3 Months later...

We are now three months into my unannounced blog hiatus.
I've been asked a couple of times about it since November, but really didn't feel a need to explain since it seemed like it would only be a temporary lapse.
Now that I'm fairly certain that it's going to be a while still before you hear from me in blog form, here's a short answer so that you're not put in the dark unnecessarily.
Simply put, I haven't blogged because I'm not really convinced that at this moment, I can do it to a level that would add sufficient value to my readers.

In the limited time I devote to this blog, I think I've done okay, but I know that if this had a little more direction, a clear focus on something more useful to everyone out there than just me and my opinion, it could be really great.

Oh, there's plenty to talk about, all kinds of wonderful things going on, and my mind and heart are as engaged in the journey as ever, but in light of all the great minds and wordsmiths in the blogosphere far wiser and more focused that I could ever be, it seems a little pretentious to me to be meandering along every three days racking my brain to figure out a witty post title on a Wednesday morning when there are so many other places out there that are saying pretty much the same kinds of things I am.

I've just started realizing lately that I'm better off spending what little time I have getting better at what I'm called to do, rather than doing something because everyone else on staff is doing it (Now would be a good time to note that I don't mean to say that no one should have a personal blog, just that for this moment in my life, it no longer feels like the best use of my time). I'm not always this disciplined in other areas of my personal development (I've got leaders in my life who are nodding as they read this), but everyone's got to start somewhere.

You may see more here one of these days with a new header or a different direction, but for now, consider me on a blog hiatus.

Thanks for visiting.

-mo

Only four days left!

Extended periods of silence on this blog usually mean craziness in the editing world, and this entire month pretty much proves that. That being said, in four days, the cat will be out of the bag, as it were, and all the awesomeness will be revealed! (Awesomeness...what a great made-up word..)

Anywho, until then, here's a message from Pastor Troy!


Don't miss this Weekend! from Flamingo Road Church on Vimeo.

Something big is coming...

Experiments in HD

Sooo....we've started using what little space we've got on our one P2 card to film small promo spots in HD for TV, and here is our first fully HD spot...maybe someday I'll post the early experiments that have people tinted in funny colors with pieces of their bodies cut off by the camera.

Mad props to our spokeswoman Ana and to Phil Lashley, our resident After Effects ninja, who made the killer background.

Enjoy!

FRC-192 Cutaway Intro - Ana from Mauricio Tinoco on Vimeo.

Adventures in Ministry

Okay, the just the facts:

1) This weekend, Flamingo Road Church brought over 20,000 pounds worth of water and supplies for Haiti relief.

2) We brought two trucks to collect the supplies. We should have brought four.

3) Supply trailers shouldn't be parked on soft grass, especially when they tip over while filled with a team of church volunteers (and 1 cameraman) packing it with water.

4) Now we are donating a crane

Lifechange @ Flamingo

I would have posted this earlier, but I needed a few days to recover from the archives-raiding extravaganza that was last week's production schedule...Two days of frantic tape-raiding with eight volunteers and three playback stations running almost continuously (and we still have almost an entire wall of shelves full of tapes we hadn't gone through) yielded its prize: a sick look back at some of the most inspiring interviews profiling the life change that we get to be a part of on a daily basis at Flamingo.

We are a blessed little crew.



Life Change from Flamingo Road Church on Vimeo.

More Than a Game Epilogue

...and here is the finished product:




More Than a Game Trailer 02 from Flamingo Road Church on Vimeo.

More than a Game

Whew! Sorry for the lack of posting lately, things have been happening a mile a minute here in my world. I've actually been doing more journaling on my own than posting, mainly because there are a lot of things I'm thinking through right now, some of which I'm sure will end up showing up on this page in the near future. 

In the meanwhile, here is the giving video from last week:

Pretty sweet, huh?

Well, that was only the beginning, because we now have a Pre-teaching video (that's the video we use for set changes right before Pastor Troy comes onstage to bring the Word) that we've got to design for the upcoming series that has that same gritty feel.

Fortunately for us, we've got musical fusion-making maniacs like Pastor Brian Fuller who make this easy for us video guys by producing tracks that are so good, they make you want to slap your grandma.

You can listen to it here.

Man, I love this job!

Easter Recap '08

12 tapes, 7 volunteers, and three days worth of editing later...


Easter '08 Recap from Flamingo Road Church on Vimeo.

Equipment: Canon XL-1 {} Sony HVR-A1U {} Panasonic AVG DVX-100B {} Panasonic Handicam from Best buy {} Apple Motion {} Final Cut.

Peeps: Luis, Javy, Evan, Stacey, Jeff, Maria,Alex, Ian, & Phil. Heredes brought food (and direction :).

Oops

Hey there, kiddos...
I know, it's been ages since I've made a proper post...Easter will do that to you- correction, Easter while working in full-time ministry in the United States will do that to you.

Anywho, to sort of make up for it, I'm attaching a small diagram of various things I've been up to over the past few weeks (notice how all of it is church-related)

Actually, the truth is that there are way more cool things to write about than I really have the time or the energy for at the moment, so I'm going to be lame and reference Heredes' blog. He's got all of the facts and sums it up nicely. Suffice it to say that we're still trying to recover some of the sleep we missed over the last two weeks.

Given all that went down, though, I'd say it was worth it...here's one of the videos the team put together last week. It was filmed on Thursday morning at 8 am and finished Friday around 7:30 am, an occurrence which probably won't be happening anymore once I'm  married. 

Enjoy!

Graveyard Video-RationaLIES from Flamingo Road Church on Vimeo.

I HEART my job...

I was supposed to post this last week after we finished putting this video together, but I got a little sidetracked (Steph and I are getting married in less than three months. Cut me a little slack), so to make up for it, I'll post two videos for the price of one:

So...this is what I and the the team get to do for a living (unless you're talking about our volunteers, in which case they are way more hard core than us paid sissies, because they actually make a living doing something else, but come in at all hours anyway).

In case you're interested, here are some facts about said videos:

-This is all Photoshop CS3 and Apple Motion

-We pre-composed pretty much everything; nearly everywhere you see a blank screen, even for a frame, it marks where we pre-exported our stuff and reimported it into another project file (even with 12 gigs of RAM in my tower, the lighting effects alone in that second trailer would have crashed the computer pretty quickly.

-Both of them took about three-and-a-half days to pull off, although that mainly included some really late nights (It's 3:30 AM on a Saturday morning and I'm writing this as my final render is exporting)

All that being said, it's still the best job I've ever had (although being a clown assistant ranks a close second.)

....Okay, my render is done. It's time for me to go home and not wake up until after the sun comes up.

Peace!

1+1=1

I think that one of the coolest things that Steph and I get to do together is work with the college ministry here at FRC. Her work schedule is a little tough right now so she can't go as often as she likes, but when she's around, it really adds value to what I do. At least it feels that way to me.
I can remember talking to her on the phone as we were discussing different observations we had about our group. The whole time I was wondering what it was that I managed to get right along the way that allowed me to be here now, sharing the joys of a mutual passion with someone that I'm going to spend the rest of my life with. This is one of my favorite examples of grace.

It's so different from what I expected it to be. Actually, that's not entirely accurate. I had no idea of what to expect.
I'd never been in a courtship before, never been in a relationship that had this much potential to glorify God in some serious ways, and I definitely had never been in a relationship with a woman who flat out told me that she was willing to submit to my leadership - which, if you're ignorant, sounds like a free pass, until you realize that the flip side of all that privilege is the responsibility to do the whole "love your wife as Christ loved the Church" deal ("With great power, comes great responsibility, Peter").

And it is a big deal. I told the guys in the small group this much, too. The day I figured out that growing up isn't something that just happens to you was one of the best things I ever learned, because it meant that I wasn't somehow excluded from manhood because I happen to be a knucklehead. It just meant that I had to learn a whole lot of discipline (I haven't watched cartoons in at least six months, for starters :)

It's a really big deal. I get to do something I love to do with someone I love to do it with, and we get to be a part of some seriously God-glorifying life change...I don't know that I've had many feelings like this one, this sense of rightness that is telling me that I'm on the right path, that yeah, it's a fight, but that by the grace of God I'm also a different person than I was a year ago. In this moment, it's tough for me to balance it well against all of the other really cool moments I get to experience on a weekly basis, so I don't think I'll be trying to make any comparisons right now.
For now, I'm just grateful that I've got Stephanie Sanchez, and that she's got me.

What do these men have in common?

Well, besides the fact that they are a bunch of goofballs, they are also going to be simplifying their lives by selling a bunch of their possessions at the World's Largest Garage Sale this Saturday from 8 AM to 11 AM at all of our campuses!
It's all for a good cause, so if you're looking for some items from the Tinoco, Lashley, or Papichulo collections (also known as the "Ian gives himself funny nicknames" collection), they will be available for sale for a limited time only (three hours).

Be the first to own a Book Read By Mo! Prepare to exhuberantly rejoice at the thought of owning an actual Paperweight Phil Used Just Last Month! Be thrilled at the prospect of bartering for that shirt Ian Wore Once And Promptly Forgot About Until Last Week When He Found It In The Back Of His Closet!

Seriously, though, all the proceeds from the sale are going to the American Cancer Society, so if you're anywhere in South Florida or in Lima, Peru or near any of our other locations, be sure to check it out!
C'mon! Make your Saturday count for something huge!
We'll see you then!

The finished product!

...and here is the end result of all the work from last week.
Apple Motion rocks...

Weekend Preview

We've been learning stuff this week!
Phil has been training me in the art of motionography, and so far it has been pretty sweet!

That being said, here's a preview of where we're headed with this weekend's giving video. It's way in the skeletal stages, but trust me, it'll look sick when we're done...sigh...I love my profession...

Adventures in Community

Okay, the pictures first, then the props.

My home group rocks.
Something really amazing and altogether unique happens each week when Stephanie, Heidy, Carson, Luis, Javier, Ryan, Matt, Jeff, Stacey, Stacie, Aimee, Leah, Aaron, Josh, Pablo, Eryn, Diana, Will, Evan, and I (and whoever else joins in) get together each Monday night; the best way to describe it is to say community happens.

Let me give a rundown of tonight, for example.
We started off like normal, all jokes and hugs and catching up with each other on what's been going on since the last time we all hung out, and then launched right into the meal. A little while later we were sitting together, everyone sharing about the kinds of lessons we all had learned in the past year. By the time we'd finished singing together in some acoustic worship (which is often the best kind) and talked over the second chapter of Ephesians, we'd been together for almost two hours, and no one was ready to leave.

That is so cool.

Anyway, I don't mention all that to talk up how great we are (tonight also included a neat little discussion on how none of us are all that important, but God loves us anyway), but simply to point out that community, while risky and very intimidating at first, is well worth whatever effort you have to go through to achieve it.

Trust me, it is. And while you're in the trusting mood, trust me again when I say that it is work.
Anytime a group of people get together, there are going to be issues, and we've got our fair share of them; what I love about us, however, is the fact that in spite of all of that, we're still here, and we're still committed, and I'm grateful for the grace that allows a group as diverse and weird as we are to grow together and to spend time asking the important questions.

that being said (WARNING: SHAMELESS MINISTRY PLUG AHEAD), if you're involved at all at Flamingo Road Church and you're not involved in a small group, then this is me wagging my finger at you and clicking my tongue in a very disappointed way. Shoot me an email or check out our website if you need info.

While I'm at it, if you're not plugged into a ministry, you should join one. Like the video team. We're amazing and we work for a guy named Heredes. With a name like that, you know it's got to be good. Also, according to this very blog we are dead sexy video men. Word up.

Okay, I'm done with the plugs. It's time to knock out.
The video team is going to the gym tomorrow morning at 6 AM, and I intend to stay awake for the duration of the work out.

Peace!

What is wrong with this picture?

I have a few thoughts as I look at this picture:

1) We should start a calendar or something, because we are some dead sexy video men.

2) Phil (center) needs more sleep...
[by the way, Phil just got hired, and he is pretty much the perfect third musketeer for this band of misfits we call the video team. You can check out his website here.]

3) It's 1 AM and we're still working on Christmas videos...we must reeeeeaaalllly love our jobs. Or maybe our office just looks that good. You decide.

You know, it's funnny

...how we can put hours-sometimes days!- of work and sweat trying to produce 3 minute cinematic masterpieces each weekend, and yet it's the stupid domino-swallowing stunt video that us took an hour and a half to produce that I decide to post on my blog. Enjoy!

El Processo Returns!

Here is another edition of before and after pictures of last Wednesday's shoots and the weekend results. Enjoy!

The Before (sans volunteers and Troy...we forgot to take pictures as we were filming):

The After:



Let me just say that Ian Achong is an editing maniac who can color correct like no other.

Props!

Snapshots

Let it be said that my small group flippin' rocks.

I thought I would just jot down some thoughts and let the pictures tell the rest.

Every week about 12 of us get together and share meals, jokes, stories and the like before we split into two co-ed groups to do the deep discussions.


We started with chips and soda, but then things started escalating when the girls got competitive and started cooking things. Not to be outdone by a stereotype, the men called in reinforcements with chicken parm and homemade cookies. You asked for it, ladies.

We usually end up going longer than the prescribed hour that you'd expect a small group to.

If there's an iPhone around, we all huddle around a screen and laugh at YouTube videos.

Sometimes the discussions go well into the night.

Nearly every week someone says something that is so funny, our sides ache for a good half hour after the event.


Matt is a very focused guy when it's his turn at Taboo.

Taboo is probably the funniest game that I have ever played.

The girls are sore winners.

Many of us come from completely opposite backgrounds, but somehow it all fits together. I'm going to put the blame solely on God for that one.

If you're not in a small group, what the heck are you waiting for?