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Join Church Production Magazine as we delve into the world of church technology and media ministry, featuring in-depth conversations with church tech experts about the latest in lighting, audio, video, staging, streaming, and content creation, and how they wrap it all together to create meaningful worship experiences. Discover how they leverage cutting-edge technology to enhance regular services, produce impactful sermon bumpers, and create both short and feature-length films. Whether you're a seasoned tech professional or new to the field, gain valuable insights and tips to elevate your church’s production quality, help your church expand its reach, and communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Joseph Cottle(00:04):
You are listening to the church production podcast from churchproduction.com. I'm your host, Joseph Cottle, and today we're with Amanda Needham, the managing director of the Telly Awards, an organization that highlights film and video from wherever it is made. Amanda spent time with church production at Capture Summit just last week, so we wanted to sit down with her and talk about her experience as a judge for the Church Film Craft Festival. But we get into all sorts of production topics and ideas as well as how good Bluey is for parents and kids.
But first, we want to thank all of our sponsors who supported Capture 24 and especially our premier sponsors, Evertz , NanLite and Sony, along with special thanks to our gold sponsors, Canon, Fujifilm, Sweetwater, and Worship Productions. Thank you all for joining us at Capture Summit this year.
Now let's dive in with Amanda. Alright, Amanda, thank you so much for joining us. Let's talk a little bit just to start out about your role at the Tell Awards, how you got involved in that. Tell us about your world a little bit.
Amanda Needham (01:11):
Yeah, totally. So thank you for having me. First of all, the Telly awards honors excellence in video and television across all screens, and we've been doing it for a good old 46 years. We're launching our 46 season October 15th. I have not been involved with it that long, but it is a veritable institution and in general, we're sort of the only video and television award show that accepts work from wherever it happens to be made in the video medium, which is relatively unique considering that the world used to exist where you had to get an Emmy, you had to be on television to get an Oscar, you had to make a movie on the big screen. But these days, the world is so hybrid and content making is so across the board that we're kind of in an interesting position in that we've never really cared where or who you were making your video work for. We cared if it was good. And so these days we accept work across branded content commercials and marketing television shows and series immersive, interactive social media and non-broadcast. And a lot of our entrants come from everywhere from a TikTok show to a television show to a independent producer or an institution or a nonprofit, anything like that. We get everything under the sun.
Joseph Cottle(02:32):
And how did you get involved with the Telly Awards?
Amanda Needham (02:35):
Yeah, so I've been the managing director for the past two years. I'll be launching my second season. And my history is in sort of all the things that the Telly's touches. So I've done a little bit of brand partnerships. I've done, I've run a business, I've been on the production side of things. I've worked on financing for feature films. I've done social impact work. And the Telly's is a program. So we do, yes, an award show, but we do work our winners and our judging council and our industry community to really build out a point of view on what is happening in video and television and have discussions around the values and ethics that go into that work. So I've done a little bit of all of the things that go into the job. And then just specifically my background is in production, independent production. I was a documentary filmmaker for a while. I've done, like I said, social impact production on feature films, and then I'm trained as a journalist. So I have sort of a broad spectrum of, we've done nonprofit work, done corporate work, so we get work from all across it. So I feel like I've got a little bit of inklings on how all of it works.
Joseph Cottle(03:40):
You started working with the Telly Awards. What motivated you to do that?
Amanda Needham (03:43):
It's just a great position to be in, and it's a great job. I live in New York City. I am passionate about the direction that film and television and the values that go into it happen. Having more sustainability, more diversity, more support for filmmakers that are up and coming. And the Tellis is a really interesting approach, two awards. It's one of the only award shows that won accepts work from wherever it's made. So we don't really, again, care what it was originally crafted for. We Care if the Craft is Good. Two was always sort of like an outside the LA New York Circuit Award as well, which in today's world means we're global. If you made it in Calcutta or if you made it in Kansas City, if it's good, it's good. And the other thing is we score on a rubric. So we score on if it hits a certain mark, it could win a gold, silver, or bronze.
(04:42):
And if it doesn't, if nothing does, we have a lot of categories. If nothing hits that mark a certain category, nothing's going to win. So it reduces this winner take all, or you're pitted against each other mentality, and it goes towards what is on display here, regardless of how much money you had regardless of where you came from, regardless of what you set out to do. And so you get little production houses winning up against big ones like Netflix and Warner Brothers, which I love. So how or why did I get involved? I love the fact that I get to be part of an organization that brings recognition and shines recognition wherever it happens to be. And that is part of elevating certain voices that might not get it that way and bringing validation to people's lives. A lot of times if you're not directly in the video or television industry, you're doing the work, but there's very little opportunity to be seen for your creativity. And so it's pretty cool to be able to say, Hey, by the way, that drone shot in that scrap metal yard in rural Texas, that was fantastic and it was just as good as the other guys. So I really love that part about what I do.
Joseph Cottle(05:56):
Now you got hooked up with Capture Summit and we'll say church film production. How did that come about?
Amanda Needham (06:04):
So a number of our, we get entrants from everywhere. We get entrants from government organizations, from corporate entities, from advertising houses, from production houses, from post-production houses, from television network from studios and from nonprofits and community groups and churches. And so when I first took over, I thought, well, what's going on? Let's see what kind of work is happening. And I saw some really beautiful documentary film work coming out of the Life Family Church in Austin, Texas. And I have conversations with our entrance on and off and had a great conversation with a guy named Will Hammond, who was just talking about how he's bridging. There are many campuses into conversation points, which is the power of film. It's empathetic, it's emotional driven, it's storytelling. And they, in their particular situation had a very rural campus in Texas. They had a downtown campus and they had more of a suburban campus. And I just thought, how interesting is it for a church to be able to be a connector, a storyteller? And also, I mean there's just, there's so many video can do, so much. And so I was intrigued with how people were using it in different contexts. And so I figured I'd come here a little bit more about how people are using it in different contexts.
Joseph Cottle(07:21):
Now, are you a churchgoer yourself or was this a new world to you?
Amanda Needham (07:27):
I mean, I'm familiar with America. I'm American. I understand that there are different levels of production in different organizations. I am not here to talk about myself personally, but absolutely I wasn't unfamiliar with the environment. And it was actually, frankly, a very, it seemed like a very professional standard video production conference. That's what it is. And that's what was cool is seeing different people from different orientations using video production to further their means. And it's just always interesting to see how that happens and where it happens. Well, I wasn't familiar with the term creative pastor, but I think that's a fantastic term, and I think every church should have one that I agree that's a really awesome thing to have someone that is in charge of creativity, outreach and also forming the stories that are being told. So I mean, that's like where it starts having real places of community wherever they are and then supporting that with resources that enable you to actually engage with people and the place you are. It makes the fabric of this country and the world and humanity because we're then sharing stories and we're having different and multiple points of connection. So video is very powerful in that realm. And so I am glad that
(08:53):
You're fully staffed and have someone to it because that means more jobs for people that need to do that work and more storytellers out there. That's the point is that it should be valued and recognized and supported because a legitimate form of communication in the 21st century. Well, and
Joseph Cottle(09:11):
Yeah, what you said about connecting, I was just listening to an episode of Armchair Expert and he was talking to Bill Lawrence, who's this showrunner and writer that's created just some of our favorite shows like Scrubs. And they talked about how film, television, whatever that medium has connected America for a long time, especially in the era of when network television was king. And you go back even as recent as the late nineties or how many people that you would go to work the next day and you could talk about last night's friends episode or last night's episode of Will and Grace or something like that because everybody watched it. And streaming has changed that a little bit, but it does connect us in a particular way. And you're talking about the church there. In Austin, we have a similar situation where we have three campuses, but in three really different
Amanda Needham (10:10):
Spaces.
Joseph Cottle(10:11):
We have a very rural campus. We have more of an inner city campus in Kansas City, Kansas, and then ours is more your typical suburban megachurch. But we definitely use the video medium to bring us together as much as we can, whether that before was piping in Sunday sermons to those campuses, but also now through the work of our creative director building specific announcement videos and things like that for each campus, but also in ways that still keep us connected. It's an interesting
Amanda Needham (10:47):
Thing. I challenge you to go further with it though, because what I see as, I mean just from a storytelling perspective or just from a film perspective, having access to different kinds of communities and having buy-in around certain value bases is the beginning of conversations. And we are in a culturally divided world right now because we no longer have episodes of friends to talk about because we are oversaturated with media and we are splintered in echo chambers from algorithms that we're all familiar with.
(11:20):
We need to come back around to a place where we can, there is still the potential to be connected through media. It just has to be done intentionally. And so rather than the top down approach, and this is the social impact producer in me speaking, leaning in to the access you have to very different lives and very different realities in those three communities that are already identified as being connected for one reason or another is the beginning of real conversations. And if you have to use a video series, like a small video series to talk about how you got to where you are and why or how you came to the church or how you came to that community, there will be real learnings in that that could then be unpacked and shared and people could actually, I'm saying there's a possibility of creating new sorts of stories that
(12:08):
Actually build a collective narrative. But that is an opening. It's not a, let me tell you, or an announcement orientation. It's like what is here for us to digest and understand together? And that if it's done through film or I'm literally imagining there could be, it could be a series, you could do a documentary series on people's different stories, their lives. It could be. And I just think that the more people take where they are and the tech resources they have and they start to talk about the real things happening, and in an open space where you could actually engage, you're going to have more people involved and you're going to have, that's the way to use media in a way that's not splintering. It's a way that brings people together. Obviously it's a production, but you're also training people. You're getting skill sets, you're giving kids opportunity to use cameras, you can have them interview their elders. There's all sorts of community-based filmmaking work that could be integrated into the structure you have in Kansas or in Austin or wherever. That I think would be kind of exciting. So there's my little go further. Go further.
Joseph Cottle(13:20):
That was great. You need to come to more church conferences and talk
Amanda Needham (13:24):
About this. There's any of 'em Go
Joseph Cottle(13:26):
Further. Yeah,
Amanda Needham (13:28):
Niche content. It's the future. So if you've got a niche, you've got content.
Joseph Cottle(13:36):
So I wasn't able to attend the Capture Summit, and I'm assuming that a lot of people who are listening to this episode also weren't able to. So tell us about your experience and because it was your first time, and so we'd love to hear, how'd it go for you?
Amanda Needham (13:52):
So I attended the summit specifically as part of the film festival review. So I was on stage with a gentleman, Luke, from Worship House Media, I believe, who was a distribution company related to church films. And we were both commenting on and critiquing the submissions and talking about craft in a production context. But as I said, a lovely and standard gathering, not too big, not too small. Good representatives from the local gear companies, from the local sound production, good things on great workshops that were happening. It was clearly a community being built around AV production and creative work in churches, which I think is, there needs to be more support for. It's a big job doing production is a big job. It's never acknowledged as a big job. It's a big job. And so the more support and connection you can have around that, the better. But I was particularly there in the context of the film festival.
Joseph Cottle(14:51):
And what stood out to you from the films that you saw in, I mean, you served as a judge, correct? Is that my understanding?
Amanda Needham (14:59):
Yeah. I reviewed the sort of final episodes. I thought that the short form documentary oriented one man with a camera doing, doing a profile piece on one of the volunteers for the food delivery services was great because it was an actual short documentary film easily replicated and done anywhere. And we learned about the person, we learned about the program, we learned about opportunities to get involved. So to me, it's like there's high quality work to be done in the standard docus sense. And there was other interesting examples of people making films. Essentially. People have evolved. Everyone is leveling up in video on television. If you'd used to just be a one man person with your camera, you're now deciding to finance a short film, figure it out. Everyone is, if it used to just be a little shaky hand camera with a guy being like, Hey, come volunteer at the food bank now it's a documentary short. It's a docus short. So
(16:03):
It's always interesting to see where and in what directions people are going. And generally speaking, from the Telly awards perspective, the Telly sees work across so many outlets from branded to immersive to social to television. And my insight in general is that people are experimenting in form. There's a new form of story taking shape that they're taking the best from community aspects of social media fan engagement. They're taking the best parts of classic film structure and looks and feel. They're taking some of the humor from ads and they're just playing. They're having fun with what's possible. And I think it's going to, I'm excited to see what kind of work continues to come out of all the places people are experimenting with video intelligence. And I think that experimenting is what is going to make the next friends. I do think that it's going to be experimenting in communities and then getting support and finding fan bases in non-traditional spaces that will then be bets that are placed by Hollywood and other larger media entities on that work. It comes with the built-in audience. It comes with a point of view, and that's the new way to get seen and to have your work get out there. So it's always interesting to swim in the different ponds where people are experimenting
Joseph Cottle(17:35):
To the listener who maybe has this creative idea, doesn't have the budget or thinks that they don't have the budget. What would you say to them right now after you've been doing this for a while, and it sounds like you've been kind of maybe on the gorilla end of filmmaking a little bit.
Amanda Needham (17:56):
I have been in different contexts. I've also been on the higher end of it, I think, and they are meeting in the middle. There's less and less budgets and higher quality is demanded and shorter timelines in general across the board. And AI is changing that as well. But I would say make your movie, submit it to the tellies under our new films and shorts section, because we see so much independent work that we needed to break out a section that's like, you just made a short movie. Let's call it what it is. It's not a non-broadcast, whatever. It takes 20 grand to make a short piece. If you want to professionally produce lowest end professionally, produce a scripted piece with a crew and edit and then submit it to festivals, you're probably going to need 20 grand. But you can probably do it for five if you get some friends. And I would say, do it for 500, put it on YouTube. Do it again. Use the feedback, make it a little better. Find more people. Show what you started with, try it again. There is room for creativity and voices out there and places. The Telly's are places you can get recognition without realizing it.
Joseph Cottle(19:21):
I think too, you'd be surprised who wants to support you. I have a friend who just self-published a book and I asked him like, oh, I've thought about doing that before, but I just don't have the cash to swing that. And he's like, oh, I didn't pay for it. And I was like, what are you talking about? He's like, yeah, I just raised some money. I did a Kickstarter and people chipped in. And I was like, oh, wow. I just hadn't really thought about that.
Amanda Needham (19:45):
So there's seed and spark. That's like a filmmaker one. There's Kickstarter. There's Patreon, there's lots of different ways you can get, there's your church, go to your church, pitch it. You get 20 bucks from a hundred people. Go for
Joseph Cottle(20:01):
It. Make it art. Exactly. I found on my team, it's such a weird experience because I'm the AVL director, but that doesn't always translate over to what the title director means, maybe in the corporate world. So I have on my team, I had a vice president of a big tech company who's working under me.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
I
Joseph Cottle(20:28):
Have a guy who's a real estate investor, people who are making way much more money
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Than
Joseph Cottle(20:36):
I am, probably with way more responsibility, but on Sundays I'm in charge of them. But what I've found is that in cases like this, those are the kind of people that you should maybe just have a coffee with and be like, Hey, we want to do this thing.
Amanda Needham (20:51):
Absolutely.
Joseph Cottle(20:52):
Yeah. And not only will they chip in, but they'll probably be like, Hey, I'll run a camera for you
Amanda Needham (20:56):
For free. Look, I would say the most interesting part of attending the Capture Summit was the takeaway that, I'll call 'em community spaces. In your context, they're churches, but in places where you have shared values and you're coming together around a shared reason, there is an opening and an openness to helping each other and to supporting each other in whatever shared value sets you have. And so that's actually really cool in a video and television context as well, where you literally have the guy that runs court TV at First Baptist in Atlanta. Everyone is coming from a different walk of life. And so there's real potential for collaboration. That's what I'm saying. You guys should collaborate, do more, tell the stories that matter, uncover them and connect communities that would start making stuff that would be engaging in real work around what we're doing here on earth. Why are we here? How does this work? It's the large existential questions on Earth, that community connection and a video camera can actually help.
Joseph Cottle(22:15):
Right. In your opinion, what are the stories that matter?
Amanda Needham (22:21):
Any story about humanity and where we're going and why we're here and how to go further? And hearts love. I mean, that's what video is all about. It's about human connection and higher, higher, higher creativity expression. So we are all magical beings. We all have the ability to manifest beauty, and I think we get locked under certain thoughts of self or hindrances of money that make us not do what we can do. And so if you are oriented towards using video and television to do that, then I would say work on whatever story it is you have. One of the films that was in the thing in the festival was just that, I think it was made in New York City. It was a movie. They made a movie around a theological question around homelessness. They put together so many story, beautiful storylines about important things that this particular human wanted to interrogate, and many other people have similar interests. So it's like if you're able to touch into what it is you want to talk about and then explore it in a creative
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Fashion,
Amanda Needham (23:39):
You're going to find people that resonate with that. And the whole purpose is to go deeper and learn more and go beyond what you think you already know. So
Joseph Cottle(23:50):
Just for fun, what are you watching right now that's really doing it for you, Amanda?
Amanda Needham (23:56):
Well, Joseph, I have two small children under the age of four, so I watch Bluey pretty much all the time, and I love it.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
Yeah,
Amanda Needham (24:06):
I think I cried the other day and I actually did.
Joseph Cottle(24:09):
I loved it. I did too. I did too. It was the episode. It was episode where they're selling their house. Oh man, that one got me. We moved around a lot as a kid. And so that one touched a nerve. I was watching the, I hate to admit this, I know it's everybody's favorite right now, but I have not yet watched Inside Out. Oh,
Amanda Needham (24:36):
Right, yeah.
Joseph Cottle(24:38):
And I was
Amanda Needham (24:38):
Watching both. Interesting.
Joseph Cottle(24:39):
Yeah, I was watching the end of it. Unfortunately, I was just cuddling with my daughter. She was winding down for the night and I saw the last five minutes of it, and I'm just in tears immediately. I didn't even need to watch the rest of the movie.
Amanda Needham (24:51):
Wait.
Joseph Cottle(24:51):
So
Amanda Needham (24:52):
With Bluey, from a structured perspective, eight minutes long,
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Very
Amanda Needham (24:57):
Digestible.
(24:59):
Always. And the perspective is the Children's, which is also very unique. My favorite episode to Illuminate, the beauty of what they do in it is, well, first of all, I don't know if they were boys or girls. I couldn't understand. When I listened to Bluey in passing, I'm like, I can't even understand what's going on. It's like a heavy Australian, New Zealand accent. But then when I sit down and watch, I'm like, oh wow, this is really magic. So eight minutes long, and it's the children's perspective. So there was one episode where, who's the young one? It's not Bluey, but the sister
Joseph Cottle(25:37):
Bingo,
Amanda Needham (25:39):
Bingo, Bingo's trying to learn to do a handstand at a party, and there's no talking the entire episode. It's just music. It's like the techno music from the parents' party that's happening. The parents are coming in and out of the kitchen and Bluey is Sorry, and Bingo is sitting in that kitchen trying to do a handstand and can't do it and tries again and falls down, and people are running and no one's paying attention. She gets it. No one sees it. She tries again. It's just like you're sitting with this one chart of the perspective and you see all the other things through this one little kick, and they're all different like that. It's like they're just these little mini moments that that's why I love them. We want me to tell you what I hate. It's Coco Melon. Can't handle that one. Can't handle that one. If I had that many rooms in my house and that many families living in one house, it's like this eternal suburbia that just continues from room to room. And I'm like, what is this?
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Who is
Amanda Needham (26:38):
Like this? I dunno. But they love it because of the addictive songs. The songs is key to that. From a structure perspective, it's like it's about a pace and it's actually very psychologically developed. There's brilliant articles written about the people that made that, about how you want to talk about how you addict a child and a human to television because it's addictive.
Joseph Cottle(27:04):
I am on the fence about melon. I definitely don't want to listen to it anymore. But they do a little bit of the bluey thing too, in that if you look at the shots, it's all from the kids' heights. So you're always
Amanda Needham (27:18):
Looking. That's interesting. Yes. I didn't think about that.
Joseph Cottle(27:21):
You're always looking up at the parents, you're always looking up at the world and you're at eye level with JJ and his brothers
Speaker 3 (27:31):
And sisters.
Joseph Cottle(27:32):
You're even a little bit below his older brothers and sisters, which aren't very much older, maybe a couple years.
Amanda Needham (27:37):
Interesting.
Joseph Cottle(27:38):
And
Amanda Needham (27:39):
Let me clarify, I don't hate Coco Melon. The songs are in my head and I'm like, I can't. More the consistency of
Joseph Cottle(27:49):
It. I am with you there lately. So our youngest is just about to turn three, and lately she's switched to PAW Patrol, which
Amanda Needham (27:59):
Is adrenaline based. So when the thing about Paw Patrol here, here's the breakdown Craft perspective. It's adrenaline based music. If you don't watch it and you listen, your heart starts palpitating and you're like, is this an action movie? What's going on? And that's where I'm like, I mean when I sit down and then watch it with them, there's a helper, there's a confidence question. There's a working through a problem. All that's positive. But to be aware, the adrenaline of it is, I would say, unhealthy for a little one. If you're going to be critical, if there's a critical lens to those are the things going on that are keeping them watching.
Joseph Cottle(28:41):
I was going to say though, that I haven't, I feel like with Paw Patrol and Co Melon, it's kind of 6 0 1, half dozen, the other, however, at least PAW Patrol has a plot. Yeah. Accurate. Accurate. And it's a consistent plot I'm watching. It's well, at least these dogs are up to something instead of just totally, we're just singing a song.
Amanda Needham (29:02):
That's what I'm saying, the endless song that moves to a different virtual environment.
Joseph Cottle(29:06):
Yeah. Amanda, thank you so much for taking time with us today for the podcast and then also for coming and joining us at Capture Summit. We really appreciate your time and your perspective just as an industry professional. And yeah, thank you so much, and hopefully we'll get to spend more time together in the future.
Amanda Needham (29:29):
Yeah, you're very welcome. I'm honored to be there and to chat with you today.
Joseph Cottle(29:32):
Alright, thanks Amanda.
Amanda Needham (29:33):
You're welcome.
Joseph Cottle(29:37):
Thanks again for listening to the church production podcast from churchproduction.com. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast or email list and our YouTube channel, as well as follow us on Instagram for everything church production.