The WHM Blog

So you’ve found (or are planning to find) the perfect mini movie to intro your sermon or service the week, honoring moms for all that they do in the lives of children, young and old… BUT, you want to take your Mother’s Day Service to the next level. Take a look at some of our motion backgrounds, splash screens, stills, and countdowns. Here are a few of our favorites:

Motions
A splash screen is a great way to intro your service or transition from element to element. We love Mother’s Day Butterflies by Graceway Media and Mother’s Day Flowers by Life Scribe Media. Splash screens not your thing, but you still want to put something pretty up during worship for all the moms out there? Try Spring Flowers 02 from Centerline New Media.

Countdowns
One of the easiest ways to add a little something special into your service for moms, is a pre-service countdown. We really like Happy Mother’s Day Countdown from Centerline New Media (for something simple), Mother Always Said Countdown by Igniter Media (for something funny and sweet), and Mother’s Day Countdown from Life Scribe Media (for something a little shorter).

Collections
No post from me would be complete without a little love for collections. I love service packs and bundles because they allow you to brand your entire service around a unified theme AND they save you a bundle (get it?) of money. For Mother’s Day, we like Centerline New Media’s Mini-Pack: Mother’s Day Vol. 1, Playback Media’s Mother’s Day Digital Bundle, and Floodgate Productions’ Mother’s Day Watercolor Service Pack.

We’d love to share more of our favorites, but we’d rather point you to our Mother’s Day Store, FILLED with excellent media. You’re sure to find just the right mini movies, countdowns, motions and more for your services this Sunday.

The following is a guest post from Kevin O’Brien about the inspiration behind Mighty, one of Journey Box Media’s newest mini-movies for Mother’s Day. As you prepare for your Mother’s Day worship service, let this mini-movie show you just how “mighty” moms really are. 

Many of the biggest holidays seem to be more magical and meaningful as a child: Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Columbus Day. As I grow older, its easy to become cynical of these dates as the conspiracy of card printers, electronic stores, and candy makers. What once was magical time becomes an onslaught of stress, bills, and unwanted family visits.

One holiday that has taken the opposite course for me is Mother’s Day.

As a child, Mother’s day was a day my teachers or my Dad had me make an otherwise terrible craft to give to my mom (luckily for me, Mom’s don’t care what these things look like). As I got older, Mother’s day became a last minute card purchase and quick note to my mom, usually a few days late, saying something about how great she has been.

Then came the day that my wife became a mother. That changed things. Mother’s day quickly became a celebration of the woman who gave birth to my son. That first year is one you really don’t want to mess up on, and I’m willing to bet 98% of men are unsure what to do. But we do our best.

The amazing thing about watching my wife become a mother is how great she is at it, and how much deeper that role gets with each passing year. It never gets easier. In fact, it gets more complicated, and more demanding, as time passes. I have seen my wife love more and hurt more as a Mother than she could as a daughter, girlfriend, fiancé, or a wife. There may not be any bond stronger than the bond between Mother and child.

One interesting bonus of watching my wife become stronger as a mother is that I now have a glimpse of all the junk I put my mom through, and how mighty she was to put up with and love me. I have realized that I owe her much more than I can repay.

So this year, may I endeavor to make the mothers in my life know how mighty they are, simply because they mother. There is nothing ordinary about that.

Mighty was based on a blog post written by Lisa-Jo Baker, who believes motherhood should come with its own super hero cape and blogs about it at lisajobaker.com. Her words have been incredibly inspiring to my wife and many other mothers I know. I challenge you to encourage the mothers in your community long after Mother’s Day by connecting them with Lisa-Jo at her blog. You could send an email with the link or print a handout with some info about it. The words found there will bring them strength when they need it the most (every day).

Spring has sprung! We’ve celebrated the resurrection of Jesus, and now we rejoice in the new life that’s ours through Him… and the new life that’s found outside our walls. Flowers are blooming, trees are regaining color, snow is melting, and we know that it’s now Spring!

If you’re looking to bring that theme of new life into your services, we’ve hand selected some of our favorite backgrounds, countdowns and mini-movies!

Spring Leaves Welcome to Church by Graceway Media

Spring Sky Countdown by Graceway Media

Color Hues Close by Igniter Media

Service Pack: Spring Vol. 1 by Centerline New Media

Thanksgiving Tree Worship Intro by Motion Worship

Psalm 33 Worship Intro by Freebridge Media

And be sure to check out all of our Spring-themed media at WorshipHouseMedia.com!

Dale and Luke sit down to share a few of the videos they think you just have to see this Easter Season. We know it’s a busy time, so we kept it short and sweet!

The videos can be found here:

Empty by Shift Worship

Light Shines by Journey Box Media

Good Friday by CentralFilms

Easter Blessings by Floodgate Productions

What are some of your favorites this season?

Special thanks to this week’s sponsor, “The NAB After Party”, April 8th at 7:30pm at the Cosmopolitan Hotel of Las Vegas. Details here.

I know. I know. Sometimes WorshipHouse Media has TOO MANY great videos for Easter… and that can be overwhelming! To get your started on your quest for the perfect mini-movie, here are some of our top picks:

Alive
by Thr-ve

If you’re looking for a great way to start your service and lead into worship with excitement this Easter, “Alive” by thr-ve is perfect. Driving music coupled with powerful scripture makes this video the ideal way to celebrate the risen King. He has won the victory and we are free…Happy Easter!

Our Good Shepherd: The Life of Christ
by Skit Guys Studios

My pick is Our Good Shepherd: The Life of Christ by Skit Guys Studios, a perfect fit for communion time on Easter Sunday. Through the amazing talent of a painter, this video reflects on the story of Jesus’s birth, ministry, death, and resurrection, reminding us that Jesus is risen!

Because of Love
by Overflow Media Group

This is a great service starter and welcome to your congregation on Easter Sunday. “Because of Love” is a very simple reflection on the love of Christ and why your church has gathered together.

Good Friday
by CentralFilms

This is a unique and powerful Good Friday reflection using imagery and spoken work by the rapper Propaganda of Humble Beast. Good Friday is not a fun time as we reflect on the death of Jesus, but we know Sunday is coming.

Empty
by Shift Worship

As usual, Shift Worship has taken something familiar and shined new light on it. This video combines just the right amount of intrigue and mystery to take the viewer through the story, moving toward a beautifully surprising end. If you’re looking for a fresh way to declare “He is not here, He has risen”, check out Empty.

Rescued
by Igniter Media Group

My pick this Easter is Rescued by Igniter Media. In the midst of all the pain and brokenness that surrounds us, this timely video is a powerful reminder of the hope that comes through the death and resurrection of Christ.

Easter Morning
by Centerline New Media

My pick this year for Easter is “Easter Morning” by Centerline New Media. The music in the background of the video starts softer and escalates really well with the message that is the cross. As a designer, I thought the type was clean & simple delivering the text in a way that made the meaning stand out strong as it should.

The following is a guest post from Kevin O’Brien about the creative process behind Light Shines, Journey Box Media’s newest mini-movie for Easter. I know you’re busy prepping for Easter, but this may be just the thing you need to get you through the next week and a half sprint…

This post is about the creative process (or blocks) in the development of Light Shines. You may want to watch it first:

I started thinking, reading and brainstorming about Easter back in the first week of January, which I was quite proud of. I was ahead of schedule, and had plenty of time to develop a story and create a mini-movie.

Then toward the end of February, I looked up and realized I was no longer ahead of schedule. In fact, I was behind… and I didn’t have a plan. This was not good.

As the Arts Director of my local church for almost a decade, this has been a common situation for me. Behind schedule, empty on ideas, stuck and frustrated. Maybe you can relate? Church production teams have the privilege and responsibility of sharing the greatest story in history. We also feel the pressure of creating something new every week. As Gary Molander points out in his amazing book Pursuing Christ, Creating Art, if we aren’t looking to Christ as our source of creativity, our creativity will run dry rather quickly.

Light Shines gave us a different process from most of our mini-movies. Usually, we develop the story, and I’ll be thinking of the visuals before or while the script is being written. For Light Shines, my partner wrote the script – which was super powerful – but I didn’t have a solid idea on what visuals to use to support the script.

So we sat down for a few meetings, and came up with some ideas – some outside of our ability (time and budget), and some that were just okay. We had a lot of “good” ideas, but nothing I was excited about. That was a problem. Time was running out, and after all, this is the story of Easter, the resurrection of our Savior. I couldn’t settle for “okay.”

I was so frustrated and stuck. So stuck that I even considered going the easy route with cliché Easter visuals (which I consider “safe,” and am adamant against). Thankfully, I wasn’t ready to give up.

A few months back I started reading Blain Hogan’s Untitled which talks about the creative process as hard work. He points out that there is no magic trick to getting “unstuck.” You just have to keep working, keep trying, keep searching.

So we did. We kept thinking, bringing ideas, killing ideas, borrowing ideas from our favorite 80’s movies (we almost completely ripped off The NeverEnding Story), till finally we had a break-through. We agreed on the visuals and the story and we were stoked, except that now we were ridiculously behind schedule.

So we scheduled, built, cast, shot, edited and released Light Shines in 8 days. It was an intense week of sweat, frustration, long nights, and lots of favors from friends. We were blessed with an amazing warehouse space to shoot in, and in the end we were thrilled with the result.

I will leave you with an encouraging tweet I read a few years back from Trey Hill (@squarerootof9). I try to remind myself of this weekly.

There are a lot of freaking talented people in this world… so I guess you’re going to have to rely on something else.

What are you relying on? You don’t have to do this alone.

Some photos from production:

The great warehouse space we were given to use (for free!)

The overhead shots were some of my favorite. (That’s me way up there)

We had some great friends and their kids shooting late into the night.

DIY equipment is the best.

A rented motorized slider gave us a sweet time-lapse shot.

There are so many things we can do with our stills and motions to tell a story during worship. A couple of weeks ago, I posted about using darker, slower-moving media to create a more somber/reflective worship environment during Lent and Holy Week (post here).

Something I’ve been experimenting with recently is using themed media to create visual momentum. We have a bunch of collections that are designed with this kind of visual storytelling in mind. As an example, let’s look at Centerline’s Service Pack: Volume 14. The four backgrounds (Motions and Stills available) work particularly well for telling a story of light breaking forth from darkness (or vice versa). Here’s how these can be used:

In A Whole Worship Set - Our band will often start a service with slower, more reflective songs and build toward uptempo, celebratory worship. Starting with a dark background and stepping lighter with each song is a great way to match the direction of the worship team.

During A Single Song - Some worship songs are written to lead from introspection and reflection and move toward celebration and proclamation (think “Beautiful Things” by Gungor and “All the Poor and Powerless” by All Sons and Daughters). As the song moves to a brighter and more hopeful place, use your slides to follow the mood of the song visually.

Just as the worship leader plans a set list around creating an environment for worship, you as a visual worship leader can do the same. Follow the flow of the service (or a single song) and create visual environments to deepen the worship experience.

The following is a guest post from Kevin O’Brien at Journey Box Media. He talks about his best-selling Easter Mini-Movie, Not the End, available here (and en español here).

One of the key factors in creating mini-movies is time. There are a lot of important elements that happen in any given worship gathering, so as producers of media content for churches we have a goal of keeping our projects under 3 minutes. To make them longer is risky.

But some stories can’t be properly told in 3 minutes or less. Some stories need us to linger in a moment, to allow a certain thought or emotion to take over us. Some stories need time to take us to the depths of sorrow to allow the joy of salvation to be so much sweeter.

We feel the story of Easter is such a story. So last year we decided to take a risk and create Not The End as a longer mini-movie (5:35). After all, why tell a story if it’s safe, right?

We wanted to take a journey through the three days of Easter weekend: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday – all through the perspective of Peter. To make it more challenging, I had this image stuck in my head of Peter running. I wanted most of the mini-movie to simply show the back of his head, with the reoccurring theme of “I wasn’t really looking.” We don’t reveal his eyes until Easter Sunday, when he opens his eyes for the first time, and turns toward the camera and runs to the tomb to find it empty. However, we don’t ever show the tomb or Jesus, simply Peter and his reaction. I think this decision allows us to focus on the emotion of the moment.

We designed the film to be used together as one piece, or broken up by the individual days and what they can represent:

FRIDAY: All hope seems lost. The disciples scattered. They were expecting Jesus to deliver them from Roman oppression. Worse, Peter denied his closest friend 3 times.

SATURDAY: God seems silent. We don’t hear much about Saturday. We used this day to represent when we feel God is not answering our prayers. How do you respond?

SUNDAY: The beginning. This is when Peter opens his eyes, when he runs to the tomb. His face shows joy, anticipation and fear as he runs.

Here are some examples of how you can use this piece:

As a 3 Week Series
Start a series 2 weeks before Easter, each Sunday focusing on a day.
    2 weeks before: Friday
    1 week before: Saturday (you could show Friday and Saturday, letting the moment build.
    Easter Sunday: Sunday – You could show Friday and Saturday before the message, then show
    Sunday after the message

All on Easter Sunday
Build the day around the concept, and divide the message up into 3 parts. Show Friday to intro the first part of the message, Saturday to transition to the second part, and Sunday to end the message with celebration into a time of worship.

Start on Good Friday
If your church is having a Good Friday service, you could show Friday or both Friday and Saturday during that service, then show them all on Easter Sunday for everyone to participate.

Because we know every church has unique needs, we’ve created a number of options for you:

With each version we are including several still images and Photoshop files from the mini-movie, giving you title or message backgrounds for each of the days.

Not The End (shorter version) uses the same story and imagery, but comes in right at 3 minutes.

Better yet, with the Director’s Cut, you get the full mini-movie, as well as each day as a separate file, all for the normal mini-movie price.

Better(er) yet, get the Not The End Collection, which includes the short version, Director’s Cut, all 3 days, and all the stills and Photoshop files.

However your church decides to share the story of hope this Easter, may you include some mystery and intrigue. His story deserves that.