can ever look my senior pastor (who was not there) or his wife in the eyes ever again.
That said "Girls Night Out" FTW... if you are a woman

TATTOO FTW

 A few weeks back the creative team at our church (which is myself and the graphic designer) decided that some tattoo art might be a good look for an up coming sermon series.  After a few days of coming up empty handed conceptually we started digging through some of the new motion designer’s tool kit by Digital Juice (MDTK) I recently picked up.  Talk about striking gold! It was awesome! But I am getting a little ahead of myself.

Let me set the stage; our church is a little …edgy I guess this the best way to put it. We have between 6-9 thousand in attendance every week.  Our worship team is a rock band and our senior pastor usually preaches sitting down, in jeans and t-shirt, wearing flip flops.  He also has a few tattoos that are easy to see when he preaches. Last month was his yearly break and we had a guest speaker who was a little more conservative.  Each week of a 4 week series he became a little more comfortable preaching to our congregation.  First he preached with his shirt un-tucked, then in jeans, all the while commenting that our senior pastor was his hero for allowing him to preach in jeans and t-shirt.  Then in week 3 the guest speaker alluded to the fact that he was taking after a senior pastor so much that he was “thinking” about getting a tattoo. Well that was all the inspiration we needed.  We ran with the tattoo concept for the series following his, we branded printed edited and turned around a series package in record time so that we could order 10,000 temporary tattoos of the series art to give to our congregation.  I don’t know if MDTK was ever intended for that type of application, but it preformed brilliantly.  Our graphic designer loved the vector images, and the motion graphics package I came up with utilized the MDTK almost exclusively.  In the end the tattoos went over GREAT everyone loved them.  Some people even wore them in to work the next day spurring all kinds of conversations. 
So temporary tattoos FTW!!!