Creating THIS Visual Album

The Ones He Gave, an album about church hurt by Jonathan Solomon, was released on September 15, 2023. Back when he first started working on the album, we started planning the video. Over the next several months, we went back and forth with ideas, shot the interviews and footage for each song, and worked on turning it all into a full visual album. When it was finished, it was shown at two different listening parties where we got to watch it with over a hundred friends and supporters. It was very special.

The Crash

The second song, Lenses (which begins with the line, “I’m running, running from beauty”) was originally going to be a slow-motion one-shot of Jonathan sprinting while I followed him on my rollerblades. During one of the takes, I lost control, ran into a fence, and dropped the camera on the concrete. Thankfully it was mostly fine. In the clip below, you can see me catching myself on the fence while the camera spins to the ground. We tried another take but were having some trouble making it work right.

After shooting the video for Alone on the top of a parking garage, we were walking down the staircase and I had a different idea for Lenses: a looped video of Jonathan running down the stairs while I fly the drone down. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to hide the cut well enough, but it ended up working out. Watch the Lenses video HERE.

DROPPING ROSES

Here are a couple of our attempts at shooting the video for My True Country. Hez, one of our pastors, helped me drop the roses. It was very hard to get through this without one of the three of us laughing, as you can see. You can also watch the final version HERE.

STREAMING EVERYWHERE

There is so much more I could share about the behind-the-scenes of making this visual album, but I will stop here for now. Subscribe to our monthly newsletter HERE to get even more BTS information, special deals, and updates on our other projects. Listen to the album or follow Jonathan’s accounts HERE. His music keeps getting better and better. This album does a really great job of taking us through experiences of real church hurt but how ultimately there is still beauty to be found in a community of believers that are following Jesus. Go check it out.