EDGE CAMP

highlights

For years, even after I had taken a new job, I would return to Edge Camp to do these videos. Even now, I still miss it. It's a frenetic pace - you shoot all day, edit like crazy to get a video ready for the evening session, then start shooting again and don't stop until midnight. It's exhausting and so much fun.

The last video plays 12 hours after the one before it, just before everyone hops on the bus and heads home. I've stayed up all night editing it these before, but this one came together pretty quickly, I think because there was just so much fun stuff from the week that I had tons to work with. The stuff I cut out of this video could have made a pretty good video in its own right.

Camp life forever. 

UM ARMY

Highlights

UM Army is a program that takes high school students into poor communities and sets them to work for struggling families in the area - building wheelchair ramps for the elderly, repainting flaking houses, shoring up collapsing porches. It’s always about more that the work, though - it's about connecting these kids with a world they don't get a chance to see that often, and for them to see how much a little bit of work can matter in the lives of people who feel forgotten.

I always told people that it was my favorite week of the year, and I miss it now that I don’t get a chance to do it anymore. Even sleeping on the floor of a Methodist church's mustiest Sunday school rooms could never dint my enthusiasm. Watching the students serve every day and seeing how God showed up and become real for them... you think you'd get used to it, but every year, it felt like a precious gift that I got to be there and witness it.

REBELBASE MINISTRIES

Forge Weekend

I love Forge Weekend (formerly Reach Weekend). I got to be their for its inception as a midwinter youth weekend that focused on missions as much as it focused on fun - the motto for the original version was “Worship. Serve. Party.” with the idea that people attending would do all three as hard as possible.

As much as I love these, this one was always one of the hardest videos I would do all year, since I’d be shooting and editing so constantly that I’d only get a few hours of sleep on Friday night and none at all on Saturday. Each one of these would finally be finished at six or seven on Sunday morning, and I’d upload the video and then walk over to church to start getting the services ready.

After the services finished, I’d head back home and crash, then wake up in the evening and cue up the video to watch it again, and I’d smile to experience it all again. It was always, always worth it.

REBEL RUN

Super Pump Invitational

I've had the privilege of being friends with Travis Postany for several years, and I've been psyched to keep coming out and shooting videos to help him promote his big endeavor, Rebel Run Sports Camp, a BMX workout facility he built entirely by hand. I even produced and edited a commercial for the organization for the national broadcast of BMX Nationals.

But nothing compared to this day, when he hosted his first big race at the track. With $10,000 on the line, the best BMX riders in the world, and a very high probability of hijinks, I came out to film the fun.