Progress is Beautiful

A Story | For Better, For Worse

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:21:41 -0400

Inspiration Thursday #23

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:28:23 -0400

Hey there, hi there! Here are a few amazing, jaw-dropping, down right inspiring things I’ve seen around the web lately. Enjoy!

A Story | Shattered Dreams

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:45:34 -0400

This past weekend we once again had the privilege and honor of sharing some amazing stories with our church. We’ve been working for the last few weeks on two stories specifically, one of which I’ve chosen to share today. Both of the stories we produced were longer in runtime than what we’ve produced in the past. However, I personally enjoyed producing and working with a longer segment of time. It was not a mandate, but an experiment, which I think paid off.

Shot on Canon 5D MK II and 7D
Canon L Series Lenses
Edited in Final Cut Pro
Colored in DaVinci Resolve

Music by Aaron Robertson

Still Frame: 'Shattered Dreams'

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 08:31:24 -0500

Inspiration Thursday #22

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 14:26:53 -0500

Another week, another round of some of the best floating around the interwebs these days. The first is a trailer for the upcoming feature film, Chapman. Sean Stiegemier was the DP for this project. I love his work, and chances are will to. You’ve probably seen some of it and just don’t know it.

Secondly is a great ad for HTC+Beats by Dre. It’s a piece directed by Dan Brown. Among some of his other creations, you’ll find the title sequence to House under his credentials. Check out some of his other work here.

Lastly is gorgeous short cello instrument showcase piece by Benjamin Hoffman. I’m really digging the minimalistic feel he achieved by lighting the scene with a couple lights against a black background. Shot on the RED One.

A Story: The Road Home

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 10:45:00 -0500

A few weeks back our team produced another batch of stories at NewSpring Church. We like to share stories in our church to celebrate what God is doing and how he is changing lives, but they also act as fantastic vision pieces. There are few things that articulate the vision of our church better than a story of how God is working in someone’s life. Sidenote…if you’re planning on attending our Unleash Conference this year, one of the topics our team with be discussing at length in our breakout session is stories. We’ll be looking specifically at our process, methods’s and all the things we’ve found that do and do not work for us.

Here is one of the stories we produced.

Shot on the Canon 5D MK II
Edited in Final Cut Pro
Colored using Da Vinci Resolve
Music produced by Listen Design Studio

Inspiration Thursday #21

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 08:34:29 -0500

Here are a few pieces that I’ve recently discovered in some fashion or another.

The first is a wonderful spotlight piece on Scott Duncan, a director/cinematographer. It’s really a piece highlighting the Arri Alexa, but they’ve taken it an inanimate object and made it a central part of his story and philosophies. Along with being a beautifully shot piece it’s compelling and allows you to identify.

This next piece is a nice spotlight on Founders Brewing Co. based in Grand Rapids, MI. I always enjoy watching Hunter Hampton Richards work, who was the DP on this project.

Lastly was a well crafted trailer for the program The NFL Season: A Biography, which aires on the NFL Network. This project featured the work from the stillmotion team.

Press Play: New York

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:13:00 -0500

Here’s an exercise I did in DaVinci Resolve this week. The footage is from our trip to New York this past fall. I’m just starting to get into Resolve, so I graded this one in B/W just to familiarize myself with controls and not have to worry about the grade as much. Still, I like some of the results.

Shot on the Canon 5D MKII
Edited in Adobe Premiere
Colored in DaVinci Resolve
Artwork by Joshua Blankenship
Music: ‘Better Life’ by Paper Route

Style Frame: Story #1

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:54:45 -0500

Inspiration Thursday #20

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:19:19 -0500

Come one, come all! It’s time for the return of “Inspiration Thursday’. First up is a fantastic piece for British Airways. It does a wonderful job of playing up the nostalgia and historical aspects of aviation. The musical score also works beautifully. It was created by Academy Films in London.

Next up is a demo reel from my good friend Steven Lester. Steven is apart of the incredible team at Elevation Church. If your not following his work…you should be.

Lastly is a beautifully animated historical timeline about Whitehouse Post. Enjoy!

What I learned from Phil Vischer

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 11:59:11 -0500

I recently had some time to read “Me, Myself & Bob” by Phil Vischer. If you don’t know who Phil is, he’s the creator of the popular children’s video series ‘VeggieTales’. If you grew up in any sort of churched background, chances are you probably have a seen a couple of his creations from time to time. And if you didn’t grow up in a churched background, chances are that you’ve probably still seen or at least heard of them. That’s how big they are.

Now, if you don’t know the story of the collapse of ‘VeggieTales’, let me fill you in.

Phil created the Veggies in the mid-90’s. It was a lot of hard work. He sacrificed a lot to just make one episode. Finally he did. Then he made another, and another, and things started to pick up. He started signing large distribution and marketing contracts. He needed to hire more staff, so he did. Things went humming right along for the next several years. The Veggies were huge. In fact, at the height of ‘VeggieTales’ popularity, his company, Big Idea, had a yearly revenue of over $48 million dollars. You could say things were going alright. At least that’s what everyone thought. In reality the leaders of his company, whom Phil had put in place, made a series of terrible business decisions and were effectively sinking the ‘VeggieTales’ and the entire company of Big Idea. A couple years go by, many more poor business decisions were made, people are fired, many of the his hard working staff are laid off, and ultimately a lawsuit which they lose bankrupts the company.

After doing nothing but working day and night for 15 years to build Big Idea, Phil lost everything.

Of course, when you read the book, there’s a lot more detail involved but here are a few things I learned from Phil’s experience.

1. Build a team that is working toward the same goal.

One of the most obvious mistakes the Phil points out (and frankly is easy to see while reading through the book) is he lost the ability to motivate his team towards the vision or goal he had when he set out to create Big Idea. The company grew so big so fast, and they began hiring based only on talent, he no longer had the ability to cast the vision for his company. Half the people he had hired didn’t share the same goal or ambitions he did. The company ultimately became ineffective as a result.

2. Know who you are

We’ve all probably heard this one before, but it’s good to keep in mind. Knowing your weaknesses can actually become one of your biggest strengths. By knowing your weaknesses you know the areas you need to improve on. Whether that is personal improvements or professional, get people around you who can help you make up the difference. It also helps to know your weaknesses when it comes to decision making. By leaning on your own understanding and not seeking wise council you likely make bad decisions. You can learn to know when to defer to others instead of trying to do everything on your own.

3. Bigger isn’t always Better

While it is always helpful to have more resources and more people from time to time, it also can reduce the ability to pursue potential opportunities. The more things and people you have the the more permanent overhead you’re responsible for on a continual basis. I think this lesson has the potential for more impact in ministry than in business. Too often I found this to be an area of contention for ministry leaders. The excuse of we can’t do ‘this’ and we can’t do ‘that’ because we don’t have the people or the resources gets old real fast. One of the most fascinating things I found in reading this book was how large of an impact Big Idea was capable of having with the most skeleton animation/production crew by comparison. And it wasn’t until they started getting larger that they began losing control. I’m not advocating that you don’t hire any additional help, because as you grow it needs to happen. However, just make sure you’re hiring for the right reasons and make sure you absolutely have needs to meet before you just start throwing resources and people at problems or potential roadblocks.

4. Better pay doesn’t equal happier staff

While I found this interesting, I probably wasn’t extremely surprised. When it came time to lay staff off as a result of the the financial state of the company, most employees said they would have taken a pay cut if they could stay on and continue working at Big Idea. They loved working there. Money wasn’t the only motivator for world class animators leaving Disney to come join the efforts at Big Idea. Don’t automatically assume it’s the reason people are coming to join you were you are. Doesn’t mean you should make them flat broke, but know it’s not always the main reason. Generally speaking, people are drawn to join something for other reasons then to just get paid. Value that.

I loved reading this book. If you get some time, I’d encourage you to check it out. You can pick it up here on Amazon.

You can also see what Phil is up to now and read more about what happened on his blog.

What's new...

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 23:08:00 -0500

I realize it’s been months since I’ve written anything on here. Now that we’ve recognized that, let’s move on.

The last couple of months our team has been working on a large project for our Christmas services we just had a little over a week ago. We traveled to New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas in support of the message for Christmas. Our pastor, Perry, taught the first part of the service live and closed the service live, but taught via video at each of the locations in between.

Here are a few still frames from our project. You can watch the entire service here.

Still Frame: Discipleship

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 10:03:23 -0400

Still Frame: Discipleship

When great isn't good enough

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 10:00:00 -0400

A lot of writing I do on here comes out of personal experience. Sometimes my thoughts come from reflections on hard lessons I’ve had to learn through major failures. I do not work for myself, which is something I think can be said of a lot of us.

Recently I was asked to create something very specific. I wrestled with it for a few days. Came up with a game plan and carried it to completion. Now I’ll be honest. I wasn’t enthralled with the concept from the beginning. But it’s my job. My job is to serve my client and ultimately create for them what they seek. So, I get over that aspect of my job fairly quickly. It just comes with the territory.

And by the way, this following point is free. This is a entirely separate post in itself. Didn’t really want to get into it. But I think it’s so prevalent in creative cultured circles. Not matter what, it’s still needs to get done. And there’s two way’s you can go about doing it.

You can fuss/moan the whole way through, and let everyone know how unpleasant of an attitude you have about is. Or you can do your best with what you have and create something you can be proud of.

Inspiration Thursday #19

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 11:44:06 -0400

Another week. Another Thursday. Here’s a round-up of some incredible pieces of work out right now.

This first is a stunning piece directed by John X. Carey, a filmmaker out of California. I encourage you to check out more of his work.

This is second piece is an excellent demo reel from Adam Hobbs, a cinematographer based out of Charlotte, NC.

Lastly is a phenomenal mograph reel from Colin Trenter.

Inspiration Thursday #18

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:01:00 -0400

Here’s some of the weekly finds from around the internets worth checking out. The first one is from a group of friends who traveled all over the world making 3 short concept films. This one is based on the idea of movement. You can read more about them and check out a couple more of their films here.

This next piece is from a good friend of mine, John Carrington, who recently took a trip to China to work on a documentary. This is the resulting trailer of the upcoming documentary. Make sure you check out more of John’s work here.

Finally is a fantastic mograph piece from Marcus Eckert. Just hit play and have your mind blown.

.::WYSBLT-Mat Kearney::. New feature today on the blog,...

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 12:22:00 -0400

.::WYSBLT-Mat Kearney::.

New feature today on the blog, it’s called ‘What you should be listening to’ (WYSBLT). Now far be it from me to dictate what your music library holds, but I certainly let you in on what mine holds. The first installation in a series of posts in the months to come is from artist Mat Kearney. Mat combines a unique blend of pop/alternative/hip-hop. It sounds weird, but trust me it works. Here’s a selection from his new album Young Love called ‘Ships in the Night’.

You can pick up Mat’s new album here.

A Story | True Glory

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:41:00 -0400

This past weekend we concluded our two week series at NewSpring called ‘Stories.’ The last two weeks, we shared some original stories from people in our church. Here is another one of those stories.

Produced by Adam Kring

Story by Nick Charalambous and Adam Kring
DP: Adam Kring
Additional Camera: Michael Jones
Editor: Adam Kring, Nick Charalambous
Coloring: Adam Kring
Shot on Canon 5D MK II and Canon 7D
Lenses: Canon 50 f/1.2L, Canon 24-30 f/2.8L, Canon 70-200 f/2.8L IS
Edited in Final Cut Pro
Graded using After Effects

Music by Listen Design Studio

Inspiration Thursday #17

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 12:19:00 -0400

Here’s some of the most fantastic pieces that I’ve come across this week while digging around in hard to reach places.

The first is a mind-blowing piece from the motion graphics team at Elevation Church. It was directed by Geoff Schultz.

The next two pieces were created in-house here at NewSpring by Michael Jones and Darrin Dick for our summer camp for our Fuse* Student Ministry called the Gauntlet. They’re apart of the branding for the weeek.

This next piece has some incredible imagery shot in the midst of an onset of fog. According to the notes it was shot from a car on a 5D and 7D in Oregon, Washington and Victoria, Canada in December 2009. It was photographed and directed by Phillip Van.

A Story I The Miracle Seed

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 17:52:00 -0400

The second of three stories we used this past weekend as apart of our ‘Stories’ series. This is the story of a group of friends who set out to spur change in their community, only to find they were the ones who’s live were changed. You can watch the service online here.

Produced by Adam Kring
Story by Nick Charalambous and Adam Kring
DP: Adam Kring
Additional Camera: Will Rodes
Editor: Nick Charalambous, Adam Kring
Coloring: Adam Kring

Shot on Canon 5D MK II and Canon 7D
Lenses: Canon 50 f/1.2L, Canon 24-30 f/2.8L, Canon 70-200 f/2.8L IS
Edited in Final Cut Pro
Graded using After Effects
Music by Davis Harwell