Saving Creativity

So I need to get back to being inspired, so I took a few minutes this morning to look around.  Here is what has inspired me:  three pieces done on DSL’s (Canon 5D MkII):

Life in Haiti-Canon 5D MKII & Glidetrack from Leclerc Brothers Motion Pictures on Vimeo.

This is a piece by a really good friend of mine Adam Kring works for an amazing church called NewSpring.

The Story of Zac Smith from NewSpring Media on Vimeo.

And my latest side work.  This was shot by me on the Canon 7D with a mixture of lenses.  It was edited by Andrew Schuurmann and was the opener for the newest Willow Creek Association Conference: The Green Room.

Green Room Opener from Andrew Schuurmann on Vimeo.

I hope something inside these three videos inspires you to shoot a new way, or maybe look at every day objects in a different angle!

Here is what Andrew and I have been up to at work these two weeks, I was DP on the 1st one, and talent on the 2nd one.  Andrew pulled out some great stops on the motion tracking!  Good job Andrew!!

Andrew produced the piece and the talent did an amazing job (it was me…).  He chose a bunch of stirring images and we worked together to light and place all of the images.  This one was also edited by Andrew…

Kingdom Of Comfort from Andrew Schuurmann on Vimeo.

Well, it’s been almost a month since I returned from Uganda.  From an amazing trip and meeting some even more amazing people.  For those of you not caught up yet here is the cliff notes version of one young man and his story:

-  I met Samuel on one of my last days in Jinja, Uganda

-  He wrecked me as he told us of his story of struggle to eat and live

- His both his parent’s are dead and he doesn’t really know how old he is, he eats whenever he earns enough money to buy some food

- He has never…NEVER…been to school and has only seen a doctor once…

So now that we are all caught up and on the same page, here’s the newest update.  Pastor Sal Sberna, spoke this past weekend at a conference in San Antonio, TX and told a little bit about Samuel’s story.  Well, on the last day of the conference, a young couple came up to Pastor Sal and handed him an envelope.  They said that they wanted the money inside to go directly to Samuel, to better his life.  Well, Pastor Sal opened up the envelope and inside was $500!!!  I was in awe of what God has done for Samuel, $650 has been raised for Samuel and hopefully we can all keep telling his story so that the last $100 can be brought in.  Please tell your friends, neighbors, and loved ones about Samuel and forward them on to this blog or to Call To Africa, and then have them donate and write a comment here so that I can make sure that the money gets put toward Samuel’s cause.  If you are in Houston, TX this weekend (Nov. 22nd, 2009), we are going to be showing a piece of Samuel’s story, and if you gave you should be receiving a link today that will allow you to see that service element ahead of everyone else.  We are working on the rest of Samuel’s story (the full version), and when it is done, it will be premiered here as well, so stay tuned!

Hope you have gotten the MMS update for your iPhone, if not, just update iTunes, plug in ye’ iPhone, update your phone and then restart your iPhone.  Once it restarts you should have a nifty little option under your text messaging icon that will give you the ability to MMS pictures or video to anyone in your contacts!

Saw this on the front page of Digg.com.  Awesome creative use of two forms of art: skateboarding (actually long boarding to be exact) and technology to power the colored tubes.  Even the tubes beat to the music, so there must have been some cool sync.

A blog that I follow (murphy24p) had a great post on the connections with people in our lives.  I loved this line form his post:

I guess it really struck me how far I have moved, in such a short amount of time, to a wholly electronic connection with people.  I mean, it has only been 4 months since I couldn’t check email, scan tweetdeck or check who commented on my wall with my phone.  Before that I actually had to sit down and check it on my desktop at home (Trinity blocked Facebook and Twitter…maybe that was a bigger benefit than a curse!)  Can I confess something:  I really want to start over, I mean get away from everything being on a screen, or via my phone.  How about instead of shooting off an email or iChat session, I should be picking up the phone or meeting someone, as Murphy suggests, over my beloved coffee.

Here is a piece that really inspired me this morning, hope I haven’t posted this yet, but Dan Stevers is a great motionographer and does some amazing work!

Dan Stevers’ 07 Reel from Dan Stevers on Vimeo.

Creativity often strikes at the most inopportune times…like at 3am, or at 4:23pm.  I follow this blog as much as I can but Josh posted a video with a single take music video.  That led me to the behind the scenes video for the music video.  I want to try this so badly, just for my own selfishness, to try to pull something like this off would be awesome…

Music video:

Behind the scenes:

I don’t have a ton of time to blog today because I am currently in between an video the staff is putting together and a video we are doing for our Celebrate Recovery ministry.  Two great groups of people, I will post the finals of both of those here so you can see what the heck I am talking about.

So here are two websites you have to reblog, twitter, pour through or at least go and check out:

First is Deidox.com.  I don’t know about you but story is what moves me, not amazing special effects, not amazing acting, not even incredibly beautiful cinematography.  Story is the driving force behind how Jesus taught, story is king.  Deidox is taking story telling to a simple, creative, beautiful place on the internet.  Although it is similar to the “I Am Second” campaign (who by the way have two new stories they are telling), this takes you to the places and to meet the people that these people’s story is touching.  Lindsey, Robert and Deon start off their series with money going to each of their closest NGO’s.  Great idea and it truely inspires me to get back to the basics of really, really good story…

Second is Kronomy.com.  Although I don’t have a Beta invite just yet and am trying to track one down, this website would provide some very, very unique options for the future of media.  At it’s core is one simple idea: provide a chronological media driven timeline of your life.  The website basically provides a place to put a bunch of media in chronological order.  From the few places that I have seen review this website it seems so amazing and different.  It would be cool to see ten years of your life strung together via pictures in order.  Just a cool new website to check out…
Enjoy your Thursday afternoon!

So the title should be read in your best Monstor Truck Commercial voice.  After a decent weekend filled with: my wife sleeping in on Saturday morning while Brennan and I chilled out upstairs, yesterday’s Compass Alumni Board’s 24hour film festival watching marathon (hey it only took 6 hours this time…), and then the boy crying pretty much from 8pm till 11:30pm, then crying off and on last night… this past weekend was decent.  This week at Trinity will be filled with lots of: DVD order filling (something like 25 different services…wow people, you know you can download then for free from here), setting up the green screen for another month of LifeIn2, and no side jobs right now (and the people rejoiced…yeah…).  Here is something to get your morning going, someone I have thoruughly impressed with…Samm Hodges….

Mystery from samm hodges on Vimeo.

I work at a church and own a side business.  They both have ups and downs to them, but one thing that I know for both of them is: you never have a large enough budget.  I always seem to have these grandeous grandiose (guess I should spell check more often!) ideas and want to pull them off for peanuts.  So I am going to share a secret with you……you can get lots of free stuff from some really great sites.  So here is my list of daily and weekly websites that I surf to to get this some great pieces for my video or graphics pieces.

In very particular order:

• istockphoto.com:  They have a weekly pictures, monthly videos, monthly sound fx, and monthy vector art that you can get for free.  You should get an account here anyways since they have some of the cheapest and best stock photog and vector art on the web…
• bittbox.com:  A friend of mine who runs a website dedicated to all things graphics.  He always has free Texture Tuesday and often gives away a lot of other stuff if you comment on his site.  Really good guy, helped me on this design via a chat session.  Does really, really good work as well…
• revostock.com: One of the best all around video and mograph stock houses out there.  They give away a free monthly video.  I often go here to get some inspiration for future mograph or to just see what other people are doing for video work.
• Churchmediadesign.tv Brad runs a great website and has a weekly video podcast that helps to really cement what a lot of church’s need…good media.  Go there to get tips, tricks, and how-to’s.  Also the bobble head Jesus, Brad, Dwight Screwt and Colonel Sanders are a nice touch!
• PShero.com:  These guys crank out some amazing Photoshop stuff.  I go there to figure out how to do an effect, find a brush or even just get inspired for some new ideas or designs…

I want to know where you go to get free stuff.  Are there websites you surf to in order to get those great PS brushes, or how about a website that shares free video in good quality.  Please make them legal, no ripping videos off of vimeo.com or youtube.com.  Let me know if you are giving away free stuff so I can write about it and share it with others!

Ahh junk almost forgot the vimeo.com video…

Digital Slaves [Modern] from Digital Slaves on Vimeo.

Digital Slaves does intense projection via HD projection and sonic matieral, all in real time and can react to the beats of audio.  While I am not into the clubbing scene at all, what they are doing for projection and effects kind of makes me think we might be able to do a little more with thinking outside the box of using projection and experimenting with different types of materials for the surfaces…

Ok, so I need inspiration and I am guessing that everyone needs it every once in a while so here we go…
m83 Music video

M83 – We Own the Sky from David Altobelli on Vimeo

Who is the Church?

Beyond the Building from Adam Kring on Vimeo

Stage Set that inspired...

A great AE tutorial on adding rain to your AE footage…

Inspiring spring photos, thanks to Smashing Magazine!

Some days as a creative type are like pulling teeth to get anything done.  I looked, pondered and stared at my screens for almost two hours straight on Thursday afternoon without a single idea or nugget of design for our Easter services.  I definitely needed a break because frustration was setting in and RadioHead wasn’t allowing that frustration to melt away.  I got up and went to check my mail in the mail office.  It went something like this: junk, junk…ooo one of those cheesy “Become a better decision maker” pamphlets, and then a LiveDesign rag.  Huh, this should come in handy I thought to myself.  As I flipped through it, a really cool design hit me.  That was it.  I ran back to my office and hammered out the design in 15 minutes.  It always amazes me how just a little bit of help or inspiration can move a project from an idea to completion!

Easter - 2009 at Trinity Church