A Weird-Looking Candle

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been burning my candle on all three ends. How a candle has three ends, I’m not sure. But while holding down my full time job as an advertising producer (end #1) and doing my best to handle my share of baby duties for our 8-week old son (end #2), I also recently lit up end #3.

The third end of my candle was agreeing to edit an hour-long interview-based documentary that had to be turned around in one skinny little week. It seemed impossible, but with the help of Sam McDavid of Ignatius Productions, we have done it.

The piece is called “The Da Vinci Hoax” and will be a companion DVD to the non-fiction book of the same name. Co-authors Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel have written the book to debunk claims made in the popular novel “The Da Vinci Code” that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children.

We had to complete the video quickly because the publishers of the book want to hurry and get it distributed before the release date of the feature film adaptation of “The Da Vinci Code”. Our DVD, as I understand, will be in Wal-Mart stores all across the country.

My favorite part of this documentary is the opening that I created in Adobe AFTER EFFECTS. In conversation with Sam, I said: “It would be nice if they could give us a layered Photoshop file of the artwork for the book cover. Then maybe we could use that.” I didn’t really think it was realistic, but Sam said: “I bet they’d do that. Our client is the book’s publishing company.”

The next day I had the file. I then took the layers I wanted, rearranged them, added some music and a couple of simple graphics: Voila! A 20-second opening to our show. You can view it by clicking here.

Look for "The Da Vinci Hoax" coming soon on DVD to a Wal-Mart near you.