SDF 2012 Is here!

The School of Digital Filmmaking 2012 has begun.  This is the fourth school I have helped to staff, and I finally feel like I know what I'm doing.  I'm not going into this one freaked out wondering what was going to happen next.  Of course I know that there will be surprises, and that there will be difficulties, challenges, struggles.  I feel confident that I can do this.  And I'm very excited to see what this next 3 months holds.

Success!

Well, at least partially.  The hard drives containing our footage are now in our editor's hands in Brazil.  For those of you who haven't followed our epic post-production struggle, I will relate the story. 


After the filming finished there was a lot of prep work that needed to be done to the footage to ready it for editing, mostly organising and syncing the sound.  This took around 5-6 weeks of solid work.  I finally was able to finish that (without really any drama).  I packed up the drives and sent them with the fastest mail Australia Post offers in the end of May.  Several weeks later they still hadn't been delivered.  After calling pretty much every day being the squeakiest wheel I could be, the end of June came around and the package was finally on the last leg of its trip to the editor's house.  While they were on that truck, on its way to the editor's house, the truck was held up and the drives stolen.  So we had to send another copy of the drives (via another company).  This trip had a lot less drama, except the Brazilian government charged over 100% tax on the hard drives (despite the fact they were only on loan and to be returned (as about 17 different customs forms attributed to).  But this morning we heard from our editor that the drives were in his hands.  Yea!

This means that we can finally start editing (about 2 months behind the original schedule). 

Security Deposit

Recently, my housemates and I had to move out of our house because the owner wanted to sell it.  So we packed up and did a "quick move" to another house.  Then we spent a long time cleaning the house.  And not the standard "bachelor" clean, we did a very thorough job. After spending all that time cleaning, we got a 3 page email from the real estate agent detailing things needing cleaning.  So we went in for round 2.  At least several times during the cleaning I heard people saying that they couldn't tell where they had already cleaned, because it looked the same after scrubbing.

I was thinking about this today and I realized how often God has asked me to do things that don't seem to bear fruit, things that just seem to keep going on pointlessly.  I want to ignore those things as being a waste of my time, and only do the ones that seem to make sense, or the ones I really want to do.  I often find myself trying to do a sort of spiritual triage, picking out what I consider to the most valuable or important of what God has told me to do, ignoring some things that seem less important.  I try to avoid things that aren't up to my standard of importance.  But, it isn't my standard that matters, I don't own the house.  I have to follow the owner's standard (at least if I want my security deposit back). 

New Pics

Hey, I jut put up some new pictures from The Umbrella behind the scenes, check out my Photos link up top.  While your looking at them you might want to check out some of the videos we have on the webisodes page.

Skydiving is just flying until you step out of the plane

Recently, I have been going over my old journals (DTS days, way back in time).  First I have been amazed at how much God has done in me, how much I have grown.  And looking back over those times, I realize that they all started with one step.  One choice to step out in faith, one decision to do what God was leading.  But the next steps from there were like a whirlwind.

Like a time 2 years ago, when God asked me to step out and trust He would provide for me.  It was such a small step (although it seemed huge at the time).  It didn't even require any action, just to decide to trust Him.  But as soon as I had made that decision, He provided.  As soon as I made that decision, I checked my mail and I saw that I had been given an extra $200.  That put me over the amount I was trusting Him for.

I want to encourage you to take those steps, make those small decisions.  God is there, ready to carry you away to something awesome.  All you have to do is step out.

No More Safety Nets

I realized a few days ago that I have been here in Australia for now 5 years, serving with Youth With A Mission.  (I even have the stamp in my passport to prove I touched down June 6th 2007).   During my time here I have had the chance to help teach about 30 film students, directly mentoring them, as well as being involved in the training of countless Discipleship Training School students.  But ministering to others is not all that God has decided that he wants to do with me during this time.  I feel like the last 5 years have been a continuous training session.  Sometimes, it was formal training, like the 2 years that I was part of the Basic Leadership School.  Other times (basically the rest of the time), it has been informal. 

During these past training sessions I always felt like I had training wheels on, that is was safe.  And now, I've finally come to a place where I want to take them off.  Sure, they kept me from some nasty spills, but they also have held me back from any of the biggest things out there for me.  (I mean how many of the cyclists in the Tour de France have training wheels?)  I want to try out the upper range of my gears and see what can be done.  Time to rely on God completely, school's out.

New Beginnings

For those of you that didn't know, for the past 6 months I have been working on a feature film called the Umbrella.  We finished filming in the beginning of April, but that's when I started to get really busy (comparatively).  My main role for the film is Post-Production Supervisor, which basically mean I'm in change of making sure all the footage we shot becomes a film.  So I coordinate with the director and editor and composer and all the other guys to make sure everything gets done.  The first part of this job was preparing everything for editing.  This was a big job, I worked it straight all day for about 2 months.  But I finally finished it last week, and sent it off to our editor in Brazil.  Woo!

This means I get to start prepping for our next school of digital filmmaking (starts beginning of August), which promises to be the largest we have run yet.