paramore welcome video

Paramore got their start at The People’s Church down in Franklin, TN. In 2006, I was able to catch them between tours for a quick interview and welcome video for Sunday morning:

Welcome videos are a great way to open the service and showcase either a group or an individual in your church. There are so many great stories out there and this is a good way to tell them. Bonus points if you get the story to match with the teaching of that morning.

starbucks welcome video

Well the hits just keep coming this week. Below is a welcome video from Starbucks that I produced and directed at The People’s Church back in 2006.

We did this in one take and didn’t tell the barista we were filming. We purposefully chose a high maintenance drink to try and get him off his game. After a little explaining, we were able to get him to say the official welcome. Good times.

hard times

This is another video I directed and produced in 2006 while at The People’s Church. As I remember, this was one of the best services I was ever a part of. The message was on brokenness and we opened the morning with this video:

We ended the service with some very powerful “cardboard testimonies” (which I couldn’t find on YouTube) and we used a still from the video as our PowerPoint background. It was probably the most well-branded services I’ve seen. “Branded” here meaning, consistent concept in every aspect from start to finish. Ah, those were the good ole days.

fix you

I’m so excited that I finally found this video file! I thought it was gone forever when the external hard drive it was on literally caught on fire. (What is it with me and things catching on fire?)

Back in 2005, I was on staff at The People’s Church in Franklin TN and this was my first video that I produced and directed. I will never forget the moment it created in church the morning we showed it. I was amazed to see how quickly & heavily people could be impacted by film.

I’m so glad that I found this video and wanted to share it!! Pass it along to anyone you think would enjoy it.

Miracle Maker by Delirious?

There’s something very mystical and almost magical about this song. Very appropriate for Good Friday:

insidious is… amazing

Good scary movies are hard to come by these days. I’m not talking about slashers that hack people up into tiny bits (although Sweeny Todd is different. I guess because it’s also a musical) I’m talking about edge-of-your-seat, this-could-actually-happen kind of scary. Insidious is just that and more.

What I loved about it was they didn’t give everything away in the trailer. Yes, there are some scary parts in the previews, but man oh man… once you’re in the theater they don’t hold anything back. It really is one of the best-made thrillers I’ve seen in a long time. Consider it today’s Poltergeist. The family moves into a new home and quickly discovers that it might be haunted. Their son falls into an unexplained coma. Strange things happen that can’t be explained and some really thrilling moments happen in the first house. The family moves into a new home hoping to leave it all behind them and focus on getting their son well. It isn’t long that their troubles follow them. Sightings and happenings are still, well, being seen and happening. A medium is called in and states the film’s tag line, “It’s not the house that’s haunted… it’s your son.” Dun, dun, dun.
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legend of the fist: the return of chen zhen

I just stumbled upon this amazing trailer for a new movie out this April called “Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen.” And it. Looks. Epic.

I’ve never seen a martial arts film set this time period before. This looks to be a sure fire winner for folks that like sleek cinematography and action-packed scenes. I’m excited to see this one.

Water for Elephants

I’m so excited this movie is coming out! I read the book last year (ok, ok, fine…I started reading the book and never finished it. It’s not because it wasn’t interesting, it’s just this thing I have with books… I have a hard time finishing them. This is a post for another day. I digress)

Jacob Jankowski says: “I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other.” At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn’t always like this, however, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. It wasn’t a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. He buried his parents, learned that they left him nothing because they had mortgaged everything to pay his tuition, returned to school, went to the exams, and didn’t write a single word. He walked out without completing the test and wound up on a circus train. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. With Ringling Brothers as the standard, Benzini Brothers is far down the scale and pale by comparison.

The most interesting aspect of the book is all the circus lore that Gruen has so carefully researched. She has all the right vocabulary: grifters, roustabouts, workers, cooch tent, rubes, First of May, what the band plays when there’s trouble, Jamaican ginger paralysis, life on a circus train, set-up and take-down, being run out of town by the “revenooers” or the cops, and losing all your hooch. There is one glorious passage about Marlena and Rosie, the bull elephant, that truly evokes the magic a circus can create. It is easy to see Marlena’s and Rosie’s pink sequins under the Big Top and to imagine their perfect choreography as they perform unbelievable stunts. The crowd loves it–and so will the reader. The ending is absolutely ludicrous and really quite lovely.

This looks to be one of the most magical films I’ve seen in a while. I love, love, love this time period and era. Shows like HBO’s Carnivale and the short film The Butterfly Circus captured my attention and emotions in a way no other era has. 1920s-1950s looked like some great years!

Water for Elephants comes out April 15th, 2011. I can’t wait!

have I got a story for you…

This past week I’ve had the privileged of visiting my Grandparents in North Carolina as well as my Dad’s brothers and their families down in South Carolina. If there’s one thing we all have in common (other than being family) it’s that we all have stories.

Whether they’re well told in great suspense and laughter, or whether the punch line is given too soon it became apparent to me that the people in my life (well, and everyone for that matter) have some incredible stories to tell. Stories of strength, honor, laughter, humility, vacation goof ups… the list goes on and on.

My Great Granny (my dad’s Grandmother on his dad’s side) wrote in her journal every day for years. I’m talking every, single, day y’all.  She documented everything from how many pints of pickles she canned in the smokehouse to processing her grief after her husband died.

My dad’s younger brother’s family now has her journals and diaries. Years and years of stories and every day encounters. And it got me thinking… what are people going to read about me when I’m gone? Will whatever legacy I leave behind be passed down to my great grandchildren? They’ll probably get some microchip from the Library of Congress that contains every blog, tweet, Facebook update (and whatever else comes along in years to come) that I’ve ever written. So there’s that I suppose. I digress.

Let me get to the point: everyone has a story to tell. And the cool thing is it’s YOURS. It’s your very own. It’s something that you can pass down from generation to generation, or write online about, or write a short story about, or make a movie about.

How are you telling your story?

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Tomorrow I leave for Arlington, VA for another Inside|Out workshop. Inside|Out workshops empower students from many different histories to tell their stories to the world through film. We have filmmakers from literally all over the world come in and teach students every aspect of the filmmaking process.

Through a week-long film workshop, students learn how to tell their story through film and showcase their 5 minute short film at a red carpet premiere at the end of the week. It’s amazing to see students “come alive” when they get in and create through film.

Inside|Out is the same workshop that took me over to New Zealand almost one year ago. It was a time that turned my world upside down. I’ll do what I can blog about my experiences this year as I go through the workshop again.

For more information about Inside|Out and how to get involved click here.