[Brant Mills]

Mr. Allen,
I have a couple of quick questions for you and I can’t seem find contact info for you. Would you mind shooting me an e-mail? brantmills@gmail.com
Thanks.

[Brant Mills]

As with anything else there are several schools of thought on the matter. I work in communications for a regional “conference” (in the Episcopal office) with almost 700 churches. Not only is there a division of thought among the young and old, but there are variances of opinion among clergy and lay leaders as well as discussions on whether the church/ministry is a business and whether it should be run as such. I did put together some resources at one point for an article I wrote on church marketing that might help you a little.

Here are the resources – mostly links to other church marketing sites.
https://www.txcumc.org/page.asp?PKValue=746

If you care to see the article it is here:
https://www.txcumc.org/news_detail.asp?pkvalue=413

Be careful about using the term “marketing” without qualifying it though. You might be surprised at how negative the perception of that word is to people outside of communications industries. I’ve learned that many view marketing as intentionally misleading people and they tend to view many marketing efforts as disingenuous. Good luck. There are many churches that can use any help they can get.

[Brant Mills]

You can buy training DVD’s from Total Training who has the best package imo for learning the application if you’re a visual learner. Andrew Kramer at videocopilot.net gets fancy with effects training for more advanced stuff later on, and you really can’t beat the Chris and Trish Meyers books for more insight into the overall creative abilities of the program.

Another option is Lynda.com for cheap online subscription based training.
And of course always come here for deeper insight or advice on creating specific effects or which plugins are good for doing certain things.

Above all else jump in with both feet and play with every setting, filter and effect and download the plugin trials and play with them too. The best way to learn is by doing and attempting to recreate things you’ve seen others do.

[Brant Mills]

You can buy training DVD’s from Total Training who has the best package imo for learning the application if you’re a visual learner. Andrew Kramer at videocopilot.net gets fancy with effects training for more advanced stuff later on, and you really can’t beat the Chris and Trish Meyers books for more insight into the overall creative abilities of the program.

Another option is Lynda.com for cheap online subscription based training.
And of course always come here for deeper insight or advice on creating specific effects or which plugins are good for doing certain things.

Above all else jump in with both feet and play with every setting, filter and effect and download the plugin trials and play with them too. The best way to learn is by doing and attempting to recreate things you’ve seen others do.

[Brant Mills]

You can buy training DVD’s from Total Training who has the best package imo for learning the application if you’re a visual learner. Andrew Kramer at videocopilot.net gets fancy with effects training for more advanced stuff later on, and you really can’t beat the Chris and Trish Meyers books for more insight into the overall creative abilities of the program.

Another option is Lynda.com for cheap online subscription based training.
And of course always come here for deeper insight or advice on creating specific effects or which plugins are good for doing certain things.

Above all else jump in with both feet and play with every setting, filter and effect and download the plugin trials and play with them too. The best way to learn is by doing and attempting to recreate things you’ve seen others do.

[Brant Mills]

Trapcode Shine or Genarts Sapphire plugins offer that effect.

[Brant Mills]

I’ve had really good results and small file sizes by exporting a jpeg sequence of a logo into a folder and importing the files via the “import folder as frames” option into imageready – then exporting an animated gif compressed the way you need it. Works great every time. You could also import the individual frames into flash and have more control over the flv/swf encoding process as needed.

[Brant Mills]

Thanks guys I appreciate it.

[Brant Mills]

Of course – I know you can’t just take someone’s work. Though – were you to make a cd copy of the ORIGINAL recording (were its copyright expired) of the song you referenced and not the Beatles REDONE version – you would be fine. My question was more along the lines of permission to use the photos directly from museum sites (which I can just ask them for permission and see what they say) vs. spending thousands for the rights to broadcast an image taken by someone who may or may not have legal claim to the copyright to begin with. I appreciate your thoughts on the matter. Thanks.

[Brant Mills]

that should have read: (for obvious reasons of light causing the PAINTINGS to fade in photography.)

Yes – I’m a grammar Nazi – I’m even anal about my own posts 😉