Chris Brank: the blog of.

Hey friends!

I’m not a very good consistent blogger… as most of you know life has been busy. Er…nonstop. Some people would question if I’ve had a life!  I have indeed had a life, it’s just been a busy one, ok?! :)  I’ve been on staff at churches for the past 6 years, everything from interning to leading worship to middle school pastor to student development pastor to video producer to band/media coordinator. And half of that time has been spent at huge churches where I’ve met most of you, my dearest friends!

I’ve been running this video business on the side for a while now, and I absolutely love getting to meet new people and I love being able to travel and shoot different businesses / events and I even love surrounding myself with vanilla Coke and candy and editing until crazy hours. For the past few months God has opened a ton of doors with that business and I’ve found myself essentially working two full-time jobs. WHO KNEW that would cause a ridiculous amount of stress?! Because if you knew and didn’t tell me, you owe me lunch or something. JK. I knew it would. But I’ve never been one to stand in front of open door and say “idk God, looks kinda sunny and fun in there, must be a trick.” I jumped in!  

So I decided to resign from my position at Brookwood to pursue this film business during the week.  I’ll still be volunteering and even leading at Brookwood some, but what’s going to change is what I do during the week while all of your lovely faces are at work and/or school!  I’ve enjoyed working in churches, but I’ve never enjoyed the office hours very much during the week while students are in school. Ministry always seemed to happen AFTER church office hours or on the weekends! I don’t mind the planning / prep stuff that DOES happen in the church office, but as I will explain, I’m getting ready to try ministry from another angle. 

God has called me to use my life and gifts to love and serve people, specifically in the Upstate of SC for now. I’m actually doubling those efforts… I will still see and get to hang out with the students just as much as I did while I was on staff, maybe more! AND during the week I’ll get to serve the business/corporate world by making whatever kinda videos their heart’s desire. Interviews, training, vision, orientations, commercials, announcements… even stepping back into the wedding / music video world. (Not to mention getting to help other churches!) I’ve already gotten to meet SO many great people and serve them from an outside-the-church angle. It slowly became apparent that outside of the church office I might be able to reach even MORE people and let this little light of mine shine. 

So here we go…a career change (well…kind of.) In the words of the David Crowder Band, “Let love explode and bring the dead to life / a love so bold to see a revolution somehow.” So excited, folks. SO excited.  And you guys and girls are the best friends I could have ever asked for. 

-Chris

The awesome J.C. Thompson, writer of the popular JCisonline blog, let me write a guest blog for the site!  Here is what I wrote…you can either read it on here, or on JCisonline. Or….well, both.

There’s a good chance you might need a GoPro for your ministry.

And here’s four reasons why:

Now, here’s those reasons:

1) It’s super cheap. I got the Motorsports edition on Amazon plus a screen, surf-mount, and tripod adapter for under $350. And you know what’s crazy? In the video I’m about to link to, I shot with a GoPro and a Canon 7D with a L-quality lens…and if you just casually watch, you won’t be able to tell the difference. Just know I didn’t take the 7D underwater! http://youtu.be/_ghPVix68hY (PS, I colored the 7D footage, but didn’t even have to color the GoPro footage because it already had the saturated vintage feel that I wanted!)

3) It’s crazy easy to use. There are two buttons.  It takes approx. 15 minutes to memorize the instruction manual…then you are good to go!  In fact, during Adventure Week (the VBS at Brookwood Church) I handed to a student (Mary Erny) and she carried it around all week with no prior experience and put together this video in iMovie: http://youtu.be/oHfbnBlRafs

4) Just look over the previous three reasons again.

Now, one quick thing before I wrap that you need to know: Do not expect good audio quality. Especially with the waterproof case…it protects everything from getting to the camera, including sound!  Without the case, it’s not horrible, but I rarely use the audio.

Get one, and put together some videos with angles that were just impossible before now. Hand it to students, take it on trips, throw together a million highlight videos. And throw IT everywhere!

Well, my friends, I officially have Final Cut Pro X and I’ve spent about 2 days editing in it on a slightly significant project. You might be wondering: “Chris, do you like it?” No, dear ones, I love it. 

A lot of people, including Conan O’Brien’s editing crew, are hating on the new Final Cut for several reasons…the biggest complaints are as follows: 1) You can’t open up old project files and 2) no multi-cam editing support. As for me, I never even used the multi-cam feature and I rarely open up old project files because I’m usually creating new ones!

So should you buy it? Yes. You should. If you have a newer Mac, and if you want to see where the future of video editing is headed, and you can save up 300 bucks…buy it. ANYONE can figure out this program in a matter of hours. The interface is wonderfully simple. The coloring features are out of this world, everything is in real time, there’s no rendering.  I had effects piled up and didn’t have to wait a single second to view them.  I synced up separate audio from a Zoom H4n to my DSLR footage in a matter of seconds (it did it for me!). It automatically saves it every step of the way…I keep pressing command+S out of habit! And there’s a huge amount of incredible, built-in effects ready to be thrown on your clips. 

This program opens up the world of professional-level editing to anyone who can lay down 300 bucks. I am incredibly excited about teaching people this program…knowing that it’s not out of their reach! Are there some bugs? Yep. It crashed on me a few times, but again, it automatically saved it! Never lost any work. And when I mean crash, I mean it just froze up, I pressed force quit, and I was back within 15 seconds. 

I’ve been using Premiere for a few months now, even got the upgraded 5.5…and yep, I think FCPX beats it out. If you’re a Final Cut user, don’t switch. If you want to break into the world of editing, or even if you’ve been editing for years, get FCPX and learn it!