I was with a friend today when he asked if I had watched Hillsong’s teaser for their upcoming conference in Sydney. He told me that it was really good, so I decided to have a look at it when I got home.

It was a rather attractive promo video, with stunning visuals, montage-like editing and a theme that followed the title, “Speak, We’re Listening”. According to a write-up by Hillsong Film on the making of the video, they briefly wrote about the idea behind it, and why they chose certain visuals and specific voices.

The idea was to contrast the reality of the noisy/chaotic world we live in with the silent sanctuary of the presence of God that we actually do live in … We start the journey with a calm landscape – slowly but surely building in intensity – building toward a crescendo, building towards a climax. These nature-scapes were also inter-spliced with modern/graphical imagery to give the sense of modern distractions/noise … We also used a voice to lead us through the narrative aspects of the film promo. We wanted to use the voice of a younger man, slightly weathered – large beard and an overcoat.

It was an interesting read, for the fact that I was able to know a little more about how it was made, and some of the ideas that guided the entire video. I watched it a second time after reading the write-up, and felt even more drawn towards it than I was before. Not only did it play its part as a promo video, but it was also a film well made.

Putting this into practice, it is really important to come up with ideas that will lead your video through, to an end product that portrays the message you want to deliver. That is what we have been doing in the studio, and by presenting our ideas to our classmates, we get to share our experiences and give one another different insights.