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Joseph Cottle(00:06):
You are listening to the church production podcast from Church Production Magazine. I'm your host Joseph Coddle, and today we're talking to Luke Man wearing, he's the video director for Bethel Music where he's recently directed a music video for Come Up Here Live from the Redwoods, as well as their YouTube series, pine Street Sessions. And you've seen his work with Bethel as far back as the live capture of we Will Not Be Shaken. He's joining us today from Redding, California. I'm here in Kansas City. Luke, thanks for joining us today and welcome to the podcast. I wanted to talk background with you a little bit. How did you get involved in production? I mean, you have a pretty impressive resume right now, but I knew you had to start somewhere and I know a lot of people in this world didn't necessarily go to school for this, they just kind of started, so I'm curious to see what your background is.
Luke Manwaring (00:54):
Yeah, well, I'll try and keep it brief and we, I'll skip over some stuff and if there's stuff that obviously you want to expand then we can go back. But I wish that I could say, man, I watched a Spielberg movie in the nineties and was like, man, I just got to do that. But I didn't. I loved movies growing up, but it never, I'm from England, I should get that out there really quickly. So I grew up in England, so maybe that played into it where I watched movies and it didn't feel attainable, but my parents moved us out here in 2001 when I was 13 to attend Bethel Church. My dad did the school, and I think it was two years in to living here. There was a video announcement at church that was made that was, so back in 2004, 2005, you either had to incorporate the Matrix or Braveheart into men's ministry to really rally the troops to come to events.
(01:56):
And I think it was to go see the second matrix, which is hilarious if you think about fathers taking their sons to see the second matrix with that opening scene. But I digress. But anyway, so I saw that video and thought, this is awesome. And I think looking back, I probably consciously didn't think this at the time, but looking back, I think it was like, oh, someone in this room made this thing. So it actually felt attainable. And I got introduced to the guy who made it, who was Nathan Grubbs, who was the creative director of Jesus culture Bethel Church. And I was 14, 15, he was 2021, and I started, then he was like, Hey, any time I've got a video, if you want to help out you can. So we made a way too long youth group videos, 15 minutes long, still have it starring Chris Ki La.
(02:58):
And then from there he is now to this day, he is one of my best friends. And we started doing video announcements for the church. Well, he started doing them. And then when I got into college, we started doing these funny video announcements that at the time at Bethel were kind of legendary and still are. We made and sold DVDs for Christmas two years in a row, and we got a standing ovation for one of them. We did a 24 parody. So that dates me a little bit. But yeah, so then probably the most significant part of this story and where we can kind of use as a launchpad is when I came in one day, he said, Hey, we're going to shoot DVD for the next Jesus culture album. And it was the We Pray Out album, which if anyone's familiar with Jesus culture, that's the Kim, how he loves where she did her spontaneous, you better just brace yourself moment. And I was stage right house, right stage left, I was stage. I still get confused by those. And I just remember that night being like, me too,
Joseph Cottle(04:09):
Man. Me too.
Luke Manwaring (04:11):
Shooting musics and worships what I want to do. I will say probably music a lot, but worship's obviously a part of that. This is what I want to do. And it's been, so that was 2007, I was 19, so 16 years later, I'm kind of where I am now, but it's taken 16 years of obsession and trial and error and heartache and lots of things in between. So that's the, believe it or not, that was the short version.
Joseph Cottle(04:40):
Oh no, I believe you. It's impressive of me though that you've been with Bethel Music, or at least in the Bethel universe kind of from the get-go. I know a lot of people sort of end up out there maybe, but that's where you were planted and rooted and grown. That's impressive, man.
Luke Manwaring (04:57):
Yeah. And I know you've done an interview with him before, so I do want to mention him. So Jesse Maitland and I, he's the production, he's the video production director at Bethel Church. We were shooting sermons together, so we used to not shoot worship and we would make the videos for the conferences, actual video cassette tapes.
Joseph Cottle(05:22):
Oh wow.
Luke Manwaring (05:23):
And we'd shoot those for the conference. So it'd be three of us. A guy named Ron Nge was in charge, and then it was me, Jesse, and then a lady named Megan Brown. We would shoot on XL twos and GH fours, fives, no, I don't even know what the words are anymore. GH fours or GH twos, sorry, GH five is now the new Panasonic. But yeah, we'd shoot to tape. It really has, I've been at Bethel from standard def up until four KI guess
Joseph Cottle(05:56):
You could say. Wow. All the way up. Well, I think they have, last time I looked they had an eight k four ME Constellation, I think is what the switcher is back there in the production booth. I think the last time they Bethel production did a,
Luke Manwaring (06:10):
Yeah, the technical side of this job is not, you don't come to me if the technical, so have to trust you on that one.
Joseph Cottle(06:17):
I have camera. We'll shoot. Yes. So let's talk, maybe start talking a little BTS stuff behind the scenes. So you're going to direct a shoot. What does that look like for you? Walk us through I guess, your day job a little bit.
Luke Manwaring (06:35):
Yeah, so if it's an album, I'll typically find out about it typically before it's fully greenlit of just like, Hey, we're planning this, whether it be in the Redwoods or at the church or somewhere else. We just did one in Nashville for Josh Baldwin a few weeks ago to just like, Hey, start thinking it through, is it plausible to do it like this? How much will it cost? So kind of a very rough budget. And then also just to give me a little bit of a jumpstart on just planning creatively what it can be. And then it's come up with, I have kind of a roster of guys, so if we use a lot of church production and then I've got kind a roster freelancers, I'll oftentimes have 'em pencil the schedule. This is very exciting information, but have them pencil just to get holds because that way they can reach out if they book something else.
(07:39):
I try and pull in different people. There's steady cams, there's people that are good at dollies, there's people that are good at shoulder rig and that kind of stuff. And then I'll make a loose plan. But I don't love planning angles too much. It's kind of very, yeah, it's just a loose plan for two reasons. One, I don't hear the demos or the songs a week or two out depending on the project come up here. We had maybe a month, I had the songs, homecoming a month or so with 'em. But that's really where the shape of the project comes. When I hear the songs camera or camera movement comes from for me, what the tempo of the song is, the mood of the song, the instrumentation and that kind of stuff. And then the second reason I don't love a solid, solid plan is once you're in the room and the lights come on and you see the artists, you can just find angles, camera ops, find different angles and say, Hey, what do you think about this?
(08:46):
So I do love to keep an open mind to that stuff. I think sometimes you can get a little locked in and then get frustrated on set if something changes. A good example, we did a project called Simple Last May, and the producer who I love and is phenomenal at his job just kept adding instruments. And it was like, okay, you get done figuring out and we're a small studio, you figure out how many things I have to and point cameras out and then I'll have my plan and the first day would it stressed me out. And it was horrible. And it was because I didn't have that approach. I really wanted that one to be, I was trying to go against what I normally do and I was like, I want to plan. And it was not the right one to try that on. So I think plans are great and I sketch out camera plots for everything, but it's definitely, yeah, I definitely like to find it. It's that Paul Thomas Anderson who's my favorite movie director, he calls it planned spontaneity and he's like, I have a plan, but I'm also planning to be spontaneous on set. And that's something that I've kind of taken since I've had him say that.
Joseph Cottle(10:11):
I think that's really smart. I know we shoot for that a little bit here too. And I picked this up from the Bethel production guys of really just trying to put cameras in a general area and then letting them find good shots and letting them do their best work and then I can pull their best work together on the broadcast. So that leads me to my next question then about that. How do you rehearse for a shoot like that? Do you rehearse? I mean, what's that look like for your guys specifically? Obviously I know the band's rehearsing and they're doing their own thing, but what does that look like on the production side?
Luke Manwaring (10:46):
Yeah, so we aim for a dress rehearsal. I've been really pushing for those since I used to freelance for Beth Music stuff in the last 18 months. It's my full-time job, so I'm kind of here from the ground up and me and the creative director, Christian Ostrom, who we work hand in hand on all this stuff, we like it for just outfits to make sure they work. And then also for the ops to see what we're doing. We can test angles, we can try some things. It's lowest, it's obviously there's no stakes really. It's tests and we can see like, oh, you know what? That idea in my head does not work at all. And I guess that's actually probably where I land the final plot because come up here was I would never do anything like it again. It was, I mean, we built the stage. My father-in-Law was on a tractor digging it up. We've got some cool behind the scenes that I could share with you if you want it. But yeah, we dug the stage out, moved, oh,
Joseph Cottle(12:04):
I've got some questions,
Luke Manwaring (12:05):
Moved a ton of dirt and stuff. So I could have had a plan. I had a plan. I knew what the jib would go and I knew what the jib could do. I knew kind of what the steady cam op could do, but I was like, Hey man, it's not level at all ever any moment is it flat? So yeah, so with that stuff, the dress rehearsal was key for that. And then on some projects, so the project we just did for Baldwin out in Nashville, we only had one take of the song. So we just did the songs once through, which isn't normal for us. A lot of it's, which we'll probably get to, but in the dress rehearsal, we shot to use the footage. So we shot angles that hid the fact that there was no crowd and it saved the project because we've got a rough cut and half of Josh's shots are from the dress rehearsal.
Joseph Cottle(13:00):
Wow,
Luke Manwaring (13:01):
The secret's out before
Joseph Cottle(13:04):
I can cut that, I don't have to tell anybody. That's very intriguing and really smart for you to try to make sure you're getting enough coverage like that. That's a lot of foresight in come up here. I think this is what I saw and what I'm guessing just from watching and kind of knowing a little bit about how this stuff works, it looks like I saw a drone, definitely saw drone, saw jib, saw Dolly, is that right? Who else did you have out there?
Luke Manwaring (13:32):
So we had jib on, I think a 20, 24 5 was the biggest I could get. And then we had Nathan Grubbs who he shot the hero shot on shoulder mount, which you could barely tell it was shoulder mount. He's very steady. And then we had a steady cam. He did, yeah, he roamed kind of in the back and then did some closeup stuff. And then that was Austin Schwarzenberg known him for 15 years, barely know how to say his name, sorry, Austin. And then Josh Seacrest was kind of roaming. He did a more handheld with an easy rig. I do love a natural kind of movement shake. And then we had Nathan Sea hosts and Chase Smith who ran Dana Dolly. And then we shifted. So we did four passes of each song over two days. So then we moved them all around. So we had five. So that's five, right? Yeah, because Nathan and Chase did, they wondered, one did one day, one did the other. So we did four takes five cameras. So we were 20 angles and then a few lock offs. So I think we landed on 26 angles per song doing it that way.
Joseph Cottle(14:53):
Wow. So with that, you've got all these shots, all these angles going, do you have a video village where you're looking at everything at one time? Or what does that look like for you?
Luke Manwaring (15:06):
That was the goal. I don't know if someone more technical would know actually what the words are, but it turns out wireless transmission doesn't work very well in the redwood forest. So I had the jib the whole time. I had steady cam the whole time and then everyone else it would just pop in and out. So it was a lot of, I hired people for the job that I knew. I just know them so well. Especially, I mean the jib I got to see, so the jib was the thing I directed the most because that to me was always the marquee shop was getting the big wides. But then also, I mean some of the lower stuff, there will be stuff that you think is a dolly, that's the jib going uncomfortably low to the ground. And then Nathan Grubbs, I know because Nathan Grubbs is my best friend mentor.
(16:07):
I've learned so much from him. He's done so many of these things that he values the worship leader being having a perfect shot the entire time. So I'm like, I could never see what he's shooting and know that in post we have kind of the master hero shot. But yeah, so definitely some trust. And then in the nature of this, there was no live crowd. It was alright, roll cameras over to the band and then we would yell, cut on a megaphone afterwards. So then I could quickly go and say, Hey, try this. Hey try this. But once we got to the second day, there was part of me that was like, should I be doing more? I always have that feeling of just, it feels like a director should be saying something at all times. But in actuality it was like, Hey, no, we've worked so hard and we got the right people in the right place.
(17:00):
The second night I kind of just enjoyed it and just sat back and was able to, because the first night we had it in the can, I mean I can't even begin to tell you the anxiety I had on the shoot, but once we had something and the audio was good, they were ready to pack up and go home and I was like, well hold the phone. I need the second day. So the second day was really alright. And I really just tried to be present because on this project in particular, I treat all of them like this. I'm never going to do one again. But this one I was like, yeah, you are actually not going to do this one again because you can't, can't do the redwoods again. You could do something as big maybe, and I hope I do something that requires as much as me as that one did again.
(17:48):
But it was just a thing of you only get to do this once and you can't do it badly. So that's where the stress came from and then the enjoyment and satisfaction of just being like, Hey, we did them and it was the biggest team we've ever had, but it still, everything we do is So I think people from the outside could think that we're like this behemoth production organization, but we're not. And we're a ragtag team and we're each doing more roles than we should and we pull it off. I mean, to move what's funny, bring up Chrisy Mulligan. For some reason he was on the coast at the same time as this, and so I think Jen said, Hey, swing by. And then he helped, he had a shovel in his hand moving the wood chips around to cover up the dirt and all that stuff. And our events, it was the best project. Every department touches a project at Bethel Music in one way or another. Obviously the events team organized it and all the schedules, but this was the first time where it was like everyone's hands were on the video. So it was really special in that sense. And it was a lot of people working extra hard to get it done
Joseph Cottle(19:09):
To go back to the come up peer shoot, how on earth do you light a forest? I'm looking at this and I'm like, man, the lighting is so good. And I know some of it you timed with golden hour, you've got the sunlight coming in through the trees in the background. But I'm like, I know they've got to have some keys, some fill. How do you light a redwood forest?
Luke Manwaring (19:34):
You call the best guy. So we went through a bunch. So they planned this, they've been planning this for three years. Homecoming was supposed to be this, but then they felt like, no post covid, we need to be with people. And then so I got brought in, I was freelance and did homecoming. It was kind of my quasi tryout I think a little bit deep down they'd admit to. So then I came in last April with the plans that we were going to do come up here. And then they had some plans that were awesome and outrageously expensive. So we thought about doing, there's the helium light soft box that you can float. And we were going down that path for a really long time. And then I thought to myself, that's going to be an every shot. To me, this thing had to be, it had to be wide.
(20:37):
And I don't love wides. I often forget wides sometimes, often. Sometimes that doesn't make sense, but I just knew that it had to be big. And I had this drone shot that I always had the intro. The intro is the only thing I planned and it's a little bit of an homage that we will not be shaken because this is kind of related to that in our, we were like, this is the follow-up to shaken 10 years later, same producers. And then I co-directed, we'll not be shaken with Nathan Grubbs who I will get to in this very long-winded answer. I love talking about this stuff. So cut me off if I go too long, I'm having a blast. So we had these plans and our budget got chiseled a little bit and I was like, Nathan Grubbs knows how to get crafty. And that's what it had to be was like how, here's the idea, we want layered lights to light up the forest and how can we do this?
(21:44):
And then he and Andrew Kelp and Andrew Kel used to be the lighting director about the production and he does this with LAD designs all over the country and he just knows the technical, he knows this light will work for this. This is how we can run the cable. And then Nathan was the creative aspect of we need this, this and this. How can it all work? And it was these layers of light, but we did the key light on a forklift that went up and were some things have some good photos of that I can send you as well. That would be great. And that's the other thing that's great about Nathan is because done these for himself as a producer and director, that's like key light. I was just like, dude, just nail the key light and everything else is fine. I just want beautiful skin tones.
(22:32):
I want them lit up. And the other thing too is a big not fight, but the concern was why are we going to the redwoods and you are shooting half the songs at night? I said, I want half the songs at night. And there was some pushback from the top and it got to, they're like, can you show us some examples? And I was like, no, because aren't we haven't, there's the Justin Bieber vivo videos, which I am half of the a hundred million views that those that were outside. And I showed them and they're like, well that's so moody and dark. And I'm like, this is why I shouldn't have sent these. And I said, Hey, just trust me. I was like, just please just trust me. And then we got to the dress rehearsal and I don't want to sound like I'm tooting my own horn.
(23:25):
There was other people on the team that were like, Hey, no, we trust the night will be epic. And I was like, that's when it will come alive to me. And to me that aspect of it was we're going into the Redwoods, we don't have an audience. How can we kind of show that it's us and it be a production? And to me it was if we did, we talked about having no visible lights. And I was like, I actually love at no stage too. We talked about just being on the ground. And I was like, I actually think it's would be cool old storytelling thing to be like, Hey, this is actually a Bethel production. This is a Bethel worship night. And we just planted it in the middle of a redwood forest. So that was when I was like, when the lights come on at night, it's going to feel special.
(24:18):
And Brian walked up and he is like, this is insane. This looks incredible. He's like, definitely. And it got to the point where it was like, yeah, we should shoot more of it a night and then to go back to the Sunbeam. So the first day we shot it, and so if you watch the song, come up here, watch the light, and you will know that it was multipass. But the first day it was Overcast and there was no sun. And Jen in soundcheck on the second day of shooting, she was like, I have always seen a Sunbeam. How can we get that? I was like, well, let's just bump up. I was like, let's bump up the recording and start earlier. And that's the opening shot where the sunbeam's coming through was because Jen and credit to her for calling it, she was like, Hey, that's how I see this. How can we get it? And I was like, well, we'll just start recording earlier. And then I think we did a little break. We wanted the light obviously to match. So we started at the same time both days. So yeah, so if you watch that video, watch the Sun specifically on the stage, you can see that, which is day one, which is day two. And I figure people who do this are going to listen to this, so they know this stuff. So I'm not ruining it for everyone. But
Joseph Cottle(25:39):
No, I don't think you ruin it for any of us. This stuff annoys my wife because we're watching television and obviously I'm in this world a little bit and I listen to a lot of long form podcasts like Armchair Expert and a couple other ones where it's just actors and producers and stuff talking. And so I love the BT S stuff and I'm just pulling apart the show for her a little bit. Like, oh yeah, they did this shot and that's a dolly and and they're doing all this and she's just like, can you just watch the show, man? I don't, I think I've watched the Lord of the Rings appendices more than I've actually watched the films themselves. I just sit there and watch them produce those movies and it's incredible. I did have a question about your creative decision. So I noticed that there's some shots where you actually have some of your lighting in the shot and you have some of your camera operators in the shot. That was an interesting creative choice to me. What was the thought there?
Luke Manwaring (26:40):
Are you ready for a very simple answer that we didn't have the money to shoot in a way that you hide them? I mean that's really what it comes down to. I love it. I love it. There's no getting around it. If you watch, so Billie Eilish did her Disney happy in than ever that they shot in the Hollywood Bowl and you never see a camera. They shot it with one camera and moved them and did it probably nine or 10 times per song probably that I haven't seen. I think there's a couple of times you see 'em. And that was my dream. And then it just wasn't impossible.
(27:22):
Could I, with hindsight now, yeah, I could probably come up with a shoot schedule that worked within our budget, but there was so much unknown and there was so much if it rained, we haven't even talked about rain. It never rains. Everyone thinks the coast, the northern California coast is notoriously rainy this month. It doesn't rain there. So we shot on Jen's uncle's property and they said it has not rained like this for 10 years and they're loggers. So they track the rain the second the rain comes in, they have to move their equipment because their logging roads get washed out or so I'm told something like that. There's no loggers listening to this episode. I think I'm good.
(28:14):
We should send it to for a fact check. Yeah, for sure. Let's, let's get this out to Loggers Production magazine. So we lost a day of setup. It rained in our second day. It was my wife showed up two days in and pointed out that I had gray hairs here that I didn't have when I left. I thought it was not going to happen. So there was part of it that was like if I roll in and have a plan that is, we could have done the jib one day, we could have done the jib big wide pass and a closeup pass, strike the jib, this is how I do it now. And then the next day, camera ops closer. They wouldn't be in the jib shots, but factoring in the rain, I had to be like, we have to walk away with the album on if I have two days to shoot it each day, I have to have an album, otherwise I am screwed.
(29:17):
Sorry if that's inappropriate to say, but No, you're good. Don't bleep it out would sound worse. But yeah, I would be, the album is obviously the king we have to put out. Then the music was captured. So if I take this budget and I'm like, I have this vision, I want it clean and perfect, but it rained the second day and I just have jib shots and we don't have a project. So that was part of it too. I would prefer it clean. And people have said, Hey, there's camera ops. And I'm like, yep, Nathan Grubbs is very featured in this thing that that's part of me too. Listen, it was not my preference, but there's part of it too that's like, hey listen, we're out in the redwoods and there's no crowd. I mean the crowd do hide a lot of camera ops in big wide shots. Yeah, that's true. In the normal thing. And we did homecoming with no stage camera ops and there were no people on stage for this. Because I feel like that's something I'm trying to get away from is having camera ops standing behind the worship leader in shots kind of drives me insane. But yeah, so it was just purely based on the needs of the project, not a creative choice. Well
Joseph Cottle(30:30):
That's good for us to know because I think a lot of times we have to be creative because of our limitations. There's this idea, I think a false idea of it that you can be the most creative when you don't have limitations, but it's usually our limitations that force us to come up with creative solutions. And for what it's worth, I don't think that having your ops in the shot are outside of Bethel's. What word am I looking for? Production aesthetic. Because even most of us watch the live broadcast and you see the cam ops in there all the time. So this isn't out of it. It's not out of character for them. So you did what you had to do and you did it in a great way and it keeps it, I think sometimes the church production world, we try to be too shiny and it's okay for people to know that, well, we're not perfect, we we're just us and we're doing what we can do and trying to do it as best we can.
Luke Manwaring (31:32):
Yeah, I think what you said about the limitations, I think to think outside of a box and listen, this might not even be profound, might not even be true, but I think you have to first be put into a box to then go outside of the box because then you're aware that you're outside of the box and you're aware that, hey, I've taking a swing here, but I have everything here. I have a follow cam, I have a wide cam, I have this. Alright, so for this camera, let's do something kind of weird on simple. We did a take where we cut off funks face here and we didn't show his eyes and it was cool and it's in the song one time and we were able to do that because we had all the other things and it worked. So it's like to me, and all of every decision I make has limitations because we don't have unlimited budget.
(32:24):
We quoted out a techno crane crane for this, which was my dream, and I had so many ideas of how we could use it, but we ran the numbers and while they aren't as expensive as I thought they would be, they were still too much for us. But yeah, limitations to me are inspiring and it comes back to, so we're shooting a project in a place that is kind of not crazy inspiring, but that I just view it as a challenge. At first I was annoyed and I'm like, alright, how can we do it in a way that is different and new? And I think that's an exciting thing to just approach things as a little challenge.
Joseph Cottle(33:12):
I've got two questions to wrap things up. The first one is, what advice do you have for budding directors? Maybe people in the church production world that are just getting started with what you're doing, which is, I call it post-production. There's live production, which is the Sunday morning broadcast thing, but then people who are, maybe they're having to create a little makeshift studio in a backroom in their church building and just start producing content. What's your advice for them?
Luke Manwaring (33:42):
Just get out and shoot. I was so lucky in the sense that my version of that was Jesus culture shoots. And I mean that's the first time, let me double check. This is correct. I think this is true. The first time I ever shot music was the night that Kim did that. So I'm extremely fortunate in that sense to just be there at the start of something incredibly special that went around the world as not an exaggeration. And it actually was kind of because of the video that Jesus culture that was early days YouTube and it went viral. Someone ripped the DVD and his version went viral and it kind of put Jesus culture on the map. They probably would've got there anyway. So I was fortunate in that sense. But my advice would be, I mean, especially the gear now, I'm jealous of the people that grew up on Super eight, the Spielbergs and the Abrams of the world.
(34:51):
My childhood was not as cool. It was mini DV, was kind of my high score stuff and doesn't even look cool. It just is what it is. But now the iPhone is insane. Or Apple just shot their whole keynote thing on iPhone, obviously with some great lighting, but just get out and shoot and try things and find band. If you want to shoot music, find artists, whether they're worship or rock or whatever, and shoot and experiment and try some things and just obsess. Like watch, I watch performance videos, music videos every day. I watch the same ones over and over again. I find director poor Doug Dale is the director that I watch a ton, and Micah Beckham, who does all the vivo stuff, who's just the vivo guys are so incredible and watch what they do, take little things and that way when you're on set, you're ready for angles and stuff.
(35:56):
A lot of that comes from, it feels like it comes from you in a spontaneous like, oh, what have we tried this? But you can look back and be like, oh, I remember in this one shot, in this one video or movie or whatever. But yeah, I mean, yeah, just get out and shoot, be inspired. And if it's something that to me, I just felt like I shot a ton and I still do shooting, but I shot a ton with Nathan Grubbs on his project, Jesus culture and a bunch of other people that he's done. We just did a gospel thing together that I shot for him, I flew out for. And it got to a point to me where I was like, it felt arrogant and it was very hard for me to admit, even just in my own head of just like I truly felt that I was supposed to be a director.
(36:51):
And it's like, Hey, I think I should be the most important person on the video team. But I really felt it and I was like, I'm done shooting for other people. So to me it became, if I don't get to do this, I actually want to do something else. I don't just want to keep shooting. I have ideas and I have ways to approach it that I think are a little bit different, but they're still like, I'm so heavily influenced by Nathan to this day and other people I watch. But I was just like, I actually feel like I have a language with how I shoot angles. And that's something that even some Toby Johnston, who's old school, Bethel production, we did the first Bethel TV stream. He actually helped me realize, we sat around after a shoot for Bethel Music and he and Austin and I just, we sat together and it was so freeing.
(37:50):
We were all in this tiny town in reading where you were competing for the same jobs and there's one record label in town that's Bethel music. And we competed for the jobs and it was competitive and there was feelings hurt and we didn't fully trust each other. And we came together. We've all Austin's in New York, Toby's in Atlanta, I'm still here. And we were like, I was jealous of you here and I was jealous of you. And we were like, you were jealous of me when I did that. And we were so confused. And it was then we were able to celebrate each other and how we all now do different completely different things. And they were able to help me be like, yeah, you are doing something that is different. Toby was like, you have a language. And that's why I said that. He was like, you have a language with cameras.
(38:39):
And it was cool for me to hear that someone else believed it, which I don't know, this sounds so lame, but it creativity is so vulnerable and it's sometimes so hard to be like, yeah, I think I'm good at a thing. But it was cool. Let's say it was just cool. We all came together and we just celebrated each other. And maybe that's some advice for younger people, just like this is supposed to be collaborative and in movies it's so weird. You have a crew of a hundred people, it takes a full team, which is true what we talked about. We've come up here and it can be competitive, but it's important to remember that you're not going to be able to be good by yourself. I have Nathan Seahurst, who I mentioned, he likes 90% of what I do until I partnered with him, especially on some of the acoustic stuff like Pine Street sessions, until I partnered with his abilities, I was capped.
(39:43):
I was at a ceiling, I wouldn't have got any better. But Nathan is such a nerd about lights that just loves it. The guy thinks about negative bounce in his free time, just loves it. And it's leveled me up. And I like to think that I've leveled him up and it's this thing of, if we all just agree that you are good at this, I'm good at this, you are good at this, let's do it together and we all get to win. And that's kind of where, it took me way too long, way too long to come to that realization in my life. And it at times was embarrassing to admit, but especially in a small town like Redding, it was competitive. You one man crew it, you are doing audio, you're doing lights because you got to pay the bills and the budgets aren't big. So it's like, well, I could crew up, but then I make $100 and I can't make rent. I think that was, there's some advice in there somewhere.
Joseph Cottle(40:45):
That's some great advice. Please pay your rent. Great advice. Well, hey, this has been really great, man. Thank you again so much for joining us and just sharing some of your knowledge and some of your experiences producing these videos. And if you're ever in Kansas City, please let me buy you a cup of coffee and we can hang out. We've got, I don't know what you got in Reding, but the coffee here is really good. The barbecue here is really good. So come on by and hang out, man.
Luke Manwaring (41:18):
Yeah, we don't have the barbecue aspect except for my house when I actually bust out my smoker. But we have great coffee, feast coffee, unofficial sponsor of my life because I give them money to get their coffee while I was drinking this entire podcast. They fuel all our shoots. They're the key ingredients. So yeah, this was fun. I appreciate it. I love talking about this stuff, not myself, but I love talking about the behind the scenes stuff, especially with people that love it too. My wife could, she's done talking about it, but it's fun to nerd out a little bit and talk about the nitty gritty of how it all works. So this was fun.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
Thanks again for listening to the church production podcast from church production.com. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast, our email list and our YouTube channel, as well as follow us on Instagram for everything church production.