New Year, New Blog

January 13, 2015 by Jake Taylor in Gear, Color, Post Production, Pre Production, Motion Graphics, Web Design, Video, Shooting, Production, Live Production, Graphic Design, Creative

We got a facelift! Thanks to squarespace. But don't worry all of our old content is still available here!

With this new look, we have some new and updated features. Make sure to check out our updated "Gear" page which you can find via the Navigation bar or within our FAQ's. Another update is to our "Who We Learn From" page, where you can find all of the people and sites we look to for education in the creative world. This is a great resource for beginners as well as seasoned veterans. You can find this in our FAQ's as well! Something we've added is out "Photos" page. This is a constantly updating page full of behind the scenes photos on sets and in the office. Lastly, we are adding a "Resource" section to give out some of our project files and footage for you all to have and play around with. This will be coming in the future so make sure to check back often to see what we've added.

Now, I'll admit, we haven't been as active on here as we should be or as much as we promised we would be to those who came to GROW last year. So this is the first step for us to become better bloggers. Now, we aren't professional bloggers by any means and we still have a lot to learn. So, don't be surprised be spelling and grammatical errors or too much sarcasm or run on sentences. Those things don't matter, what matters is us helping you succeed in your creative process while advancing the gospel and growing the Kingdom.

So, if you have a question about anything we do, or want to see a post about anything we do, then please comment on this blog to let us know! And I mean anything. Anything from how we shoot a story to how we get our haircut to what blending modes we used on a layer in Photoshop to what our favorite recipes are. Please let us know anything you want to know, see or have explained!

We are going to attempt to get better info to you and more of it. We have learned a lot in 2014 and can't wait to share it with all of you in the months to come!

Shooting BRoll

July 08, 2014 by Greg McKinney in Creative

This was an original post from a couple years ago. This is something we teach our Highlands College students still to this day. I decided to repost and add some more to it. Feel free to leave a comment and tell us some of your tips! If you don’t know, b-roll is video footage of something that is shown while the talent is speaking.

We Want to Hear From You!

May 14, 2014 by Greg McKinney in Creative

GROW is a resource partnership, training process and support system with Church of the Highlands. We hold an intensive each year where we invite churches to come and learn principles that have helped us reach people.

Feel is Important

January 20, 2014 by John David Wright in Creative

There are a couple of really key elements when it comes to editing video. One of those is feel. As a video editor, my job is to take whatever broll, interviews, pictures etc., and turn it into the best thing someone has ever seen ;) Ok... not really, but my job is to make the best product I can with what I have.

Stabilizing Shaky Footage

November 22, 2013 by Jake Taylor in Creative

So you shot something awesome and dropped it in your timeline only to find out it is a tad bit shaky, ok maybe a lot bit shaky. Don't panic! We all do it from time to time and if you've got After Effects CC you're covered. In this post I'm going to quickly show you how to stabilize those shots that have a case of the shakes.

Rules of Interviewing People

May 30, 2013 by Greg McKinney in Creative

Interviewing people is an art form, and it's a continual learning process. Everyone is different, and when you interview one person, they may react to a set of questions differently than another person would. All this to say that the "rules of interviewing people" is a constantly changing list and i'm sure amendments could be added every time you interview someone new. That being said, here are a few rules that we follow that has helped us out throughout the process of capturing and telling someone's story.

Quick Tip: Digital Recorders

February 28, 2013 by John David Wright in Creative, Video

As we've written about many times here, audio recording is just as important, if not MORE important than the video you're capturing for your productions. A bad sounding interview is very disconnecting to the viewer, while audio that's recorded well will make your video productions much more professional.

Don't be afraid of the sequel

February 20, 2013 by Greg McKinney in Creative, Video

Some of our favorite video projects are the ones we get to create for our big events. Often we'll create a handful of videos that will play during each session of a conference. It can be a real challenge to continue to come up with fresh ideas for events that repeat each year -- so occasionally, we'll take the Hollywood approach and create the sequel!

Rules of Storytelling.. from the best.

October 03, 2012 by Greg McKinney in Creative, Video

Storytelling is the heart of what we do on the video team. Storytelling is used in testimonies, highlight videos and creative promos. Here are a few tips on storytelling from Pixar's own, Emma Coats.

Green Screen Basics

September 12, 2012 by Greg McKinney in Creative, Video

Every once in a while, we get to pull out the green screen and put it to use. It's an effective way to put your talent in a place you don't have access to, or to give you a generic look for a church news shoot.

Quick Tip: Exporting Video

August 09, 2012 by John David Wright in Creative, Video

There are a few things that you can do to ensure that what you've been editing plays back looking great in a manageable file size for your playback computer. We're going to show you how we do it in Final Cut Pro, but the settings and principals should be similar in most editing programs.

Music For Video

August 01, 2012 by Greg McKinney in Creative, Video

Music is a critically important part in producing videos. It completely sets the tone and mood for the video. Music brings energy and makes you feel something. Sound must be taken seriously when being selected in videos.

Quick Tip: Banner Design

July 30, 2012 by Todd Helzer in Creative, Graphic Design

Highlands uses banners for event and program promotion. Designing for banners take a slightly different approach due to their size. Here are a couple of parameters that you will want to use when designing banners

2 Camera Interview Setup

July 23, 2012 by Greg McKinney in Creative, Video

For interview and testimony videos, we like to use a two camera setup with a traditional 3-point lighting rig. In this post I will go over how and where we place our cameras, lights and microphone. Wherever we shoot, we use this system, and it works for just about every condition.

Is that slow motion?

July 19, 2012 by Greg McKinney in Creative, Video

Stuff looks awesome in slow motion right? Most people have seen shows like Time Warp that really slow things down, almost to a stop, that make something ordinary, look amazing! But did you know that many times, you are watching slow motion and you don't even know it?

Traveling Light

July 16, 2012 by Matt Minor in Creative, Video

At Highlands, we try to have at least two to three people, if not more, on a shoot. We've learned that more eyes and ears you have on set the less likely you are to make a mistake, however there are still situations that arise when everyone on the team finds themselves shooting solo.

How to Coordinate Video Shoot Participants

July 09, 2012 by Greg McKinney in Creative, Video

There is a saying that goes something like this: “People are sheep.” In other words, people tend to go in the direction a good leader, or Shepherd, takes them and I think this same principle applies to coordinating talent for a video shoot. When each person on camera understands clearly what is expected of him or her and their time, then they are much more willing to agree to put themselves in what is, for many, an uncomfortable position: appearing on camera. Over the past few years I have picked up on a few tips that have worked for us. I hope these prove to be beneficial for your shoots as well!

Video Tutorial: Motion Tracking

July 01, 2012 by Greg McKinney in Creative, Video

For our most recent series opener, "Remind Me", we had the idea to film people in their everyday lives and have little spiritual reminders show up in their environment to remind them of a Biblical truth. To pull off this idea, we decided to use motion tracking to make it look like the reminders were really there with them. We put together a short tutorial that will give you an idea of how we created this series opener.

Don't Lose Sight of the Message

June 25, 2012 by Greg McKinney in Creative, Video

Something that we are very careful about here is making sure that we don't put the "creative" that's in us as a team over the message of the content we're delivering. It's easy to forget about the end goal of what you're producing when your primary focus is on making something "cool".

Sound and Video

June 18, 2012 by Matt Minor in Creative, Video

Sometime ago, I heard that Walt Disney had a revelation. The philosophy for their parks, rides, and video environments would be...