John and Charles Wesley and the History of Methodism
The path this video took to getting finished was a rocky one. Every year, our church hosts the Texas Annual Conference, a meeting of Methodist ministers and leaders from across the state. One year, as we were approaching the event, I was requested to make a documentary on the history of Methodism to loop in the lobby as the conference attendees were there. So I went to work - digging up histories in the library, finding images, collecting information. I managed to assemble enough to write a ten-minute documentary, and I asked one of our church members, Marty Fleck, to do the narration (he's a professional voice actor, and an awfully good one). With about two weeks to go, I was right on course to finish in time, when suddenly - the project was cancelled. Our design staff didn't have time to get the display ready and had given up on it. Game over.
I kept the files and voiceover in the vain hope that I might get another crack at making it, which it turned out to be a strong choice: the project was abruptly re-started two weeks before the start of the next Annual Conference. Since I was under a new boss at that point, he hadn't realized I had a documentary already half done, so while he panicked about the deadline, I calmly rebuilt the project, taking advantage of the extra time to interview some Methodism experts in the area. I managed to put the project together just in time for the beginning of the conference.
The video was such a hit that - even though we didn't have it on sale - we had more requests for it than for any of the sessions at the Conference. By the second day, we were forced to start duplicating the video and putting it on sale in the bookstore, since demand was so huge. Apparently, there isn't much out there in terms of the history of Methodism, and so this video is now playing in confirmation classes across Texas. To the joy of children everywhere, I'm sure.