Tag: camden baptist church

Thank you guys for following along in my diary blogs with this project. It has taken around 6 months and many. many hours. But alas, here it is. Thanks again and any feedback would be invited.

The clock in the upper right corner of my mac reads 1:54am. And as I type the Camden Baptist Church “welcome video” is exporting to Compressor. Which means….. drum roll…. It’s complete! The CBC welcome video is finished! As always, I have a mixed bag of emotions. But the most prominent of those is happy!

It has been a crazy 7 months and this project has certainly served me the ups and downs. I’m always mixed with the “feels” when a project like this is over. Whether you know the subjects in the video or not, you do get attached to them. You spend late nights trying to get things to work. You spend countless hours staring at the characters in whatever film you are working on. And then like the best of relationships past, there gone. Just with one click of a button. Gone.

Nonetheless, I feel relieved. This (for me) was a major undertaking and I can’t stress enough; without the help of My wife Lindsey, John and Mandy Lynch and Bro Edward and his wife Ms. Faith, this process would have been an extremely difficult undertaking. I’m thankful I had a support group when needed and extra eyes on demand. The older I get, the more I learn nothing worth substance is usually executing alone. Most good results are spawned from teamwork. This project was no different.

A word on the finished product if I may. I’ve always had an issue with making things creatively and then letting them go in to the public. This is no different, but with this current project I feel “OK”. My only job was to put together a video to replicate the true heart of Camden Baptist Church. I wasn’t commissioned to make a super polished video by any means. (But I feel confident in the quality.) I wasn’t tasked to buy new equipment and shoot out of this world shots. (But I feel this time around I really stretched my equipment as far as it can go and reached it’s full potential). At the end of the day I looked at this project like such: It had to stand the test of time. This video’s main objective is to inform church searchers that there is a place called Camden Baptist Church and the people there will welcome you with open arms. The video must succeed on capturing the essence of CBC so when a newcomer attends the video doesn’t feel fabricated or convoluted. This was the goal.

I can sit here honestly stating I feel the video has hit the mark we were going for. Of course this is none of my doing, but the result of much prayer and grace. I’m thrilled it’s finished and in my opinion an accurate representation of the church. But I’m more excited of what the future brings. If one, just one visitor comes because they viewed the video, this was worth every second of the six months it took.

So whats next you ask? Currently I am working on the website. Brother Edward, Ms. Faith and I have discussed about how and where we would like to place the video and those talks are ongoing and still in discussion. Personally, I’ve always wanted to do a sort of “cover” page for the site introducing the video and simply presenting it. If the reader didn’t come for the video they can simply click the “continue to site” button. Also the video’s long term home will be one of the main pictures tiles on the bottom of the home page. I’m not sure how long the cover page will last, but ill be checking analytics on it to determine if the plays we are receiving from there are substantial or not. If not I don’t mind at all just placing it in it’s home on the homepage.

Well, there you have it. Thank you guys for following this diary of sorts. I originally planned for much more than 4 entires, but time is tough nowadays and honestly I’m just glad I got 4 out. I hope you somewhat enjoyed this and maybe learned something about Final Cut Pro in the process. I have been really excited to hear from some younger readers and how the young kids still have a interest in editing.

OH YA… the video! I almost forgot. I will post the video on this site as soon as it is live on Camdenbaptistchurch.com for your viewing pleasure. I am really looking forward to your guys take on it, positive or negative.

Once again, thank you guys a bunch and Ill be in touch soon with the finished product.

Well, I am pleased to report the video is moving along quite nicely. Not without a major scare though (we’ll get into that). November was an extremely stressful month for planning shots, executing angles, coordinating with people to make certain shots happen, etc. It was all worth it and I am happy to report, Filming is wrapped!

First things first though, about a month ago I made a mistake. (enter amateur hour) I accidentally misplaced my entire timeline. I know, I know. Basically the video just disappeared. I’m sure you could imagine my enthusiasm. There was a big moment of denial which lasted around an hour, followed by cold sweats and a pounding headache. I traveled my mac up and down to the ends of long lost file directories. No CBC.FCP (file name) to be found. It was like stealthy magic trick. Im not gonna lie, it was impressive. But frightening to say the least. After an hour of nothing, I caved and called Apple customer support.

Since I am using a “pro” software I am able to call Apple’s support line and reach for the safety raft. I was pretty confident Apple had a solution, they had always helped me in the past. So while on the inside I was crying, I felt Apple would pull me out of it. Nop. Not only could they not help me. A supervisor gave me a lecture on backups, especially working with a large video project (Thanks, Apple).

After about another hour of scouring my computers hard drive to no avail, I opened up Final Cut Pro and bit the bullet. I started rebuilding from scratch the entire video. This was months of work, but I had no choice. I was pulling down files to place into my timeline one at a time. Anyone who is aware of the process knows how insane this sounds. But really, what were my options?

All of sudden I pulled down a file with an odd name. It was labeled that days date. I dragged it to my timeline and low and behold it was my original video that went missing! To this moment, I still have no idea how my 5 minute edited cut of the video got removed from my timeline and mixed in with 400 clips of random footage. If I would have been allowed to run around with no pants discharging whipped cream in my mouth, I would have! I was extremely happy to say the least!

After that incident I directly went into filming. I have attended every church service I could with camera in hand. I went with the bus ministry with my clanky tripod and toted my camera equipment in the hallways of nursing homes for the nursing home ministry. I lugged my trusty tripod and camera around church to every Sunday school class, every special occasion. In all actuality it was pretty fun, but certainly exhausting. A mental note: filming is exhausting. I always forget this.

Last week is when I really sat down and dug my heels in with the editing. I had a goal of trying to make something cohesive and feel like “one” video after a 2 night edit session. This was hard because I had literally 400 plus clips of footage I had to condense into a 5 or so minute video. Luckily making the audio narrative really helped.

When I felt the product was about 80% complete I wanted to show it to Bro. Edward. After all it’s his video. I knew once achieving around 80% completion, the rest of the work would really be just polishing the actual footage in the timeline. Polishing is tough and takes a considerable amount of time. So therefore I dint want to be polishing video that wasn’t going to make it into the final cut. And I didn’t have the authority to claim Final Cut, Bro Edward did.

I was nervous showing him, but felt somewhat confident that the product told the story he wanted. But most definitely my goal was; if there was something in here he didn’t want or like, I wanted to know now. Before putting a final polish on it. Luckily, he loved it. He kept telling me he thought it was finished. Or that I didn’t need to do anything else to it. Of course I know, and every filmmaker in the world knows thats not true. But this was a good sign. I was on the right track.

Presently I am proud to say I have a picture lock and am deep in “magic” month. Really, just tightening the screw and polishing everything. It looks like I will hit my goal of launching sometime in January! I really, really can’t wait for people to see it at this point. I should be posting one more update to this series as time goes on.

Thanks for following along!

The project is trucking along. In many ways I have been kind of surprised by how smooth some tasks have been. In more ways, frustrated by fixing some of my shortcomings as a filmmaker. Nonetheless, the project is in fairly healthy shape and still tracking a possible January completion.

Recently, I have finished my audio narrative. Basically that means the audio narration from Bro. Edward is in place and it seems completed. As of now, I am satisfied in how the dialogue flows. I think it tells the right story, at the right pace, in the right tone of delivery. I guess time will be the judge of all the elements at play. But at this point. That audio is a pretty firm lock, and thats good thing .

Moving on but staying with audio. I always knew finding the right music was going to be difficult. Exactly like my “Family Videos”, the tone of the music I know, but finding the actual track that will be placed is always a complicated feat. For me, the music is a huge element in a video like this. If we are going to try and recreate how the church feels accurately – which is the goal – then the  music needs to feel the most spot on in my opinion. Especially because in a church like CBC, music plays such a big role as the general “feel”.

I searched high and low for literally weeks on end and nothing came. To be honest, I was getting scared imagining a future where the music would fall short. Then at church 2 weeks ago something hit me. Bro Edward does so much of his talking with piano playing in the background. And what is this video? It’s him mostly speaking. So soft piano music would work. And it would be a precise representation of what church is actually like there. So my idea of “big production feel” music was left at sea and my search began of old gospel hymns, softly played. Nothing big, just subtle. Blending in instead of demanding attention.  I found a keeper and pleasantly am surprised how well it is working in the current cut. Check and moving on.

Like I mentioned earlier, all of the audio nearly is finished, so my focus now is on shots. I need a bunch of them. Mostly every service I attend in the month of November I will be shooting. Thats the  level of shots needed in a video like this. Sure the final cut will end up around 5 minutes, but I’ve discovered by doing this, you need shots and shots and more shots and back ups and fill shots. So shots it is.

So, It seems all of November will be big on picking up shots of various things. Bus route, Sunday School classes, Super church, in service shots, Nursery etc. Anything really Bro. Edward speaks on in the video,  I need ample coverage.

More words on shots and cinematography: I’m shooting everything with the idea that when I go back to Final Cut, I have the option to play with these. I am shooting a tiny bit wider and zoomed out then normal. The main reason for this is to play with the notion of a Ken Burns or dolly effect to be added to everything. Im not sure if that idea will pan out in the final cut, but I like the idea of leaving that option open. So there’s that. Of course I don’t have to do that, but I want to make this video as good as possible. So I’m willing to put in the extra work and try it. if it doesn’t work, I’ll revert to my originals.

Then comes December. If all goes well and according to some sort of plan, December will be my magic month. This is common phrase in the filmmaking world. Basically by then, you hope that you have all the footage you need and all feels right to where you can really maneuver the video and tweak elements to really make it a strong project.

Anyhow, I’m moving forward and all is going decently right now. Like I mentioned, November is going to be a shooting month and December will hopefully be a Magic Month with the hopes of release on the website sometime in January!

Thanks for following along and I will certainly update this video diary some point in November. Any questions as usual you could use the contact tab on the site.

Happy Shooting!