First off, to everyone who made it to Drive, thanks for coming.  We thoroughly enjoy the chance to visit with and learn from you.

Sometimes in these visits, we’ll get asked a question along the lines of “How did you make that?”  Since it’s difficult to answer that question succinctly, I’ll often respond with something useless like “Magic!”, which I imagine is really irritating.  Sorry about that.

But that’s one of the reasons we have this blog– to continue these conversations throughout the year and get into those details.

I had the privilege of working on the center screen content for the opener to this year’s Drive.  It was easily the most gargantuan project I’ve worked on in my time at North Point, and it couldn’t have been pulled off with out a ton of help from Andy Wadell, Matt Gibson, and Brad Bretz, who were a huge help in pre-production and the execution of the side-screen content.  I may ask them to post something about the green screen shoot, since that’s not my area of expertise.  Anyways, here’s a small peek at what it took to execute the orchestral section of the opener.

(Note: For the time being we cannot post video of the actual performance, since we don’t yet have internet distribution rights on the music.  Sorry for the inconvenience, but hopefully that will be resolved.)

Obviously, before any footage was shot, composited, or animated, we planned extensively.  We made storyboards, test sequences, and sometimes just doodled:

While Andy and Matt were shooting our instrumentalists, I started work on creating the stage, which took form as something like a bandstand, since the orchestra needed to fit into a three-level-tall grid.  It was modeled in Cinema4D and exported as a single still image.

The stage was brought into After Effects, and it was time to begin compositing.  Now, I’m not sure how obvious this was live, but the eventual 49-piece orchestra was actually only made up of 7 unique individuals.  Andy and Matt shot them from different angles, wearing different clothes, with hair up and down, etc.  Even so, making sure our orchestra didn’t look like some sort of clone army was a bit of a challenge.  Luckily, we were going for a mostly silhouetted look (with highlights being the primary details), so the identical faces weren’t a huge problem.  I should also note that the string and percussion players were legitimately playing the music you heard.  That’s not something you can fake and get away with.

Easily the most tedious part of the whole process–in fact, the entire opener– was getting all of the instrumentalists timed to the final music track exactly.  I’m not sure how many of you have ever worked with audio in After Effects, but let me assure you, it’s not the place for precision audio editing.  Fortunately, Andy worked up a sync system later on in the process that really helped streamline the rest of our work.

To create the illusion of depth, each successive row was increased in brightness and blur, as though they were disappearing in a haze of bright light.  Each player’s color correction had to be animated individually as the center lights expanded and intensified.

The lights themselves were a product of Video Copilot’s Optical Flares plugin (link).  If you’re not familiar with Optical Flares or Video Copilot, I encourage you to check it out.  They make some of our favorite plug-ins and scripts, ranging from free to not-that-expensive.  My Optical Flares layers were controlled by regular-old After Effects light layers, which allowed me to easily animate the intensity of each individual light.

On top of it all, I used a plug-in called Magic Bullet Looks to adjust the overall color and give it that bronze “epic” feel.  The most important addition was a diffusion layer, which gave all of the brightest points a realistic glow.

For the climax, it was as simple as cranking up the lights even further and animating a curves adjustment layer (the red and green channels specifically) to transition the bronze into a bright gold.  Because we all know that gold beats bronze.

When it was all said and done, this section of the opener (roughly 1 minute and 45 seconds) took 22 hours to render.  When you have 49 keyed 1080p video files playing simultaneously (not to mention layers and layers of color correction and plug-ins), it’s going to take some time to digest.  So make sure you anticipate your render times when working on large projects.

Check back in soon and we’ll walk through Part 2…

I would be remiss not to mention the good folks at Real Fake Buildings.  They did an amazing job throughout this process.  A huge thanks as well to the North American Mission Board for allowing us the use of their studio space.

Of course, there are MANY more great people involved in the pre-production and post-production of this massively detailed project, but for now, here is just one aspect of our process: the evolution of a video set.

We would love to know, what is your strategy?

Click here to view the embedded video.
Click here to view the embedded video.

****************EDIT 8/25/09: Here is Part 3 (FINALLY) for those of you who asked–I totally blanked and forgot to post it as a follow up to this post last month. Since we are SO late in the game posting for this series, I am editing this old post directly with the new video addition.  Sorry for leaving you guys in “the waiting room” for this video!  Hope you enjoy this little hidden blog nugget ****************

Click here to view the embedded video.

Creative Director:  Josh Peters
Producer:  David Blakeslee
Writer:  Adam Dukes
Director:  Adam Dukes & Josh Peters
Editor:  Josh Peters
Sound Design:  Lane Johnson
Casting:  Heather Breslin
Camera (DP):  Josh McKague
Key Grip/Audio:  Brian Little
Video Assistant/ Grip:  Nathan Boyd

We are beginning a new series on June 29th at North Point and it promises to be one that generates a lot of questions. We wanted to get people involved no matter what political view point they had so, we created a website where people can write a letter to the next president no matter WHO it will be. You are not writing to a candidate but to the next president.

Don’t forget to check out the promo. It’s always fun to have Andy involved and we had a great time recreating the White House press room - IN ONE DAY!!!. North American Mission Board is right next door to North Point so we were able to get the flags. We rented the blue drape. Then Matt from the media team sketched out a fun version of the white house but with a little spin. Make sure you see it! Podium is courtesy of Alpharetta Baptist Church.

This series promises to be a good one and we are really excited about it. Stay tuned…

CLICK HERE to see it.

Ok, I know its been a while since I posted a video confessional. These take time and right now, time is a luxury.
This TenBefore had more singles events in it then normal. Thanks for being interested in this as always. I am humbled by your comments.

In this edition we had Do.Justice for singles - Promo for Jeff’s series that concludes this Sunday - then a promo for Fusion (a singles gathering and connection event) and then we focused on Middle school. We used Joe Wiggleston and contracted out the final editing and the final export of the Ten Before.

Again, we are still learning as we go but for us, it’s a great way to welcome, engage and let people know what is coming up.

Let me start off by giving some credits:

Producer: well… that would be me.
Written & Directed (Kelly segments for all three campuses): Sunny Williams
Shooter for Green Screen: Dave Blakeslee
Green Screen Edit: Dave Blakeslee
Keyed: the guys let me do this.
Composited, Motion Graphics and Final Edit: Matt Gibson (our maximizer)

Click here to see NPCC’s TenBefore
Click here to see Buckhead’s TenBefore
Click here to see Browns Bridge TenBefore

Before you see the TenBefore’s, read below for a little bit of insight.

Each week the media team needs to export three different versions of the TenBefore. Much of the content is the same but there are specific elements that are different. three Churches - three Kelly intro’s - three logo’s.

For this particular week, all three churches are letting people know about “NEXT” an environment for those wishing to take the next step in getting connected. Whether it’s volunteering, finding out where to get plugged in, whatever you are interested in, we want them to not take up a seat but to get INVOLVED and find out what is NEXT.

So we needed to promote “I Want to be Great” a new four-part series that Clay Scroggins AND Andy were going to preach together. Clay is young, fun and is the High School pastor. Andy is, well, the senior pastor! So we convinced Andy to help us with the promo and I am so glad he did. He has a great sense of humor and pulled it off great. The concept obviously came from a certain Super Bowl ad but it worked perfect because of the series that was coming up. (This promo is in the Buckhead and Browns Bridge TenBefore and not in North Point’s. North Point had already ran it twice and instead did a Kelly VO with graphics.) Tripp and Tyler did great and continue to be a staple of laughs for our pre-service ideas! Tripp (guy on left), Adam, Matt, Ryan, Dave B. did a great job of getting this baby in the can on a tight turnaround with some TOUGH weather conditions and some serious illnesses. While one crew was shooting the golf scene, Dave was setting up in Andy’s office. We had 45 minutes to get Andy’s stuff.
A lot of details on this shoot. The picture in picture on the computer. The wall that needed to fall (thanks matt borbi). Finding a golf course in the dead of winter. Asking IT to give us a computer and CAMERA we could total. Good times.
I got to put the graphic together at the end and added the “falling” logo for a little fun. Mike (our graphic designer) worked really hard with Brian Manley to come up with this look. HUGE TEAM EFFORT. These are my favorite successes.

We started a new segment called “unplugged” and really it’s a way for our attenders to get to know our worship leaders in a fun and relate-able way. The cool thing about this is that all three campuses got involved. North Point (Dave and Tripp) shot and edited Kristian Stanfill’s video. Kaye at Buckhead shot and edited Chrystina Fincher’s video and Ryan Shove and Shae got to shoot Casey Darnell’s video. We know that there are a TON of ways to do this kind of video. Kaye originally came up with the Cribs type feel so we modeled after it however kept it a little bit “lower toned”. Our goal was to not make it CRIBS “look at me” but more of a get to know me segment as if you were invited over to the house. Browns Bridge went with a completely different route and came up with a powerful piece on Casey. I love Ryan’s set design. Matt from media worked his magic on the branding side of things.

Buckhead added a little segment called the “Just Tell Booth”. In early January we did a series called “Just Ask”. Buckhead decided to make a “confessional booth” for people who were invited to church by a friend, co-worker, family member, etc.. and to talk into a camera and tell their story of how someone “asked” them to church. I love this idea and I love that we were able to put it into the TenBefore that is specific to Buckhead.

Lastly - all three campuses took the opportunity to make people aware of one of our partnerships. This time we highlighted Southside Church in Peachtree City. I believe Joe Wiggleston took a ton of B-Roll for our guys to put together. Kelly did great with walking us through this campus. I can’t say enough about Kelly and the way she makes this look easy. Sunny Williams does an amazing job of writing these scripts and walking and directing Kelly during the shoots. Again, I am spoiled to work with incredible people.

Please let me know if you have any questions at all or just make a general comment. Believe it or not, I hate to write, but love to read.
Brad

So this series just leant itself to doing some crazy stuff with letters, words, etc..
Mike started it off strong with the promo for text and then I did this title package which could change for week 2 (probably just intro text). Matt finished it off with some sound effects and last minute changes. Team is always better then one.
I got more comments on the music I chose than anything else.
FYI - I am not sure I mentioned it but we used ADAM’s sister Anna Dukes for the design. She is in college and we are letting her run the gamet (?) for her portfolio. Resources, bulletin, etc.. She ran with the concept given to her and did great.

***Just a tip for those that design for video - think smaller fonts than you are used to. So often I see videos where the TEXT IS HUGE!!! Lower thirds are huge. Logo’s are HUGE. Find the font that works, and think about 6-10 points smaller than normal.

MARRIEDLIFE - I LOVE this concept. I think this campaign is going to grow for MarriedLife. I really want to now if you all get it.
There is always this tension between promoting an event and showing footage from it (which is like taking a picture of Rome and telling everybody how great it is - it’s just not the same) or creating a buzz about the event or even the ministry. So for MarriedLife, we decided to promote the ministry and then tag it at the end with the EVENT info. The concept of the ministry promo being “Every marriage deserves more.”

This is the promo for “Text” we first promoted this last week. Mike bailed me out on this. I told Mike on a Thursday I needed help with the promo and what I envisioned for it. He killed it and read my mind. ESPECIALLY for getting it done on a Friday in 5 hours.

One of the great things about the TenBefore is that we can use Kelly to highlight any ministry and like Waumba land we are really trying to be intentional about Starting Point twice a month. We really think this is a great place for people to take that next step to a relationship with Christ.

Love to know your thoughts…

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