Recently, my Lead Pastor and I tried something new: an intentional, quick turnaround video project.
We decided we would create an illustration video for his message and it would go down like this.
- 1 Hour: Concept Development
- 3 Hours: Complete Execution (from shooting to editing)
We met on Tuesday to discuss the content, I planned to execute on Saturday and the video would drop in service on Sunday of the same week.
Quick, right?
We got this idea for Craig Groeschel and the guys at LifeChurch.tv when we heard him speak at Catalyst: One Day. Although I don’t know if they work with such a limited time-frame, even though they do turnaround videos during the week for the upcoming weekend.
We wanted to test out the “deadlines foster creativity” mantra that is currently being passed aroound like hotcakes.
I’ll be honest, this was a scary experiment for me. I like to have weeks to work and think (and procrastinate).
But then I remembered Parkinson’s Law which states that:
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
Plus, we are finding that people in our church respond to videos that feel “under-produced” and “grassroots” although I like videos that are slick and pro. But, if the message is the key and we want it to move our people to action, than we have to communicate on their terms.
How We Did:
So, how did the experiment go?
Great! Although I did go two hours over in execution because we tried to incorporate an editing trick that was too complicated to pull of in our conditions and the set we were using.
But it felt good to be on the edge for the duration of the project plus we had a deliverable right after the concept was created which was exciting. When those two (concept and deliverable) are separated by time, it can be easy to lose momentum.
What do you think about trying something like this?
If you are interested in our video, here are the details. Our Lead Pastor was in the second week of a series entitled Chick Magnet and we wanted to focus our video on illustrating the idea that openness and honesty are needs for women, clearly an abstract idea for men to understand. So, like good Christians, we decided to go for a spoof. We both like the new series of Geico commercials so we created a GuyCo commercial about Humpty Dumpty which can be watched here:
kylereed says
Cool idea, I like it. Great challenge
Blane Young says
Thanks Kyle, it was fun!