"Crisis Response Lake Charles," took home Best Overall at Church Production’s Capture Summit Church Filmcraft Festival in Atlanta this past summer. The film was created by Jon Peake, filmmaker at Constance Free Church in Andover, MN.
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In 2020 the town of Lake Charles, Louisiana, took intense beatings from the weather. The string of disasters began with two hurricanes, deadly category 4 Laura in late August followed by category 2 Delta six weeks later, complete with catastrophic flooding. Then, just as the community began to recover from the hurricanes, a February 2021 snow storm hammered down an inch-and-a-half of snow and ice. One final punch came in May, when storms pounded the town with 16 inches of rain in just six hours.
In a dizzying swirl, town residents witnessed the might of nature firsthand, followed by the healing hand of God. As a testament, many shared their story in an amazing five-minute mission trip video shot and produced by Video Producer Jonathan Peake of Constance Free Church in Andover, Minnesota, when the ministry’s missions team came to the aid of Lake Charles’ residents in October 2021.
Church Production (CP) talked with Peake to learn how he crafted the video in the thick of the missions trip—a work that earned his video, entitled Crisis Response Lake Charles, the honor of Best Overall at CP’s Capture Summit Church Filmcraft Festival in Atlanta this past summer.
Watch the video Interview with Filmmaker Jonathan Peake:
In this video interview, Jon Peake describes the challenges and rewards of making high-impact video content for Christian ministry. He says, "My goal in everything I produce is to change the way the audience thinks, feels, and behaves. What better way to do this than to teach people about Jesus [and] to show how God is working in and through us?”
Production, a firsthand account
When he arrived at hurricane ground zero in Lake Charles, Peake had to feel out the situation and uncover the story on his feet—the mission trip would last just one week. Armed with a Sony A7 III camera with 24-240 mm and 50 mm lenses, as well as a DJI mini2 drone with an on-board camera (and his pilot’s license), he jumped into action.
“I had no idea of what visuals were going to be until I got to Louisiana,” he admits. “After going on a walk-through of the old sanctuary at Lake Charles Bible Church, I knew I wanted to interview in this space. I have an obsession with old, dirty, broken down spaces. They’re just beautiful to me.”
“My goal in everything I produce is to change the way the audience thinks, feels, and behaves. What better way to do this than to teach people about Jesus [and] to show how God is working in and through us?”
—Jonathan Peake, Video Producer, Constance Free Church, Andover, MN
Peake decided on an approach that would allow him to get the most footage possible with the two cameras he had to capture the story. He also relied on strong educational and real-world experiences in film and video production, with a bachelor’s in audio and video production gained in 2010 and work in TV production following just after, before he became a one-man-band film team for both live and pre-produced video content at Constance Free Church.
“I devoted each day to following another person,” he describes of his week in Lake Charles. “I was the sole videographer, editor, producer. You name it, I was it. I came up with the interview questions during the morning breakfast time the day of the interviews.”
The straightforward approach worked well in the sensitive scenario, and it allowed the Holy Spirit to shine through in the work.
“My goal in everything I produce is to change the way the audience thinks, feels, and behaves,” Peake says. “What better way to do this than to teach people about Jesus [and] to show how God is working in and through us?”
Cameras, tools, and capture wisdom for other church filmmakers
In addition to the Sony A7 III, Peake’s basic and portable rig looked like this: the DJI mini2 drone, a 5-in-1 reflector, natural light and ceiling lights since he didn’t have luggage space for stands or lights, an easily portable and maneuverable Manfrotto photo tripod from BestBuy that would fit in his carry-on, a Rode Wireless Go and a Sennheiser lav kit for the audio capture of interviews, and a Zoom h5n so he could record them both and have a scratch track on the camera.
Along with shooting on-site in Lake Charles, Peake outfitted a video studio space back home at Constance Free Church to shoot several of the missionaries’ interviews upon their return to Minnesota. This allowed Peake to use the precious little time he had in Louisiana, during the mission trip, to focus on getting the shots and interviews that he could only get while there. “In the studio (grey wall shoots at Constance Free Church) I had the A7 III on a Manfrotto 516 tripod with a fluid head,” he describes. “I lit it with your typical key, fill, back lighting setup (one Aputure 300D and two Aputure 120D).”
To secure the drone footage on-site in Louisiana, captured with beautiful establishing shots and big-picture positioning images of the Lake Charles landscape and building sites, Peake snagged his pilot’s license in the nick of time.
“I had actually gotten my certificate number the day before we left!” he laughs. Then on-site, “I had the idea of flying the drone through the ladder racks of the trucks to show some more visual interest. In the last shot of me flying backwards through the truck … you can see my red hat for a split second before I duck out of the way for the remainder of the shot.”
As far as learning to fly that drone, Peake says his process might be helpful to other church filmmakers as they build up their wings for the task. “I got it (the DJ1 mini2) in April and I’d been more intentional with trying to fly around things and get the cool shots.” But at the end of the day, he finds, “I put filmmaking and all aspects [of it] into being an artist, the same way that musicians know to practice. They have to put the time in before the gig. You have to know how to put moves into the camera and make all the aspects work.”
So Peake practiced in his neighborhood first. He’d capture shots and experiment, and then practice editing “rinky-dink montages of my neighborhood,” he shares. “Because looking from the camera is way different than looking from the editor.”
As far as what shots Peake was mindful to capture in the Lake Charles video, specifically, whether through the drone or the Sony, he shares this about the execution: “Having a lot of organic motion in the frame can also tell the story. For instance, having the action of someone walking through the frame just adds something to the shot.”
Storytelling is always the ultimate endgame in film and video production, he notes. “Take a step back and look at the whole picture. To show an authentic story you need to show all aspects of the story. The majority of this process is character development and conflict. These are the things that resonate with your audience. Take them on a journey. Don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions, and don’t be afraid to be uncomfortable. Get your hands dirty, show your heart, and have fun.”
That said, Peake did not work from a formal script due to the nature of the mission trip to Lake Charles, the tight timeframe he had to work within, and the critical nature of the church team’s aid to the town. Instead, he opted to tell the story organically—a judgment call that worked well in the aftermath of the Louisiana disasters.
Editing drives home the story
With his filmmaking background, Peake brings a high level of expertise to Constance Free Church’s filmmaking efforts. He has experience in every major NLE since 12 years ago in college, but for Crisis Response Lake Charles he used Final Cut Pro X, Apple’s newest version of the software.
His editing process for the Capture award-winning video looked like this: “How I assemble stories is have the entire interview on the timeline,” Peake says. “I play it back and make cuts on my voice and for every response, then cut on each answer. I then delete my questions and listen to everything again.”
Next, he starts raising the clips that can tell the story onto another video track. “Once I get through the interview, I pull all of that second video layer aside and start a new timeline for just the stuff I kept.” From there, Peake keeps moving forward with the same process of listening and trying to assemble the story from what his sources said.
As he describes, “I did this with everyone’s interviews on one timeline, that way I could get the best from everyone in one place. Since I used three different microphones to record the interview, I sent the audio of the final story to my worship arts pastor so he could EQ them and make the audio seem consistent across every interview.”
Peake had a solid process for handling the music in Crisis Response Lake Charles too. “I select music early on in the editing process that I want to dictate the pace and feeling of the piece,” he notes. “Then while cutting the interviews I underlay the music continuously under all of the interviews. That way, the feeling and pace of what is being said can fit with the feeling and pace of the music, as well.”
At the tail end of the editing process for Crisis Response Lake Charles, Peake’s spouse factored into the equation. “My wife and I went to the hospital for the birth of our son within 12 hours of the final edit being done. I wasn’t even here on the Sunday to see it ‘air’ in our auditorium,” he shares.
Next steps for church filmmakers
Not everyone comes to their church’s filmmaking and video production team with a relevant four-year degree and prior professional television production experience. And yet, Peake notes, when God puts ministry filmmaking on someone’s heart, there are multiple resources to help them learn. Many of them are ones Peake continues to turn to himself.
To gain inspiration for telling the story at Lake Charles, for instance, Peake watched different shows on Discovery+. On an ongoing basis, too, he routinely talks and consults with many different church film teams on how they’re handling their live and pre-produced video.
“Don’t limit your inspiration to one thing that you see that’s cool,” he advises. If you see videos and films that you admire, write them down, he suggests, so you can go back to it and look at them, beyond simply for entertainment value. Then use what you see to learn.
Back to the brave Lake Charles residents who shared their stories in heartfelt interviews with Peake, he describes his process of capturing their incredible recounts.
“They had experienced the hardships of all the weather events, as well as the blessing that crisis response was,” he notes. “I wanted to hear about how they handled the hardships. I wanted to know what was going on in their hearts and minds when the first hurricane came, and when the second one came through. I wanted to know how they handled the devastation. I wanted to know how it made them feel to see their town destroyed. I always preface my interviews with, ‘This is just a conversation between you and me.’ It’s important to let your talent know that there is a face behind the camera.”
His parting suggestion: be present in the interview. Don’t give your subjects talking points on everything you’re going to ask, he says. Then, sit back and capture an authentic answer … an authentic moment.
