Part of the Glue

Accomplish something BIG

Brandon Riley — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:23:14 +0000

I lead a drama/media team of teenagers at my church. Every once in a while I feel a need to accomplish something BIG together. We find projects that our bigger than ourselves and take up an entire weekend or numerous saturdays…but everyone rallies together and we accomplish it. I like the story in the gospels when Jesus is speaking to the five thousand and his disciples come to him saying the people are hungry. Jesus says "You feed them" Jesus is calling the disciples with their limited resources "five loaves and two fish" to perform a miracle. He is calling them to depend on His resources to do something unthinkable. This year I decided to challenge our student drama/media team to participate in one of the largest christian film competitions in the US….the 168 Film Project. We will have 168 hours to write, shoot and edit a 11 minute short film based on a bible verse. Check out the film below we did two years ago.

Drag and drop websites for your ministry

Brandon Riley — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 03:32:42 +0000

Pagelines is by far my favorite wordpress theme. I have used this drag and drop framework to build more than 7 websites in the last year. Recently pagelines has updated their system to 2.0, which means better customization and a new store with specialized plugins coming soon.

Creating simple promo videos for your events

Brandon Riley — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 19:36:00 +0000

Recently we started creating a series of videos that would help promote a program in our youth ministry called FUZE. We shot the below video on a green screen and did one simple take. Students loved the video and it didn’t take a long time to produce because it depended mostly on the characters improv abilities. A lot of times videos we create are scripted and have lots of angles in various locations …occasionally its good to mix it up and do something very very simple.

Using fairy tails to communicate truth

Brandon Riley — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 23:13:15 +0000

We recently created a video called "the tale of Johnny Rattleweed". The premise behind the film was to create a fairy tale that would explain the concept of skeletons in your closet in a fun and creative way. We bought a bunch of skeletons from a local haloween store and shot with the new sony fs100.

Promoting small groups with media:

Brandon Riley — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 22:03:42 +0000

We recently launched our small group ministry in our student ministry. We call them D_Group or Discipleship Groups and run from August to May. We decided to create a series of promotional videos to encourage students to give them a try.

New vimeo gallery plugin for wordpress

Brandon Riley — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:08:10 +0000

I was doing some research today and was trying to find a youtube/vimeo gallery plugin for wordpress I ran into this really cool looking one that only cost $15. You can check it out HERE. I love how this plugin is iphone/ipad friendly. This plugin has been out since February, however its still new in my book.

Using MTV as inspiration

Brandon Riley — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 23:38:51 +0000

I know often times when you hear MTV….you think bad…..you think negative and anything offensive. Truth is you would probably think right, but one thing that MTV does understand very very well is youth culture. While doing some research for some upcoming programs I watched some clips from the UK series SKINS, which is now a MTV USA series. One of the things I noticed when watching this was that the students often talked on their cell phones more than they talked in real life. Now I know this to be true and don’t need a tv show to tell me this, however the idea of showing students talking on their cell phones on video was a new concept that I stole from watching this series. This gave us the idea for the following promo for a video we showed to promote a new event we call FUZE. Check it out.

Group Texting service for your ministry

Brandon Riley — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 19:17:44 +0000

Our student ministry recently switched from tatango.com to txtsignal.com because of increasing prices and difficulties with their interface. We love txtsignal.com and have only been using it for a little more than a week.

Here are the things we love about txtsignal.com

1. ability to create multiple groups
2. ability to create multiple teams within each group
3. unlimited admin users
4. web links and email addresses for each group or team
*this means group leaders don't even have to be admins to send txt messages they can do it by themselves
5. its cheap and cost effective compared to most other texting programs out there
6. clean and easy to use interface.
7. discount for non-profits
*just email them and ask

Creating a movie trailer for your summer events

Brandon Riley — Mon, 23 May 2011 15:32:30 +0000

This year we decided to create a movie trailer for our two summer events. We hired a voice from voices.com and downloaded some after effects templates from revostock.com to aid in the creation process. We had great response from the video that encouraged students to sign up sooner than later.

Figure out your creative process

Brandon Riley — Fri, 06 May 2011 17:36:42 +0000

I get frustrated from time to time during the creative process. Most of the frustration comes from not having a finely tuned process. The difficult thing is that sometimes the creative process is messy and sometimes messy does not lend well to a process or system. Systems are great for assembly lines and standardized products, however when you use an assembly line to create a video or piece of artwork…you may be in for something you didn't hope for. I'm not saying we should have no systems in the creative process….however the systems have to be elastic and allow room for the messy parts of creativity to take place.

Below is a system I have created when creating creative videos. I don't always use this system, however when I do I find that things work out better in the end.

1. have a mtg with your leadership team to discuss the next series or sermons and overall direction.
2. meet with yourself to brainstorm some ideas to bring to the table
3. meet with a creative team to flesh out some of your ideas and to come up with more ideas
4. meet with yourself again to fine-tune these ideas
5. present these ideas to your leadership team and ask for feedback before moving forward
6. meet with yourself again and make changes based on feedback
7. create the project
8. show the project (if time allows) to the leadership team and see if changes need to be made