Producer / Director / DP / Editor

Producer / Cinematographer / Editor

Producer / Director / DP / Editor

Producer / Director / Editor

Producer / Director / Host / Writer / Editor

Producer / Director / Host / Writer / Editor

Producer / Director / DP / Editor

Producer / DP / Cam Op

Director / Editor

Director / Editor

Producer / Director / Editor

Producer / Director / DP / Editor

Producer / Director / Editor

Our team was asked to produce a film to end our sermon series “Mystery & Meaning,” on the parables in Matthew 13. Thinking specifically through Matthew 13:11-17, we focused on the verse that says “Blessed are your eyes because they do see, and your ears because they do hear.”

We knew we wanted our film subject to be digging around, searching for something–only to find it revealing itself to them. Our concept took several different shapes before landing in it’s final stage of an art gallery.

An art gallery felt like an easy setting to be injected into as we watch our actors observe the paintings on the walls, digging for deeper meaning on their own–only to watch this beautiful piece of art reveal itself to our main actor, resembling the truth of the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven & the gospel being revealed through the Holy Spirit.

Once we were locked in on the concept of the gallery we began searching around Austin for the perfect setup, but just couldn’t find one that would work with exactly what I wanted. So we decided to reach out for some bids on building out a set at one of our congregation’s location.

I’d never done anything like this before, so honestly I had no idea how much it would be. I was just hoping it’d be comparable to renting an art studio. We ended up getting bids that were out of our budget, so I decided I’d take matters into my own hands and take a swing at building the set panels myself.

Lucky for me, this landed right in the middle of the hottest July on record in Austin–so it was a nice balmy 108 degrees outside while Jesse and I worked on constructing these panels.

Somehow, we managed to make 15 4x8 foot panels in less than a week, assemble them and mud the gaps–and still create a convincing, professional looking 24x12 foot art gallery set.

We also knew we wanted art that reflected the parables Jesus taught in Matthew 13. So we reached out to our Worship Collective and got referred to some incredibly talented local artists. Three pieces of art were created just for this film, and one artist loaned us his painting he had previously created.

It was such a cool project watching so many artists come together and collaborate on what felt like such a simple final product, that actually had so many moving parts & complexities behind the curtain. Actually, come to think of it, that’s a little like the parables themselves–simple, yet so very rich in complexities and deep truth.

In March of 2020, our team traveled to Barcelona to film a project for our church’s missionary team–only to get cut short as we fled Spain at 2AM the night the US announced travel from Europe would be banned due to COVID (a long, (not-so)fun story for another day).

Well, after about a week of quarantining & finding out we weren’t positive for the virus, we geared up for another shoot – this one for our Easter Service.

At this point, the concept was locked, the spoken word was recorded and mixed with a music track, and I had just finished creating an animated piece that would play on the LED wall on set. (This was streamlined thanks to the incredibly talented Ezra Cohen who is constantly releasing beautiful content for creators at ezracohen.tv)

Our desire was to create a 120 second spot that reminded our church of our lives before Jesus, and bring our church to worship as we remembered how we have been redeemed by Christ’s death, burial and resurrection.

We wanted the first half to feel confined, trapped, dark, chaotic and defeated with shaky, tight camera movements. So we built a big wooden box, hoping it would create a “coffin-ish” or caged in feeling and we stuffed Roberto (Talent) and Kris (DP & CamOp) into the box.

To contrast, we wanted the second half to feel a bit more expansive and bright with smoother, sweeping camera movements. One of our congregation locations has an existing LED wall, so we decided to use that to our advantage. Unfortunately we couldn’t lower the LED wall (it was about 8 feet off of the ground), so we brought in some temporary staging to bring our camera and actor up to the LED wall. It worked pretty well, except that budget only allowed for about a 24 x 16 foot stage. This was just extremely limiting when we were wanting much wider shots.

Our crew absolutely nailed it, though and I couldn’t have been more proud of what our team was able to create!

Director / Producer / Editor – Colton Holmes

Executive Producer – Donovan Golden

Actor / Performer / Writer - Roberto German

Writer - Brett Land

DP / Cam Op - Kris Rutherford

AC - Brooks Birdsall

Grip & Electric - Keaton Loudamy

Grip – Jesse Witt

DIT / Grip - Aaron Campbell

2019 Reel