patchdrury/dot/net

Joplin

Last week I went to Joplin with a group from Crossroads to volunteer with recovery efforts and to capture some video. It was heartbreaking, exhausting, and very rewarding. We met some incredible people and hopefully helped a small handful of people regain a tiny bit of control of their surroundings.

Here’s the video that we’ll be playing this weekend at church to encourage people to take part in future trips throughout the summer.

I usually wait until after the weekend to post pieces here on my blog - but this one doesn’t reveal anything content-wise about this weekend’s service, so I feel safe going ahead and posting it.

Plus, it’s not like that many people go to my blog anyway, right? Jerks.

The Cave (by Patrick Drury)

Last weekend the band at Crossroads covered Mumford and Sons’ The Cave. In the fourteen years I’ve been around this place, it was one of my favorite performances ever.

I managed to get some footage of the band running through the song three or four times during rehearsal, plus the three services where they performed. I edited all of those together to create this video. Obviously mouth movements and strums aren’t going to line up perfectly over multiple performances, so don’t look too close - there are a lot of random cuts that I usually wouldn’t make, trying to cover that sort of thing.

After cutting it together I did a little color grading and added some film grain in After Effects.

vimeo.com

Recent Project: Imagine A World…

Recently, the director of the Children’s Ministry, here at Crossroads, came to me for help brainstorming a volunteer recruitment video. By the time we finished talking about it, I was begging him to let me film and edit the piece.

I was excited about it because it was a chance to get a little more cinematic than I’ve been so far at Crossroads.

Here’s the video. It features some really talented and really cute staff kids and the extremely talented Matt Hadley, Jason Koerner, and Griff Ray. Below the video is some very self-indulgent process stuff that I recommend skipping unless you’re a masochist.

One of the things I really wanted to try with this piece was directing the viewer’s eye by using a rack focus. That kind of thing is fairly easily done if you’ve got the right equipment - namely a follow focus. While that kind of thing is on my “to buy” list eventually, I came up with an idea to try and accomplish the same effect on the cheap (and when I say, “came up with” I mean “was probably the last guy on the planet to figure this out”).

A follow focus is basically some gears and a knob that allow you to move easily from one pre-determined point of focus to another - on some professional shoots, there’s actually a guy other than the camera guy in charge of operating the follow focus, I’ve read. Below is my shoe-string solution:

Yeah, that’s a rubber band and some tape. Basically, each ink mark on the rubber band represents a pre-determined point of focus. When the mark on the rubber band lined up with the mark on the tape, I knew that particular point was actually in focus. So to move my focus from say, an actor’s face to a set of keys, I simply moved from one ink mark to the next. Simple. Amateurish. Effective.

This was also the first time I’ve attempted any sort of color grading with a video. Specifically, I wanted to give this piece a highly saturated, blue-heavy look kind of like a modern action flick. I was pretty fascinated by the whole process and clearly have a lot to learn. Curious what a little color grading can do for a piece? Well, here’s a nine second video to give you a little idea.

Neat, huh?

Okay, that’s enough rambling. Thanks to Jason for letting me work with him and the kids!

Patrick’s Favorite Things

We showed this at Crossroads on Christmas Eve.

Actually, now that I watch it, this is a longer version than what we played on Christmas Eve. So this is the director’s cut, I guess…

Going viral

Crossroads Viral Video (via xroadschurchky) Crossroads made this video as part of our Viral Virtues series and we’re trying to make it go viral. Send the link to all your friends. And if they have questions about Crossroads, send ‘em to me!

How I learned to quit worrying and love XTC (the band, not the drug)

When I was younger, my sole exposure to new music was my older brother Jeff. I had a pretty limited tape collection of, frankly, terrible music; some particularly cheesy Christian bands, Huey Lewis and The News, Steve Winwood, and, embarrassingly enough, Bruce Willis’ blues album. My brother, though, would come back from college with a lot of stuff I’d never heard before - Bands that were a revelation - like The Violent Femmes or The Dead Milkmen; bands that broadened my pallet considerably.

I remember looking through his vinyl albums one day and finding a record by a band named XTC. It had a song on it titled “Dear God.” I’m sure my first thought was that they must be a Christian band. One look at the album sleeve and the lyrics corrected that assumption. Dear God was a statement of unbelief; an open letter to the God of the Bible, detailing all the bad things he let happen on a daily basis and the writer’s conclusion, therefore, that he must not exist.

As a really religious kid growing up in a small Kentucky town, I was scandalized. Why would somebody write such a song? Why would anybody buy the album? Why did my brother have it?

Fast forward to last Monday. I’m sitting in a meeting at the church I work for, discussing content for the coming weekend’s services when my co-worker, Steve, says he wants to do a song called “Dear God” that he heard on a recent episode of Glee.

Imagine my surprise. It’s been twenty or so years since I first encountered the song. Since then I like to think I’ve developed a much deeper appreciation for music (I won’t say I have eclectic taste. Everybody says that and they almost never do) and a much sturdier spiritual constitution. After the initial deja-vu wore off, I became very excited at the notion of the church band doing the song. Yeah, it’s not exactly the kind of song you imagine hearing at church. I think that’s why I’m excited.

My church has always been really interested in acknowledging and addressing what the Christian faith must look like from the outside; and the fact is a lot of people have trouble accepting the idea of a loving God when there’s so much suffering in the world. This week we’re using a song to recognize that point of view - and then hopefully have a meaningful discussion about it. I like that. I hope that it makes people with similar doubts more willing to engage us. And I hope it makes some believers a little less likely to be traumatized by hearing song lyrics that don’t agree with their world view.

I have a friend who attends another large church here in Lexington. He teased my wife one day because Crossroads performs so many “non-Christian” songs. I’m sure that’s a stumbling block for some folks. In the thirteen years I’ve been associated with the church I’ve heard covers of songs by Radiohead, Queen, The Violent Femmes, The Avett Brothers, Jeff Buckley, the Beatles, Colin Hay, Depeche Mode, and LL Cool J (Don’t worry, it was an acoustic version, nobody rapped). I think that kind of thing is good. Not because we’re “totally not your father’s church” or some other stupid cliche, but because you almost never learn anything in an echo chamber.

UPDATE - Sara questioned the song being on Glee. I can’t find any evidence that it was. I’m not sure if I misheard Steve or what. Anyway, we’re doing the song. If Glee, indeed, wasn’t the inspiration then all the better in my opinion…

Good Vs. Evil

It seemed like such a good idea at the time…

Actually, I still think this video was a decent idea. It wasn’t my best script, but it did what it was supposed to do. The hard part, though, was the time issue. I came up with the concept late on Monday. Tuesday was spent writing on the script in between checking items off a large to-do list. Wednesday was set-up and shooting. Once that was done, all that was left was editing, compositing, and effects - two whole days worth of work. And Thursday and Friday are my days off. Needless to say, last week was a seven hour week. I’m self-taught on Final Cut and After Effects - and it shows no doubt. The good thing is, though, that I learned a ton on this project. Like:

-I need an HD camera
-Garbage in, garbage out. The whole “we’ll fix it in post” idea only goes so far. Especially with less than ideal green screen footage.
-If compositing a lightsaber, give yourself more than just a handle to work with. Imagining a straight line moving incrementally from frame to frame is a pain.
-I have a fun job.

I’m sure most of you don’t care about these particular thoughts, but I’ve decided it will be beneficial to me, over time, to start ruminating more on my experiences with video editing and motion graphics.