Filmmaking is what Capture Content Creation Summit 2020 is all about. Testimonial videos. Sermon bumpers. Film shorts. Life change stories. Promotional videos. And sometimes feature films. If church teams are shooting it and sharing it, Capture is designed as the place to learn to do it better.
One voice of authority in the realm of church filmmaking, Capture 2020 presenter Jesse Henning, now owns and operates his own company, Henning Animation + VFX in Durham, N.C. Before Henning sat up shop, he created film and other media in the church setting for 7.5 years.
“In the church world you can wear many hats, which naturally leads you to explore many different mediums,” Henning says of his time writing, directing, shooting, and editing 2D and 3D animations, VFX and motion graphics. “Eventually you discover the things you enjoy doing the most … and that’s ultimately what led me to where I am now.”
To create content in the medium of film takes money—a realistic steady stream of it, and occasionally considerable sums of it.
Here is some of Henning’s best advice, learned over the years, that can help church filmmakers create excellent content on an oftentimes shoestring budget.
1-Look in the obvious places
“I think the best place to start is with vision,” Henning says. “One of my greatest assets was knowing the vision of our church, knowing what our team needed to grow in resources and then, as projects came along, pitching things we needed to accomplish those projects that would ultimately help us [share] the vision of the church.”
Jesse Henning, Capture 2020 presenter, 3D/VFX Artist, Henning Animation + VFX, Durham, NC
Realistic patience is also key when it comes to funding. Henning reports that his church started out very light in gear, with most of it being his own. Before he left to start his own business though, his church had a fully functioning studio with a cyc wall, multiple cinema cameras, and quite a bit of gear and resources at its disposal.
Other methods of getting cash included selling old gear or selling resources like his team’s film online. “If you have a sermon series package with graphics and videos that can benefit others, you can try selling those online too.” While Henning admits that some attempts to sell resources aren’t necessarily lucrative, they do add to the overall money collection effort.
2-Remember to look for ways to save money as well as make it
“It wasn’t always about thinking how much money do we need before we can do something,” Henning says, “sometimes it was about who we could partner with to help us accomplish what we needed to do.”
As an example he notes, “We did a lot of digging in the local community and even our church. We found crew and actors that were willing to join us for free, people willing to let us use props or locations at little to no cost, or others that had gear we needed and that were willing to come on set and help for free or let us borrow their gear.”
3-Consider the possibility of unique donors
While Henning says his church film team didn’t have unique financial donors, it did benefit from local companies that were willing to donate gear to use on set.
“In one case that was us asking [a local company] and them saying yes,” he shares, “and in another it was because they saw what we were doing and wanted us to review a product for them. One of those was a large company. So, it can’t hurt to ask, but again, we did have vision behind that ask and we were able to show them the quality of work that we were doing at the time.”
4-Remember to plan, be strategic, and check your choices twice
Henning says, “Work in strategies that help accomplish the vision of your church and why those resources are needed to do so.” As an example, he says his church film team would go overseas to film its missions work—which took a good deal of creative forethought.
“I had little to no budget and we needed some gear unique to travel in those conditions,” he says. “So we asked our missions department if we could use their budget to purchase those things and they agreed to it.”
In another scenario, Henning and his team were able to partner with yet another department within the church. “We had a few commercials our marketing department wanted us to film, and again, I had a very small budget to work with, so I asked if we could hire an actor and pay for the location and gear rentals out of their budget, and they said yes.”
No matter which tact Henning and his team used to secure film project funding, he stresses, “I constantly kept vision in mind, which also helped me steward over resources and realize when I probably shouldn’t spend money on something.”
