Dallas Trip, Part 1 of Many

I just arrived back in Lafayette from a trip to the Big D, and I have LOTS to post about, but we're getting ready for Gustav, and my church will serve as a shelter, so I'll be needed to help with that.

Once everything dries out, I'll hopefully have a house to come back to, and a place to sit where I can fill you in on Gustav's wake, plus all I got to do in Dallas.

Introducing the New and Improved Crossroads Creative

Well, it's finally here:  the new and improved Crossroads Creative site. It's been a long time coming, but we did it (finally). No new logo as of yet, but I got tired of waiting for us all to make up our minds. Logos are hard!!

Anyway, we have 114 pieces, some of which are actually packages, plus an interactive search. We have four product categories:

- Countdowns

- Sermon Starters (with PowerPoint title and background slides)

- Sermon Illustrations

- Video Announcements (with full-res Quick Time movies for customization)

 Check it out here and let me know what you think!

Next up on the horizon is a 50,000-piece email blast, which will start going out this week.

Saying Goodbye

Lori Ellen Belaire Booth

1967-2008

It is with great sadness that I am writing this post. One of my oldest friends, Lori Booth, passed from this life into the next this last Monday, August 11, 2008. She was a wife, and mother of two.

I've known Lori since kindergarten, and although it's been twenty years since I've had the chance to be with her for any length of time, the hole left in my heart is larger than one can imagine.

I'll always remember her sweet smile, the laughs, and her all-around love of life. It is my most sincere prayer that God would bring glory to Himself through this situation.

To all my dear friends in the AHS Class of '85, I love you and wish the very best for each and every one of you, and that includes making Jesus Christ your personal Lord and Savior. Please understand that I am not forcing religion on you, or making any judgments, but I simply want you to know the love that I have found through knowing Jesus, and I pray that you would come to know Him as I do.

Goodbye Lori. We will all miss you. I already do. 

Friday Funny

I found this picture yesterday on a friend's facebook page.  You write the caption...

The Olympics - and a Random Thought

OK, this post has nothing to do with anything, except perhaps how thoughts stay with us for a lifetime.

I was talking to my wife today about the Olympics (our daughters watched the Olympics all day at their grandmother's house), when I told her a deep dark secret of mine.

When I was a kid, I thought the word "gymnastics" was a dirty word, because it sounded like "nasty" to me.

Fun With Photo Booth!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I use my Mac for serious stuff - editing, writing, audio, etc, etc.

But sometimes it's fun to mess with stuff. I just took these pics while trying to come up with something cool and different for my facebook page. Which one should make the cut?

1.  The cartoonish egghead?

2. The weird wide-headed alien?

3. The double-chinned cylops?

4. Just plain headless?

It's fun to have a cool computer.

Friday Funny

Okay, instead of the usual pic, I've posted a video of my youngest daughter. She and her mother were waiting in the car for my oldest daughter, and my wife wanted to capture some video of her singing while listening to some Aly & AJ on her sister's iPod Shuffle. What happened, however, was COMPLETELY unplanned!

It seems that she got a little mixed up between "cappuccino" and "Frappuccino!"

Any comments?

Crossroads Creative's Latest Work

Here are the sermon starter videos we did for Crossroads Church and its youth department. First, Crossroads' August series is called "The Prayer." After producing this piece, we modified the end to read "The Lord's Prayer," to be a little more marketable for Crossroads Creative.

Our youth department is in a series called "Lion Killers."  Here's that one:

Pretty cool After Effects piece. Special thanks to Matt Avant and Sonny Maynard over at Media Savant for their great work. You'll see both of these pieces on the reseller sites soon, as well as ours (whenever that happens!).

OK, so no one could (or would) guess where the bloopers are in "Ben and George."

The first one is in the opening shot. We used stock footage from Digital Juice's VideoTraxx library, and we 3-D modeled the table in the room. If you look closely, you'll notice that there is no reflection in the door.

The second one is in the voice-over. The announcer (yours truly) asks, "Which one of these presidents have you brought to church?" while the video shows a $1 bill, a $2, and a $100 bill. The only issue is that Ben Franklin was never a president.

So, there you have it. Crossroads Creative produces an occasional piece with a blooper or two in it. So sue me.