4 days of water leaks

It’s been brutal these last few days.
Thursday we discovered a leak in our roof as we were putting Christmas decorations away.
Friday we discovered a leak behind our refrigerator that we thought was because of the leak in the roof but after playing CSI for a while, figured out the two were unrelated. The refrigerator line had leaked.
Saturday got roofing guys out to get quote to fix roof. Decided on a price. they will come Monday.
Sunday night, heard a dripping noise right around the area where my office was in my basement. Turns out the dripping was from a leak in the MAIN WATER line just as it entered through the basement concrete. I temporarily patched it.
Monday called plumber for main line water leak and after investigating the decision was made to dig up outside the basement (6 feet down) and replace and seal copper tube that goes through concrete wall, as well as run a new water line from the street to my house (long story but Sharp Builders who built our neighborhood had issues and this decision was preventative).
Also Monday roofers came and fixed everything. $$$
Monday – Plumbing guys fixed everything $$$ and actually upped my water pressure (so there is a positive).
Worse part about the whole deal – I dented my BRAND NEW FRIDGE in my BRAND NEW KITCHEN in trying to CSI my way through the refrigerator leak. Yeah my yard is a disaster which means more $$$ to fix. But through all of this, did my freakin’ fridge have to get a small dent. That little sucker (which was my fault) sucked the life out of Jiyoung and I.
Then the topper. The dog threw up four times because he ate the mud that the plumbers dug up. Twice outside. Twice in the garage. Seriously. Shoot me.
How are my kids you ask? Through all of this, they didn’t see daddy at his best.
It’s been brutal.

Technorati Tags: Plumbing problems, leaks

Christmas Surprise

I surprised Jiyoung this year for Christmas and got tickets to the Keith Urban and Carrie Underwood concert coming in April. She is a HUGE country fan and I am just a huge MUSIC fan. For being married ten years I think I can count on one hand how many concerts we have gone to together. Not enough.
Looking forwards to going with Jason and Allison in April. Can’t come to soon.
When was your last concert?

Technorati Tags: Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, country music

Interesting prediction for Mac World.

This perked my ears big time!!!
This is from Mike Industries.
I hope it’s true!!!
“.Mac Finally Gets Great.”
“I thought the release of the iPhone and Leopard would coincide with a massive revamp of Apple’s .Mac service, but it never did. I was three years early in calling the iPhone, but I don’t think I’m that early on this one. Come January, .Mac will become the missing link that let’s you sync your entire life, over-the-air. If you’re shocked that the iPhone can’t do something as simple sync with your iCal/Contacts/.Mac over-the-air right now but can do so in just a few seconds using a standard USB cable, you’re not alone. If you think Steve Jobs hates having his phone out of sync when he’s on the road, you’re also not alone. These features are coming, and while you can argue they should have been there from the start, you can also argue that they belong as part of a subscription package like .Mac. In order for Apple to increase their .Mac subscriptions 5-10x, they need to be part of a well orchestrated “Life Sync” campaign, and sold separately from the iPhone itself.I believe Apple’s plan involves two concurrent strategies for getting into the life-syncing bloodstream: a) play nice with Exchange (current support via IMAP barely qualifies), and b) play nice with open technologies like IMAP and iCalendar/WebCal (already in-progress). Most big companies these days run their corporate mail on Exchange. Know what Apple runs internally, at least as of very recently? Netscape’s old mail server. I’m serious. Running that mail server for so long taught them how inferior it is to Exchange, but also taught them that by using the right combination of open technologies like IMAP, iCalendar, and WebDAV and then creating the right glue to tie it all together for the end user, they could produce an enterprise-quality experience rivaling Exchange and even beating it in many areas. Via this new and revamped .Mac service, you’ll be able to play nicely with most of the major platforms out there: Exchange, IMAP (and by extension Gmail and Yahoo Mail), WebCal, POP, and who knows what else. In 2008, .Mac will finally become the big revenue driver Apple expected it to be years ago.”

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, mac rumors, syncing

I love being Home

Time off = Happy kids
I love Christmas Break.

Technorati Tags: Christmas with family

Camp Out – Digital Kitchen

For the new year I want to encourage everyone to go CAMP OUT at some of these incredible websites of those who do motion graphics. You will get inspired, frustrated, and encouraged all at the same time.
First up – Digital Kitchen. Go visit their website – check out their ‘07 REEL. Amazing stuff.

Technorati Tags: demo reel, Digital Kitchen, Motion Graphics

Product placement on Motionhouse

- PRODUCTS I USE -
Can you really have too many of these hangin’ around the house?
For the new year I thought I would put some product placement on my blog. These are products I whole heartedly use and believe in and think you should too.

Technorati Tags: Pringles

HD DVD or Blu Ray

Costco had a CRAZY deal right after Thanksgiving. Online they were offering an HD DVD player from Toshiba with 2 HD DVD’s included (see picture) and then a mail-in rebate for 5 more HD DVD’s (from a selection of 14, some good some not so good). All of this for the low price of $150 bucks. So I dove into the HD DVD world. I have no idea which is gonna win but as they battle it out, online distribution is reaping the benefits. Do you own either BluRay or HD DVD?

Technorati Tags: Blu-Ray, Coscto, HD DVD, Toshiba

Merry Christmas!!!

Jiyoung, Jake, Jillian, Calvin (he’s fake sleeping) and myself would like to wish everybody a very Merry Christmas!!

and then there were the pictures that didn’t make it.

Christmas Title Package

We had a great Sunday before Christmas.
Thought I would throw up the title package I did before Andy went up.
The kerning and spacing is off a touch but I do like the simplicity of it.

Video confessional in a nutshell:
Created it in After Effects -
Took the tree that MIke cut out from iStock. Threw it into the same base design from the whole look of “Be Rich”. Pulled the frame out a little and added a big drop shadow for depth. Put everything in 3-d and added light. Did slow camera pull out. Snow was made in Particular and if you look very carefully, you will see the lights glimmering on the tree. The white lights on the tree was made with Particular preset but made sure nothing moved, then added Starglow. To create the glimmer, Tripp and I brainstormed and used Fractal Noise with high contrast and then used it as a track matte. Worked like a charm. Added text.

Technorati Tags: Andy Stanley, Be Rich, Christmas Video

“Be Rich” Campaign

Based off of an earlier series we did this fall called “How to be Rich”, North Point, Browns Bridge, and Buckhead launched a huge initiative this Christmas season called “Be Rich”. We wanted to push our attenders, members, basically anybody that was listening to GIVE. Not to any of the three campuses but to give locally to specific charities and also to some needs around the world. This video that will show Dec. 23rd tells the story and gives the results. The numbers are not pledges. They are real dollars that people gave.


Video Confessional:
Music, music, music. If you are thinking about doing a mission’s piece go get copyrights for Tim Hughes’ song “God of Justice”. It is absolutely perfect and speaks truth to what we want people to hear and do. Tyler from Browns Bridge lead the way with this song and EMI is so easy to get rights from to play it synced with video. (I also recommend Fee’s “Burn for You” ) Audio is 3/4’s of the viewers experience and this song took this video to a whole new level. We were originally going to open with a live children’s choir singing “Some children see Him” and this video playing behind it but it didn’t feel right. We separated the two and used “God of Justice” from our original promo and it worked so much better.

The original look for the Be Rich campaign started with Groups and they were using a guy by the name of Jeff Gribble from Design Industry. We went through a couple of renditions and finally landed on something that everybody was happy with for print. Mike did a great job implementing the design into different quips and even continuing the brand into Christmas where we added the tree.

(back to the video) – Matt (from Media) had a vision for this baby from the beginning and ran with it. He pretty much owned this edit from the start using After Effects and Final Cut. (Heck two years ago I taught Matt After Effects and now he is doing circles around me.) I LOVE the addition of the heart exploding that we grabbed from the original promo. Matt put it in just the right spot. Dave (from Media) scheduled all the shoots (around 15 or so) throughout the 4 weeks so we had footage GALORE to work with. Dave, Matt, Tripp, and our old intern Mark shot at different times throughout the 4 weeks. We also included what Ryan and Josh shot at Browns Bridge and Buckhead. Global X and Groups provided additional content and stats to complete the video.

Technorati Tags: Atlanta Union Mission, Be Rich, Good News Shelter, Motion Graphics, NFCC, North Point Community Church

“Jawbone” Bluetooth Earpiece

Ok, so my dad got me an early Christmas present. A bluetooth, handsfree earpiece that is suppose to be SPECTACULAR.
I am going to put it through the ringer and see if it really is Steve Jobs choice for Bluetooth ear pieces. I went to “Jawbones” website and saw this video that is well, quite impressive.

Do you own one?
I promise I will only wear it in the car and not walking around.

Technorati Tags: Bluetooth, iPhone, Jawbone, Jawbone Demo, videos

“It’s Personal” Part 4. Scott Alka

This is the last story that we played last week at North Point. It will show at Browns Bridge this week.
This story is VERY personal for me and Tyler because Scott is in our small group. I can’t tell you what an amazing person Scott is. He is one of the most humble men I know and for being so young in his faith he teaches me so much. This story will touch your heart.

As far as details for this video – Mike again took the pictures and did an amazing job with it. Brad Sitton (Blister Studios) who is also in our small group did the motion graphics. Everything else is the same in regards to finalizing and syncing with music as the other three versions. Media guys had their fingerprints over all of the videos and as a team really shined. Overall this has been one of the most rewarding projects to work on and I couldn’t be more humbled by the efforts put into this by Scott, Meghan and Chris, as well as the team of people that owned their parts. We are doing a one week turn on the DVD’s for this series so we can have them available on Sunday. SO many people want to give to family and friends during the Christmas season. Thank you to all who were involved. Click here for Scott’s story. If you want to listen to Andy’s messages online click here.

Technorati Tags: Andy Stanley, it’s personal, Media Team

10,000 Hits

Thank you to all who take the time to check out what’s happening on my blog. I started doing this in August (thanks Carlos and Tyler) and still have a lot to learn especially about getting outside of wordpress’s template solutions. As you have already probably noticed, I find all sorts of blog gadgets and just throw them into the mix for the fun of it. I think I am ready to get a little deeper but I would need somebody talking me through the initial set-up. Any takers?
I never would have thought I would be a blogger.

January and the TenBefore

We shot on Tuesday (Dec. 17th Kelly’s segments for the first two weeks of January for TenBefore. We always take off December and the summer time to catch up on things and allow our team AND the audience a little break. I took a few shots of Kelly (she gave me a little wave) as well as Dave (media team) and Sunny (she produces Kelly’s segments and just overall ROCKS!). Sunny has one of the toughest jobs keeping all of Kelly’s content in sync for which campus she is talking too. This year Kelly will be talking a lot more to people who are attending the first time and pointing them to the different environments on campus that they might not know is available. We are also trying to figure out a winter theme.

We shoot in the KidStuf Theater and Dave is the master now of getting a GREAT setup for a great looking TenBefore. If his part doesn’t happen well, then it effects EVERYTHING down the line. If you want a great key, start with a good set and great lighting. He also captures the footage and edits the segments together then passes it to me and I key all the green out and give it to Matt who does his magic and throws it to the Final Cut timeline for the final version. This last fall we decided to go with more templated pieces for easier compositing (Kelly’s Name – Maps – Intro – etc..) It’s not as organic from week to week but it does speed things up a bunch. If you want to see one of the earlier ones from November click here.

Technorati Tags: green screen, Motion Graphics, North Point, Ten Before, Ten Before, videos

Total Brilliance

Saturday we went to the mall to get the kid’s pictures with Santa Clause. Walked by the apple store and saw this beauty.
You gotta love Apple. (Santa Picture’s went great – thanks for asking).

My son with the HORN

Jake has always been very particular about certain things. One of which is his hair. He like to comb it himself and then he styles it in only the way a 6 year old can. With a horn. I love him..

“It’s Personal” Part 3 (Meghan Coffee)

Oh my word this series has been more powerful than we could have ever imagined.
Andy has done an amazing job walking those who are “thinking” about taking that next step towards a relationship with Christ and pushing them to KNOW God before they UNDERSTAND God.

This particular title package is the story of Meghan Coffee. I don’t want to ruin anything but this girl has got a story. I loved meeting her and was so impressed by her attitude and flexibility with what we were asking her to do.

Here is a little bit of the VIDEO Confessional:

Jon Acuff again took and edited all three stories and continued the theme for “It’s Personal”. Meghan turned in her story and it was amazing. Her writing style was so unique and I thought Jon did a great job of keeping her authenticity.

We brought Meghan in to do her voice over the same day we did the photo shoot at the graveyard. Before she left we had her write her WHOLE story down on white paper with the paper turned landscape to better represent the 16×9 screen it was going to play on. Everything you see on this video is her handwriting and her voice.

Meghan’s story got pushed up a week because of the timing of both – when we wanted to play a Sarah Groves song and her availability to play it. That put us in a little bit of a bind. Mike (from Media) took this one and OWNED it. Mike shot all the pictures at the graveyard and Dave B. (from Media) shot live footage for backup. Mike then continued to do all the motion graphics.

Mike surprised all of us when he took all the photo’s – put them in iPhoto and printed out a contact sheet. He then cut all the pictures up and made a storyboard before he ever got into After Effects. We were able to go over all the pictures together, move things around, dialogue and then make final decisions. (Storyboards are great on white paper after you draw them, but to put them on a nice black canvas, cut the images/sketches out and move things around, it allows for a whole lot of decision making to happen before you even start shooting or editing. I am sure most everybody does this, but I think churches (not all) tend to skip over a lot of this process for multiple reasons and it usually has to do with time. Funny thing is, in our experience, time is saved when this process is applied.)

One of the best decisions we made was to actually add color to a couple of the pictures. It was just the right touch that separated this piece from the first, while still keeping the overall look. You’ll see why we did it.
I thought originally we were going to use a different song for this piece than Chris’s but the music is so good we decided to keep it for all three stories (Lead me to the Cross – Hillsong). Again, we played this song live one Sunday morning and Dustin (from media)remixed it and took the lead vocals out.

I am sure I forgot something so please feel free to ask any questions. Media guys, if I forgot something, feel free to comment.

Here is the final that we showed. CLICK HERE

Technorati Tags: it’s personal, meghan coffee

And the answer is….

I never smoked.
Everything else is true.
See this post for details if you have no Idea what I am talking about.

Thanks for playing.

Which of these is NOT true. (Getting to know us a little)

My wife worked for Passion when it was just Louie, Shelly and – well – my wife.
I quit smoking when I was 25
I played in Germany for the Frankfurt Galaxy. (NFL Europe)
My wife is beautiful. (don’t even think about saying this isn’t true)
My kids are freaking adorable.
I played drums on Passion ‘98
My dog Calvin sheds like he needs to make a blanket or something.
I have authored all of Louie Giglio’s sermon series DVD’s.
My brother’s name is Brian my name is Brad and if you say Brian and Brad Bretz are brothers really fast ten times you might hurt yourself.
I played with the Dallas Cowboys
I got cut by the Dallas Cowboys
I played with the Washington Redskins
I got cut by the Washington Redskins
I do not have Leopard yet.
We just finished remodeling our kitchen and life is goooooooooood.
Please post your answer.

Bay Community Church

I read this story on Trey’s blog and what their church is doing for their community. It seriously touched my heart.
I can’t get enough of these.

“Louder than Creation”

Buy this CD!!!
Todd Fields, Steve Fee, Eddie Kirkland and Kristian Stanfill are all on it and the songs are 90% originals.
Great, great stuff.

It’s called Louder than Creation and you can pick it up here.

When was the last time you sat in the 5th row of your church service?

Normally I sit middle back in either the East or the West auditorium at North Point. This last Sunday I sat in the front section, 5th row from the front. What a completely different experience.

Loved it.

When was the last time you experienced church that close? Better yet, when was the last time you experienced church through the eyes of a friend that had never been? 

North Point was INCREDIBLE this morning!!

Ok so Part 3 of “It’s Personal” was amazing. The whole service, top to bottom was great. We did little drummer boy opening (thanks Lifechurch and Trent Austin) after a couple of preservice Christmas tunes. Instead of having two drummers on stage we had a drummer in the East Auditorium and the drummer on the west. It was crazy and fun!
The title package with Meghan was AMAZING!! I will try to post that tomorrow. Then to everyone’s surprise, meghan came out and sang at the end and oh my lord that girl can sing. Sitting behind the keyboard she killed it.

Today is inmy top two favorite services. #1 Canvas part 4. #2 TODAY.
Andy invited people to take a step out in faith to follow Christ.
Next week’s is Scott’s story. Incredible.

Find’em, Buy ‘em, and eat ‘em

Jiyoung bought this little bag of yum.
Oh my lord these chips are good.
They truly are – a vacation in a bag.

“It’s Personal” Part 2 Title Package

Here is the 1st story of three that showed last week at North Point and will show this week at Browns Bridge and Buckhead. There were more details in this than you might think and the whole team did incredible. Chris was great and it was a powerful story. Andy killed it. If you want to see the message then go to northpoint.org.

I also wanted to pass on what Chris shared with me on this past Monday after his story played at North Point…

Chris wrote:
“On Monday morning I arrived at work and this guy I didn’t know walks up to my cube and says, “My wife and I went to North Point on Sunday. She was raised Southern Baptist, I was not. She is a Christian, I am not. Your story is our story, but we are still in the middle of it.”

I cannot begin to describe the conversation we had over lunch. Our Father was all over it. We were talking about believing in Jesus and the guy kept saying, “I want to ‘get there’, but I just don’t know how.” I told him I don’t know how /he/ is going to get there, either! Not having all the answers is kinda freeing, actually. We discussed grievances we both have with how this whole deal works. The conversation kept coming back around to taking a step in God’s direction even with a clenched fist full of doubt.”

Please pray for Chris and the opportunities that lie in front of him, especially his co-workers.

“It’s Personal” Part 3 this Sunday

I hope to post Part 2 of “It’s Personal” soon. The title package is an incredible story of Chris Ames and his journey towards believing that God exists.

I do, however, want to say COME THIS SUNDAY to North Point and hear Meghan’s story. It’s a powerful phrase… “My story of life, starts with death.” Meghan narrates the video of images about her journey through her mother’s death at 13. The pictures are incredible and at the end… Meghan herself will sing an incredible song by Sarah Groves. This series has been amazing and it’s still got two parts left.

Technorati Tags: it’s personal, North Point, videos

“It’s Personal” Part 1 Title Package (Video Confessional)

OK, so here is the scoop on how “It’s Personal” came about…
These videos are unique in a couple of ways. First, everything is photographs. In the early creative meetings we wanted to tell three stories of different individual’s lives and the barrier’s that kept them from a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Let me tell ya, these stories are powerful. We fell in love with a couple of black and white photo’s from JPEG magazine and as we worked through some design comps, decided to add blue splash to it. The bulletin looks great (See previous post) and overall the series is coming together well. One additional unique flavor about this series is that we are incorporating ALL SCREENS for the title package. Meaning, the videos will be showing on the 16×9 image mag as well as the High Def screen in the middle. The trick here (and we are still learning) is to not have the person in the audience try to figure out which one to look at but to instead, have a visual experience.
Here are the steps that we took to create the series so far…

- Creative meetings about look and feel and settled on B&W look with heavy text texture.

- Mike (graphic design) worked with Regime Design and we settled on heavy black look for bulletin with splash of blue throughout. Mike also took the photo’s for Scott’s story and Meghan’s story. He’s a stud. Dave B. shot video for backup (also a stud) and am really thinking about the possibility of using his shots for the DVD menu to change things up a bit.

- Decided on the three stories to tell. People agreed. Asked them to write their stories

- Asked Jon Acuff to edit stories and asked him to create a theme of the three stories that worked with our title. He edited them great and came up with these three statements -
“My story about my Heart starts with my Head” – Chris’s story
“My story about life starts with Death” – Meghan’s story.
“My story about being a son starts with being a dad” Scott’s Story

- we needed to decide on locations for these three shoots and use the locations as a center theme throughout based on their stories.

- Set-up photo shoots for all three people. Scott was first, then Chris, then Meghan. (This was over three weeks time). Just finished Meghan’s on friday.

- Set-up voice overs for these very REAL people to read their edited stories.

- For the initial soundtrack I choose a “Human Emotion” piece from Bluefuse music. For the stories we recorded the music from one of our worship services, remixed it and took out the vocals. (“Lead me to the Cross” was the song).
- I designed the series Promo and the title package for both screens in After Effects and it really started the series off great.

I will continue with more information on each part later… but this leads us to Part 1.

Love to hear your thoughts or any questions.

It’s Personal (new Series)

Last week we started a new series called “It’s Personal” and this week the title package is a four minute, unique story told from the perspective of Chris Ames (see below), a guy who became an atheist after believing God didn’t exist. This whole series is about the barriers people believe are in their way and choose to not take that next step. Andy is going to invite people to take that step of faith and invite Christ into their lives. Through the 4 part series we will be telling 3 stories of individuals who wrestled with God.
Hope to see ya there.
Brad

Chris Ames. Story #1.

Kitchen Update

I can not tell you the whirl wind ride Jiyoung and I have been on with the last two weeks of the kitchen remodel. It has tested our marriage, our patience, probably our jobs, our communication skills, and our view of other people.
I have driven around the north half of Atlanta in search for a microwave that does not have a dent in it (I went through 3), our cabinet installer/electrician/plumber/ friendly german does not have a car anymore, and community groups are the real thing, especially when I am about to lose it with the contractor and they come over and save the day and install the kitchen sink. It’s been a ride. I think I might post the Top 1,000 things you need to know before you remodel your kitchen. Seriously, anybody interested? I am an expert now.