Film & Design
Create Compelling Visuals That Inspire & Engage
Elevate your visual storytelling and creative impact with our Film & Design track. Gain hands-on experience in video production, graphic design, and motion graphics to create compelling content for your church. From pre-production planning to post-production editing, this track equips you with the skills to craft engaging visuals that captivate your congregation. Learn practical techniques for enhancing your church’s visual identity and telling stories that inspire and connect with your community.
Masterclasses
Why Preproduction Is the Most Important Part of Production
Adam Erickson
Our success as filmmakers lives and dies by how much we invest in preproduction. It's often the first phase to get cut when time is tight, but it's the phase that makes everything after it possible. Preproduction lets us answer hard questions before we're on set, set clear expectations with crew and leadership, and solve problems before they arise. That work frees us to focus on the creative once we're rolling, and keeps us from having to problem-solve when we're already stretched thin, mentally and physically. This session walks through preproduction using our Christmas and Easter productions at Seacoast Church as the case study, including moments when strong preproduction saved us from catastrophic problems on set. We'll break down the process step by step: the tools we use, the questions we ask, and the specific benefit each step delivers.
Key Takeaways
Get a repeatable preproduction framework that separates your creative decisions from your on-set problem solving, so you're never doing both at once.
Learn how to build a plan detailed enough that someone else can execute your vision without you in the room.
Walk away with a toolkit for turning a raw idea into a plan your whole team can follow.
See how to build in contingency planning so a personal crisis or schedule change doesn't sink the project.
Crafting Documentaries That Inspire Change
Patrick Clark
Many ministry films are forgotten within minutes. The stories that stay with people are the ones that make them feel something real.
In this workshop, you will learn how to craft documentaries that move beyond information and create genuine emotional connection, clarity, and action. Through a real-world case study of an award-winning documentary created inside our church, we will break down the entire storytelling process from discovering the right story to building tension, capturing authentic moments, shaping emotional impact, and guiding viewers toward meaningful response.
This is not just theory. Throughout the session, you will both hear the strategy behind effective documentary storytelling and see it in action through film clips, visual breakdowns, and behind-the-scenes examples woven directly into the teaching.
Whether you are creating films for generosity initiatives, vision campaigns, testimonies, outreach, or ministry storytelling, this workshop will give you a practical framework for creating honest, compelling documentaries that resonate deeply and inspire change.
Key Takeaways
Learn the Story Framework Behind Films That Move People to Action: Discover a simple but powerful documentary structure you can use in any ministry setting to turn real stories into meaningful films that inspire response, generosity, and transformation.
Find Stories Hiding in Plain Sight: Learn how to identify the people, moments, and breakthroughs already happening inside your church or ministry that have the potential to deeply connect with your audience and reflect the work that God is doing.
Create Emotion Without Hollywood Equipment: See how intentional interviews, purposeful b-roll, sound, pacing, and small moments can create cinematic and emotionally compelling films even with limited gear and small teams.
Learn the Anatomy of an Effective Call to Action: Not all calls to action are created equal. Today’s audiences are smart and can quickly sense when something feels forced or manufactured. Learn how to strategically guide viewers from emotion to response through aggressive authenticity, clear storytelling, and intentional next steps that inspire people to give, serve, volunteer, pray, advocate, or immediately engage with the mission after the film ends.
Building a Design Pipeline: From Design to Final Destination
Brad Zimmerman
It's Monday morning. The sermon graphic and notes that looked great on Sunday's screens now need to become an Instagram post, a lower third, a YouTube thumbnail, and an email header. If you've ever spent hours rebuilding the same design four different ways, or been handed a graphic from another ministry and asked to ""make it work"" everywhere, this workshop is for you.
Key Takeaways
Learn how to plan your designs based on their destinations.
Get practical, repeatable workflows in Canva and Photoshop for reformatting one design across multiple aspect ratios and formats without starting over each time.
Learn how to hand off designs to ProPresenter (and other destinations) in a way that keeps text and content editable, so the people running Sunday morning aren't stuck recreating your work.
More masterclasses to be announced!
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Mastering Video Production
Learn essential filming, editing, and storytelling techniques to produce high-quality church videos.
Graphic & Motion Design for Churches
Create eye-catching graphics and motion visuals that align with your church’s branding and message.
Effective Visual Storytelling
Discover how to craft narratives through film and design that emotionally connect with your audience.