Starting this December with a trip to Malawi, Africa to help build a school, we are planning a year-long Adventure to explore all 50 states and 9 different countries.
Our goal is to learn what AMAZING marriages look like in different cities, states, countries, and cultures. Along the way, we will document our journey and what we learn from each couple, to share with as many people as possible! We will be “trading in” our house in Baltimore to live in a small RV. The RV will take us through the contiguous United States and Canada with excursions outside the RV to Hawaii, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, St. Lucia, and Africa!
We did it! ;) We completed the Stillmotion Take Action Challenge! When we signed up in May, I remember feeling a little overwhelmed just by adding the dates to the calendar. For 11 weeks straight, we received a challenge on Monday, on Tuesday we had a 1-2 hour live webinar to discuss the challenge and the results from the week before, and then on Sunday we had to submit our completed film project by 11:59 p.m. PST. (I put the specific time because there were many weeks that we found ourselves pushing the deadline of 2:59 a.m. EST! ;) ).
We signed up for the Challenge because we have this dream. The dream, that we have shared a few times here and there, is to produce a documentary! We took on the challenge as a way to learn as much as possible about the art of filmmaking. As photographers, we have a little bit of understanding… but to be completely honest, cinematography and photography are completely different! We knew that going in, but we were reminded over and over again each week.
When I was feeling overwhelmed just by putting the dates on the calendar, Ryan reminded me that this was our FUN! Filmmaking was something that we were completely excited to learn about and this was a fun opportunity to do exactly that! Fun… yes, I would definitely say with confidence that we had fun throughout the Challenge. However, I think we can both say with confidence that it was definitely hard work too! We pushed ourselves BIG TIME to complete the challenges and grow as much as possible with every opportunity we were given. There were many weeks that Sunday would roll around, and after traveling for a wedding on Saturday and still feeling the exhaustion from the wedding, the last thing we wanted to do was START the challenge for the week! Those were the days we definitely struggled, but we knew we would gain so much by challenging ourselves and completing the assignment! We had some of the world’s best cinematographers (yes, they won an Emmy!) at our finger tips and that is pretty incredible in itself! During our weekly webinar meetups, we began to feel like they were our friends just hanging out in our living room! ;)
The Take Action Challenge is now complete… 10 assignments later and a final project complete, we can now say we have a much better understanding of filmmaking! ;) We won’t go as far as claiming we are pros! ;) But we definitely learned a TON and we are so incredibly grateful for the experience!!
Huge thanks to the whole Stillmotion team for putting so much time and attention into educating filmmakers from around the world! They are literally changing the industry and it is AMAZING to watch! We are so grateful for their talent, passion to educate, constructive criticism, honest feedback, and love they put into everything that they do!
On Wednesday, Stillmotion shared a post on their blog about the Take Action Challenge and they asked us to chime in to share about our dreams for the documentary! We are so incredibly honored to have our story featured on their blog in hopes of inspiring others to follow their dreams too! Check it out and leave them some love! http://stillmotionblog.com/2013/09/04/taking-the-leap/
Also… just a quick plug because we love them… Grant and Baker, from one of our all time favorite documentaries (“I’m Fine Thanks”) are now part of the Stillmotion team and were HUGE contributors to the Take Action Challenge! If you have not already done so… download I’m Fine Thanks. ;) It will likely be the best $5 you will ever spend… because it WILL change your life! ;)
Just for the fun of it- we had to share this iPhone behind the scenes photo! ;) haha! If this doesn’t scream fun, I am not sure what does!?! ;) Side note… but incredibly important note: HUGE thanks to the Simer Family, the Coates Family, Marissa Walch, and everyone else who participated in our films at the very last minute, of course! ;) You all are AMAZING!!
Just before leaving the house at 4:45 a.m. on Saturday morning, I did a double take. I had walked past the book I was in the middle of reading and at the last minute decided I should bring it along! I typically always bring books on our travels… however, most of the time I never even pull them out of my bag! Our flights are usually the perfect opportunity for me to cuddle into Ryan’s arm and just let my mind wander!
Saturday morning was a bit different. I was more awake than normal and I was so ready to be in Portland. I was definitely a bit anxious… or maybe excited is the better word? ;)! Let’s just say, letting my mind wander would have just resulted in a very antsy flight!
I pulled out Kevin Hall’s Aspire and opened it to the chapter titled Ollin. Ever since hearing Kevin speak at Showit United earlier this year, I have been looking forward to exploring this word a bit more. I had never heard “ollin” used… but I certainly liked the way it sounded (“all in”)! It pretty much means exactly that… but on Saturday it meant even more. The words on page 195 stood out to me in a way that I never wanted to forget. “…much of what we want and seek in life that is meaningful and significant is just beyond the edge of our comfort zone. If we’re not willing to venture ‘out there,’ we will never find and have all that we truly desire. We will never fulfill our complete purpose.”
As you may have already discovered, Ryan and I are dreamers! ;) We are the kind of people who blurt out “crazy” ideas when they come to our minds and then we find a way to make them happen! Sometimes that is a good thing… well, actually all the time that is a good thing! ;) It doesn’t necessarily make this life easy or without challenges along the way! In fact, very recently we had a life chat… and we found ourselves craving simplicity… as soon as the words came out of our mouths, we knew immediately that we likely would not be as happy or fulfilled if we didn’t do the “crazy” things in our lives.
Our trip to Portland was a long time coming. We had a few months to pull our thoughts together on this “crazy” project and get our minds around what was to come. However, with the extra time to think came extra time to fear and doubt and second guess. Every time those doubts came to mind, we ALWAYS came back to the feeling in our hearts of knowing we are on a mission to fulfill a greater purpose! We have a passion to live this life in a meaningful way. “To reach our goals and dreams, to experience life in full color, to soar to dreamed-of and hoped-for heights, we have to expand our comfort zone.” Reading Kevin Hall’s words reminded me of just how grateful we are to be on an adventure of always expanding comfort zones! ;)
Our blog may be a little sparse this week… (as this late in the day blog post indicates! ;) )… we are making this week a week of DO! We have a lot of BIG BIG things on our mind and we have decided that now is the time to act on them! ;) We will be spending a lot of time in coffee shops over the next week as we take action on a few things! If you have any favorite coffee shops in the Baltimore/Annapolis area that we definitely should hit up, please let us know! ;)
In the meantime… we hope you will give us some grace on the blog posts and join us in taking action on all of those things you have been dreaming about!!!
It started with an email to our potential Love Inspirers and what it turned into was more than we could have ever imagined:
“We just wanted to let you know that we are inspired by your marriage and would love to invite you to be a Love Inspirer for our “An AMAZING Life Together: More Time for Love” webinar!
Recently, our minds have exploded with some super crazy dreams and ideas!!! As we have been thinking about our business and where we want it to take it, we have realized a huge passion for helping couples live a more amazing life together. Realizing this has set our hearts on fire with ideas. So far we have already started our AMAZING Marriage Project and created an AMAZING Life Escape. We are super excited about both of these projects and the impacts they will have on couples lives!
However, we have realized that with the help of amazing couples like you, we could have a much larger and more immediate impact! So, we have created the Make Time for Love webinar and we would be honored to have you as part of it!”
When we hit send, we didn’t know if any of the couples we contacted would actually be interested in participating. But when they pretty much all said yes, we knew we actually had to go through with it, which meant figuring out how to create such a webinar. The next forty-three days of our lives were going to be just a bit crazy.
First things first, we needed to create a website for the webinar. This wouldn’t necessarily be so hard, except for the fact that Liz and I are both pretty stubborn when it comes to design. Initially we planned to just grab a free WordPress template, customize it and create the site. Unfortunately we couldn’t exactly find any that we really liked. So naturally, I said, “Why don’t I just create, design and program it for us?” It sounded simple enough, and I always enjoyed a challenge, even if I would have to learn html5, CSS, and PHP scripting languages. (Note to self, next time you offer up learning how to create and build a website from scratch, make sure you have more than 2 weeks to do so!) Many sleepless nights later, the AMAZING Life Together Webinar Site was launched on April 1st.
Just 26 days until the webinar and we still hadn’t recorded a single session! Yikes!
Over the next few days we watched as many documentaries, Oprah Winfrey interviews, and Barbara Walters specials as we possibly could.
Camera gear in tow, having never recorded our own on camera interview, we were off to Portland, OR to meet up with Karen and Isaac. Our first recorded interview, which would actually be shown as the last session of the webinar, was definitely a huge learning experience.
After completing the interview, we flew back home to Baltimore, photographed a engagement session, then immediately packed up the car and drove to Chapel Hill, NC, on Liz’s birthday no less, for the next interview. As one of us drove, the other edited Karen and Isaac’s interview. This would be our routine for the next several days. Our car basically became our mobile production unit. In a span of three days, we made stops in Chapel Hill, NC, Richmond, VA and Portsmouth, VA. After a few moments back home in Baltimore, we got back in the car and drove up to New Haven, CT for the final interview.
Looking back, I am not exactly sure how we pulled it all off. Especially considering we didn’t exactly factor in how long it would actually take to render and upload over 15GB of video to the internet. With just a few hours to spare, the final interview finished uploading. What was once just a dream had actually become reality.
Being a former engineer, I am just a bit of a numbers geek. So for this behind the scenes post we thought it would be fun to share just a few stats we think are pretty cool.
In total, to record all the Love Inspirer Interviews, we travelled 6849 miles, 5508 by plane and 1341 by car.
484 People signed up to watch the webinar in advance.
Viewers tuned in from 83 Countries across the world!!!! CRAZY!!! Checkout the viewer map below!
Combined, total video plays from the webinar were 2020.
During the webinar 1714 unique visitors visited the AMAZING Life Together Webinar website.
Thanks again to everyone that made the webinar possible and to all those that tuned in to watch.
