She was always documenting events, whether family, church or out in the community. She loved to go around to the different ministries at her home church to film all that they were doing. Then she would go home and spend countless hours pouring over film reels, splicing them together and editing stories that she felt fit to be shared.

Then she would return to each of the church ministries, break out her projector, and unfold their visual stories right before their eyes. After years of doing this, she began to earn the nickname “The Video Lady”.

Her name was Mildred Nix, and today, she would have been 94 years old. And she was my grandmother.

After she went Home to be with the Lord, we were going through her house, and i found all of her old film equipment. So now I have it on display in my studio.

The last years of her life were the years that i just started to get into video & film. You can imagine her old mind trying to understand the concepts of VJ-ing, or even how computers and digital images worked in the midst of worship. But she definitely connected to the films we shot overseas, and she loved when i would come home, lay on her bed, get out my laptop, and show her a film i shot in a foreign, distant area of the world… places she had only heard stories of from Pappaw’s time in WWII.

It wasn’t until after she passed away that i heard the story of “The Video Lady”…so you can imagine that was a fairly epic moment for me, realizing that this passion for the visual goes back many generations. Even my mom serves on the media ministry at my hometown church, Wynne Baptist, the same church where Grandma earned her nickname.

But today, she isn’t really remembered as someone who always had a camera with her. People around town remember “Mrs. Nix” as someone who would share her faith to anyone who would listen. It was known that if you worked out on the farm and didn’t know the Lord, it would only be a matter of time. My Pappaw was the same way…so you can imagine that they made one incredible team!

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

and then i get an email like this (a response to our latest video “Awayo”):

————————————–

I loved your movie. I’ve watched it three times, and cried each time. There is a young couple in our church that desperately want to be missionaries, but the guy’s parents were dead set against it, even though they are believers. Our church showed that movie on a weekend that they were visiting. After seeing it, the parents are nearly pushing them out the door towards New Guinea!

They are heading out to PNG as associate missionaries for a year, then they plan to return for the training so that they can go full time! Thank you so much for the movie. It has really changed their lives. And thanks to your work, there might even be more brothers and sisters around the throne one day! Thank you for your hard work.

————————————–

as soon as i start feeling like i need to shift my direction or the way i’m doing things, God gives me a subtle hint NOT to. Thank You, Lord. I’m still in this if You are!

I’m so proud of my Worship Guide at Journey, Drew Cline, who is doing an amazing job at leading the charge on Last Letter.

some of my friends in Nashville are featured in the video called “Ryan” on the Last Letter website. it’s not on Vimeo…but you should seriously go check it out now. i’m so proud of them… i regret being on the road so much b/c i have missed out on so much back home.

Here’s one more video from Last Letter… this one absolutely wrecks me.

what legacy are you leaving behind? cool motion backgrounds & the latest greatest creativity? what will come to mind when people remember you? What will your last letter be?

—————————————-

tech: All of the Last Letter videos were shot on the new Canon 5D MKII (& 7D) cameras that can capture HD video. I’ve been seeing more and more videos shot with this amazing camera… it takes video to a place i’ve never seen before. Barton Damer recently blogged about the 7D. And Nick Rivero just got his 7D in… i’m jumping on the bandwagon soon.

Here’s some more videos shot on the same cameras. Make sure “HD” is on & watch it in fullscreen…you might have to go to the original vimeo page to do that…it’s worth it.

I figured I’d take the Vimeo thing to the next level and create a “channel”. This will be a place where all of the videos I post are housed in one location. You also might want to check out the “VJs UNITE” channel to view some trippy, euro examples of VJ-ing.

Enjoy.

Awayo lives in the mountainous jungle regions of West Papua, Indonesia. His tribe is called “Moi”(’moy’); there are only 700-800 Moi in existence. The Moi have a language and culture completely their own. Their primitive lifestyle is one that you wouldn’t think still truly exists in the 21st Century. Awayo’s home is as “ends of the earth” as you can get.

This is Awayo’s story. Though he lives in an indigenous, remote tribe, Awayo’s life is anything but simple. Riddled with pain, murder & deception, life in the Moi tribe was spent in constant fear. There was no hope. Then something happened that shook the foundation of Awayo’s life.

———-

Backstory: During Thanksgiving last year, most of you were probably sitting at home, enjoying time off with your family and eating as much turkey and dressing as possible. Me? Well, I was with my tribal family, enjoying each other’s company and eating lots of amazing food (pig, chicken, rice, possum poo…you know, the essentials). I was in the middle of “Moi Land”! I was with our NTMfilms team filming Awayo’s story, on location in West Papua. Our team was made up of Nate Griffin (my business partner), Ben Smallbone (of Radiate Films), and three missionaries from New Tribes Mission (Macon Hare, Ian Fallis & Regina Sullivan).

I blogged about our trip a few times back in the Winter. You can see those posts & “behind-the-scenes” videos HERE.

The purpose of filming & producing “Awayo” was to provide New Tribes Mission with a video that helps communicate and promote the vision of NTM. Most organizations make overview videos & emotional infomercials, loaded with overwhelming statistics and heart-wrenching appeals to “pray, give or go”. All of that may be well & good, but we decided to do something different. We wanted to simply tell a STORY.

B/c of it’s broad message (aka, it doesn’t have NTM’s logo & name plastered all over it), we realized that this film could fuel many churches’ call-to-missions. So we have made “AWAYO” available on WorshipHouse Media. The version posted above has Awayo’s own voice with subtitles, but we also produced a version with an English voiceover. We also created a Leader’s Guide to go along with the film. When you purchase the film from WorshipHouse, you get both versions of the film, either in SD or HD resolution. When you purchase the film, part of the proceeds are going directly back into New Tribes Mission.

I’d also like to give a shout-out to Jason Morant, who scored the original music, as well as Paul Mills, who mixed the audio for us. They blew us away and are some of the most talented, creative artists in the industry.

To learn more about New Tribes Mission & how you can share Awayo’s story, visit ntm.org/reach.

A couple of years ago, we (Grateful Inconvenience & Radiate Films) produced a short film called “Changed” for New Tribes Mission, as a creative way of promoting their INTERFACE program in Papua New Guinea…a program that both Nate & I have both experienced and have been impacted deeply by.

Recently, we re-edited the original film, creating a new, shortened version, as well as a Director’s Cut (a longer version that more closely represents the original vision for the film). Both are available at WorshipHouse Media. Part of the proceeds will be going directly back to the missional efforts of New Tribes Mission.

Here is the new short version:

The new versions have a broader message and call-to-missions than the original version, which was created specifically for Interface. These mini-movies were released so that churches can have a creative tool to draw their people in and help them to experience, for a moment, the unpredictable adventure of God’s global story. They can be played in many situations, such as a missions-focused worship service or message.

This was one of our first film projects at Grateful Inconvenience, and our first ever Int’l project for New Tribes Mission. We did the entire project pro bono and made many sacrifices in order for this dream to become a reality. Ben Smallbone (of Radiate Films) came alongside us and helped us to tell an amazing story. We are forever indebted to him for this. Mike Lane (from Rivertribe) gave us all of his music to use…for free! The New Tribes missionaries were some of the coolest, most pleasant, and organized people i have ever had the pleasure to work with. They had it more “together” than most of our clients do. Thank you, Emerson, Janie & Macon! This project opened the door for many more films with New Tribes Mission (and with other organizations). Our latest New Tribes film “Awayo” (featuring the Moi Tribe of Indonesia) is set to release here very shortly!

Enjoy.

It’s been a very long journey. and if you know me well, this has been a dream i’ve had for a long time. You see, i’ve spent years and years VJ-ing the content of other producers….but i’ve rarely created and shared my own. I joke around at conferences that “I just push the play button.” But one of the downfalls of ONLY being a VJ is that you can only be as creative as others’ softwares and content allow you to be. thank goodness we live in a day where there’s great resources for both. Still, it’s been very frustrating being in a place where i wasn’t creating and releasing my own media content.

The best part of this is that it’s not all “my” content. You see, i’ve been privileged enough to be surrounded by a creative team of friends who are telling amazing stories and creating unique content…most of which i use all the time when i VJ. i get the question all the time: “where do you get all of your backgrounds?” Well, about 25% of my “most played” content are loops & clips that hasn’t been available anywhere online (at least not publicly, or easy to find). So now…it’s public…and it’s easy to find!

We (Grateful Inconvenience …aka, the design/media company nate & I started) are not only creating ourselves but we have also partnered with a few friends. And these friends just happen to run non-profit organizations that are doing amazing work and vision-casting around the world. So here’s the deal: when you purchase content linked with a non-profit, part of the proceeds (aka your money) is going back into that organization. It’s “media with a missional purpose”!

So far, our partners include New Tribes Mission & Daniel Bashta’s organization, Go Motion Worldwide.

We are still in the process of uploading and approving content, so our offering is quite small right now. But it’s growing, and it’s coming down the pipeline fast! Soon, we will release two more mini-movies: “Confessions” (a humorous video highlighting the tension between music & tech teams), & “Changed” (our first NTMfilm that promotes INTERFACE , which is being re-edited to have a broader message/call-to-missions).

So, if you’re looking for some new content to VJ & great stories to tell, then please head on over and check out what we have to offer. I welcome as much feedback as you’d like to give, as we truly want to create visual content that helps you not only leads your congregation into deeper, more meaningful worship, but instigates a lifestyle of putting your worship into motion outside the four walls of the church building.

It’s interesting to me that the origins of "VJ-ing" in it’s purest form come from an underground culture, birthed in the club/rave scene back in the 90s. And here we are years later applying the same art-form to our worship experiences. And after watching this and seeing what other VJs are doing, i don’t even feel like a VJ. and i’m definitely not European.

Here’s an excerpt from Create Digital Motion , where i found this video:

"Michael Faulkner of D-FUSE says the most interesting thing in this video: it’s when technology becomes redundant that it’s accepted as art. Photography gets invented, and suddenly painting – a business and a craft for centuries – is “high art.” (Don’t ask, incidentally, about what late 19th Century art critics and salon organizers thought was great painting. It was utterly dreadful.)

Ctrl Alt Shift is a 10-minute documentary, pointed out by Resolume developer Bart on their forums , featuring live visualists and audiovisualists. It has a number of things going for it: a terrific artist lineup, asking the tough, obvious questions about why fundamentally we do this stuff, and an editing style that makes projection, live-style edits, and eye candy animation part of the documentary object. It’s a tasty treat to watch if you know the artists, and even if the chatter in this video is the sort of thing you discuss over beers and V4s with your mates, it could be an ideal video to pass along to your friends who don’t yet entirely get what this whole thing is about."

Have you ever experienced tension between members of the worship & tech teams at church? Tension might be an understatement!

“Confessions” is a comical satire that sheds light on the “behind-the-worship” struggles faced in every day churches. You will laugh until you cry, as this video is spot-on at profiling the technical difficulties in leading worship.

You’ll enjoy watching it yourself the first 10 times, and then you’ll get even more enjoyment by showing it to others, especially your church staff & members of the worship & tech teams.

I produced this video a few years ago to show at some worship conferences that gi*inc was helping to produce. We had a lot of help from our favorite cinematographer & editor, Ben Smallbone of Radiate Films. And we finally wised up a bit (after getting dozens of requests for this video) and made it available online.

The above video is a shortened preview of the “Confessions” video, but you can download the full-length (6 min) version.

Enjoy!

————-

“It was so funny! And it really, really….well, just made me laugh & lighten up a bit. It’s a very cool video & very well done!” – Rick Muchow

so in my last blog post i mentioned something along the lines of not being fully devoted to answering the question of where i get all my backgrounds. to me, answering that is such a process b/c there are so many resources and places i’ve gone to in the past few years, & i don’t know how i could answer it all.

part of my frustration with the visual media “industry” (if you will) is the lack of creative content out there. sure, there are some REALLY CREATIVE pieces out there….but not as many as i think there should be. that’s why VJ-ing is so important to me b/c i can almost create my own visual media on the spot.

my biggest frustration has been that one genre of visual media doesn’t even exist, and that is missions-themed media. Until now…

the fact that visual media focused on the Great Commission hasn’t existed until now blows my mind. i’m not talking about mini-movies, b/c there are certainly some good ones out there. even my company gi*inc is producing short films for New Tribes Mission. however, when it comes to backgrounds/loops/photography (formatted for VJ-ing), there is nothing out there. You can search SermonSpice, WorshipHouse, etc all you want….and what you MIGHT find is pitiful.

My friends in Florida just launched Mission Field Images and a brand new e-commerce site dedicated to getting excellent visual media centered around missions into the hands of the local church. Tonight, i used some of their images while VJ-ing for Brian Doerksen (for “Hope of the Nations”) and it ROCKED!!!

go check the new site out and load up on some of these beautiful photographs that capture the global story of God, and share them with your congregation this Sunday!

so what about backgrounds & loops for worship? well, let’s just say i am FULLY DEVOTED to solving that problem. and i’ll just leave it at that…for now. ;)

Here are just a few of MFI’s current work done by Dale Stroud.