BFC Studios

Word | Making Of | Jud Heald's Intro

Ever seen Just Married written across the back windshield of a car in shaving cream? What does that have to do with Jud Heald's intro of Luke 11:9? Everything.

As told by director, Scott Yamamura:

I was just leaving my house to head to the Shoreline skatepark. I knew I'd have about a 40-minute car ride that I could use to mull the video over. Jud is totally down with a group called Shade, and had selected one of their songs for his part. Shade... shade... so how about using shadows to display Jud's verse? But how?

About three blocks into the drive I found myself behind a couple that had apparently just gotten married. The white splattered writing on the back windshield of their car was impressively legible despite the foamy stuff it was written with. As our cars carved onto the freeway entrance, the sun started shining down pretty hard.

Boom. There it was. The letters on the windshield cast a strong shadow inside the car. I could read Just Married in shadows on the back of the seats. So could it be done with Jud's verse from the book of Luke?

So if letters could be placed on glass, then the sun could cast it's shadow on something else... perhaps a wall. So there I was having driven about 5 blocks from my house and the concept was there right in front of me.

Glass was too heavy to work with. When I later went to Lowe's, plexiglass seemed to be the most suitable for the job... light-weight, but completely transparent. Shaving cream wouldn't be clean enough for the letters, but what if they were printed out from the computer and cut out? Tedious as it was, that seemed like the route to go. I would later find that I could recycle those cut-out letters for Richard Jefferson's intro too. Using small pieces of rolled-up tape the letters could be posted on the plexiglass.

So what to cast the shadows on to? Well, my neighbor Allan rounded up all these pavers ('bricks') to lay down for his new driveway. He ran out of space on his front yard, so we built up a stack in my driveway until he found time to lay them. Glad it took him so long. The pavers ended up being the perfect thing to use as a backdrop for the verse to appear on.

Due to the surrounding trees and the way they block the sunlight, there seemed to be windows of time that would be best to shoot during. Several days of shooting occured to get it right. First I tried the letters stationery. Boring. No action. After editing the whole thing up that way, there was just one shot that looked right where the letters were moving. That shot was really kind of a mistake, but sometimes the mistakes lead to discovery.

After capturing the right shots, the color of the footage was altered to give it an intentional, unified look. Busy and unwanted areas on the screen were blacked out so the pavers and letters could remain the focus. The verse was displayed as much to the beat of the music as possible. It got me to thinking about that verse:

'Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you.' Luke 11:9

God is here. He made the universe and everything in it. Sometimes I get distracted and forget he's around. But if we acknowledge he's here, he's stoked on that. It's kind of like when a kid says hi to his dad... the dad is stoked everytime his kid acknowledges him. So what does a dad like doing for their kid when the kid is asking or seeking for something? The dad wants to provide cause he loves his child. That's what God wants to do for us. He's there, but it's our job to take some initiative on our side and be open to him.