Hey everyone,

This year was the 2nd year of our annual Hillsong Easter Art and Film festival – The eXchange, and it was a major success!!
You can vote for the films and art at theexchangefestival.com. I suggest voting for “craft of Innocence” by Jess Balda. I got to narrate it!
Yours truly entered a film this year, but unfortunately didn’t quite making it to the final voting polls. But nonetheless I thought I might show you my entry anyways! enjoy

Happy 2010 everyone,

Sorry it’s been so long, but I have been extremely lazy and highly unmotivated
But that being said I wanted to share with you what’s been on my mind [and heart] lately. Over the last few weeks I have been able to work with some of the great guys and girls here at Hillsong church and we have put together this amazing presentation of the heart our church is heading into. I love it! Of course I am slightly biased cause I helped make it, to me it is also a great testament to the fact that what all this is about – the videos, the graphics, the mad skillz- it’s ultimately all about God and people. I think if we keep that as our motivation, I think we can change this planet for God.

Now without further adieu, here is the video :

View on Vimeo.

In the past, we have always had to figure out how to capture an album record successfully. Do we use more cameras? Do we need more lights? Perhaps we need to get the talent to do more? Need better camera operators? But in the end, none of it seemed to make life easier.

Well coming off our recent album record, I am currently cutting some of the songs and to be completely honest, it looks like some of the best stuff we have ever shot (at least from a TV point of view).

Now in previous years, it’s not that the footage or coverage was bad per say, but I always felt like we had to substantially grade and push stuff around too much to kind of get the mood and desired lighting effect we wanted. But this year it seemed golden (figuratively of course).

Speaking to our television technician Luke Irvine who is pretty much the tv guru on our staff, he eluded to the fact it isn’t so much the quantity of lights you use or the number of cameras you have that will set you up for a win, it is in fact WELL PLACED lighting that will give you a good result.

Let me explain.

The biggest concerns we had in previous years was the fact the lighting (from a tv point of view) always looked flat and lacked a lot of depth and certain colours looked terrible (if you look at the album of Faith + Hope + Love, Yaweh has a terrible blue colour all over it which caused a terrible solarising effect which unfortunately we were unable to get rid of, and sent our skin tones into a purple which we eventually colour corrected!)

But more than that, it was also how we placed the lights so got some great contrast and great definitions out of our cameras. So Luke, Ian (our lighting director) and Nathan (creative director) worked tirelessly to not neccessarily use more lights, but use the right amount to create the desired effect.

And on the night we found that the camera operators were shooting amazing footage, the crowds were lit really well,  and the whole edit flows really well.

So light your stuff well, make sure you’re audio is good and the cameras will probably be the least of your problems

Finally got this bugger online!

Ok earlier this year we made a documentary on how we made church news from the initial script writing to the final playback on a sunday. It covers everything from camera operation, post production skills, editor management and dealing with departments. I hope you guys enjoy it! I think it turned out alright!

So tomorrow morning I am going to go the live broadcast of the UNITED I-Heart release which is getting beamed around the world for the release of the I-Heart Revolution movie : We’re all in this together (It’s a mouthful I know). And from what I am hearing from some of the privileged few who had seen it, it’s going to impact you in a big way. If you haven’t already got your tickets, go get them and see it tonight! you will not regret it! Look for me in the audience on the screens! I’ll be the asian guy with black hair sitting in the dark!

Sorry it’s been a while. I really haven’t had a good a chance to post something up here with Sunday night live. But rest assured there will be more hilarity to ensue.
In the meantime i wanted to share with you my 2008 Show reel. Not as much to show you how awesome I am (but yes you may bask in my glory) , but just as a mo-graph/filmmaker I reckon its always really encouraging to see where you have been So I encourage you, if you’re just starting out, or you’re the most senior of senior filmmakers, get that reel together! You never know when you’re gonna have to use it!

So I am really really pumped that Wes Anderson has made another movie (he has brought you such gems as The Royal Tennabaums, Rushmore, The Darjeeling Limited and the Life Aquatic) and now he is releasing an awesome animation which looks superb. As my friend Ben said “i think my emotion directed towards wes anderson might supersede love.”

In case you didn’t know, our church is running a multimedia extravanganza called “SUNDAY NIGHT LIVE!” and yours truly is heading up the editing (along with trusty editors Matt Eastwood and Jordan Ironside) for this great four week event. It’s all part of our amazing month of August. You can check out:
www.myhillsong.com for the latest!

To help put things in perspective tho, we have to construct all the multimedia content for all 4 weeks of Sunday Night live by the end of this week! And we only got given the footage this week! So we’re in the maddest rush ever! haha but sufficed to say, it will be epic!

ok so I also got a bit bored in the week, and all this talk of the new twilight movie also got me in the photoshop mood. So this is Frank and I having a go at being the new asian characters in the new Twilight movie. I reckon they are tight? what do you reckon?