A Good Day

Two meetings today – first one with Krista Mason, founder and dreamer behind an absolutely jaw dropping vision called Benjamin’s Hope – a place where people with autism, downs, or other developmental differenecs can find peace and meaning in a farm-like setting. Krista hired GP to help her tell her story and raise the money to bring her dream into reality. Today she and a friend came in to review my script. Krista is everything you could want in a client – she’s smart, she’s passionate, she knows her subject, and she’s authentic. She is living this story herself. Her fifteen-year old son has autism. I felt great when she came today and said to me that the fund raising consultant she works with loved the script, and she did as well. “He sure knows how to weave a story,” were her exact words – words about me and this script. Now, I love to hear that. We are always working hard to tell other people’s stories. People come to us because they recognize that they don’t really know the best way to tell their own story. I’m thrilled that Krista Mason and Benjamin’s Hope came to us for our help. I am honored to be a part of helping Krista make her dream a reality.

Second meeting – rough cut screening for the fourth and fifth episodes of a travel/teaching series we’re producing with best-selling author and host Ray VanderLaan. Today we showed RVL, as he is known, an episode we had cut together that takes place on either side of the Red Sea in the Egyptian desert. RVL doesn’t need much help with his he is a veritable encyclopedia of Biblical knowledge. We just produce his lessons in ways that are powerful, visual, compelling, and moving. Today we showed him some initial comps of a shoot we pulled together just last Friday. I shot, here in our studio, several scenes that our graphics guys would comp together to create a “you are there” moment when the Israelites were crossing the Red Sea. Now we weren’t after a Charlton Heston moment, but we did want to get a great visual sense of the fear, the uncertainty, the blow-your-mind moment the Israelites were experiencing. It was the result of some creative mixed color temps, some huge fans, some decent costumes, a lot of shadow, a chroma screen, and a vision for a great night crossing scene. RVL saw the comps of these today, and combined with the other graphics we’ve created like Pharoah in his palace and a hoard of 600 chariots kicking up dust along the desert horizon — he was delighted and surprised.

Now, neither of these two projects are fully complete yet. But satisfaction in this business comes, for me, every day the process goes well; every day the client is satisfied, every day we can be proud of our work. Today was such a day.

Last 5 posts by John Grooters

• New Finds - June 15th, 2009
• The Happening - June 3rd, 2009
• Biola Media Conference - April 30th, 2009
• Meeting with Movie Execs - March 24th, 2009

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 6:00 pm and is filed under GP Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.