A lot of times after I finish a video people ask… “how did you…(feel in the blank)?” I leave this question vague in the blog because regarless of the question… there are always serveral constants.

First…While shooting video, it is very important to have a vision for how you want the video to turn out. Knowing how you want the video to look before shooting will help you know what kind of shots you will need during editing. Remember, shooting is only half of the process but a super important one! Plan your shoot on the front end.

Second…Post production is your friend! Post production opens up a whole other world of creativity! Several key components make up post production: editing, color correction, and audio sweetening.

Color correction is what i want to show you now. If you were at Elevation Church today, you saw a music video that the band performed. Here is a look at the video before and after… the first image is RAW out of the camera, and the second is from the final export:

image is of Chris Brown.

more to come in the future….

Well, today was quite amazing as usual. Pastor Steven Furtick took a hammer to a 4′x8′ sheet of glass. We had an artist draw wordart on the glass as Pastor talked about each one. Then, with hammer in hand he spoke of how through Christ, we can break out of the sin (issues as some call it) that separates us from Christ. Today, 94 people gave their lives to Christ as we wrapped up an amazing series where we saw 500 people come to know life in Christ. You know… it is truly a blessing when you find yourself right in the center of something amazing God is doing. In fact, God is doing amazing things all around us. Sucks that we are to selfish sometimes to recognize it. Seek first the things of Christ.

One amazing thing that stands out to me in regards to Elevation Church: we are bold in having a vision for lost people. Not sure why we would ever be silent about the way God has allowed us to be a part of what he is doing. Psalm 27 says, “The LORD is my light and my salvation whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life of whom shall I be afraid?” God has given us what we need to be bold. Let’s press on.

We were able to huddle up tonight with our production volunteers to tell them how great we think they are. In fact, there is a spirit of generosity that has seemed to infiltrate our entire church! For example, I had mack brock drive my car back to the office today after being downtown shooting video together. I get back to the office, get in my car to go somewhere and I see that the car i left that was almost out of gas, not only had gas in it, but was full to the max. Umm… no really gas cost what $5.00/gallon or something close? So let me get this right… i asked him to take my car back for me, and not only did he do that, he filled it up with gas.

Hello?… it’s pretty apparent why our volunteers have such a giving heart. I’ve always said that people who work under leadership carry a lot of the same characteristics. Mack was amazing at leading the way! Mack, you are the man.

Well church today was amazing as usual. Pastor Steven Furtick had a memo sitting on his desk this past week stating the number of salvations through the life of the Church. Our Church has only been in existence a little over two years. The number was 1,998. For those of you who aren’t gifted in math, that is 2 people away from having 2,000. So during the 11:15 service at Butler High, one of our campuses, Pastor told the story of the memo and then said he felt like there were some people in the service that knew they needed to give their life to Christ. Keep in mind that today’s message was about “Breaking Out” of financial chains. He went on to say something like, “i’m not going to ask people to close their eyes or bow their heads… if you want to give your life to Christ right now, then walk down here and up on this stage boldly.” Well a long story short… two adult men and two adult women gave their lives to Christ today! God is so cool.

It’s been a long time coming. I’ve actually made several blogs now that I never actually started. In fact this is the farthest I’ve ever been. Whoops.

I start the blogging off with this one thought… “Creativity requires more than a good idea.” I work with a small team of “creative” people. For anyone who thinks that creative teams get to sit around and just come up with cool ideas, this post is for you…

I began thinking about this concept several years ago. I found myself working late nights leading up to a big production event. Procrastination? Poor Planning? Not necessarily. I very quickly realized, “if i come up with a cool idea, someone has to pull it off… oh wait, that’s me.” It is very important to remember that the sky isn’t always the limit. In fact, in the production world, the sky isn’t your limit…. time is.

Coming up with a cool idea is only 1/3 of the process. The other 2/3’s consist of planning, and execution. The 2/3’s brings me to my point. It is very important for you creative Genius’ to admit you live in the clouds and that you probably need help figuring out the details. In order for you to be able to dream and create, you need to surround yourself with those who like details. It is very important that you carefully think through details before you begin any project. Trust me, it will be to your benefit to think of details in the beginning stages. The worst feeling for any content creator, is to come close to the end of a project only to realize you promised to make 20 marbles in 10 minutes when it takes 1 minute just to make one!

Think –> Plan –> Create.