Picture Update #7

(l to r) Geoffrey Botkin, Jeff Moore, and Doug Phillips discussing new HeuMoore production "Ace Wonder"

George Sarris retelling the biblical story of Naman, cured of lepresy.

(l to r) George Escobar and Doug Phillips previewing Advent Film Group's latest project "Alone Yet Not Alone"

Picture Update #6

George Sarris

Ace Wonder-ful: (l to r) Johnny Reighard (intern), Joshua Hedrick (intern) David Moore (actor), and Phillip Haumesser (intern) get into the spirit of the movie, along with the rest of the enthusiastic audience.

Joshua Phillips, being interviewed

Interviewing Joshua Phillips

Isaac Botkin networking with filmmakers.

Picture Update #5

(l to r) Jeff Moreland (actor), Robert Grossman (actor), Ben Botkin (composer), David Bowman (special effects artist), David Heustis (producer)

Full Q&A Panel: (l to r) Doug Phillips, John Moore, Jeff Moore, Gator Moore, Derek Moreland, Jeff Moreland, Robert Grossman, Ben Botkin, David Bowman, David Heustis, Nathan Webster, and Geoffrey Botkin

Family collaboration: (l to r) John Moore, Jeff Moore, Gator Moore

Ben Botkin

Geoffrey Botkin

Picture Update #4

Mr. Phillips listening to Q&A answers

(l to r) Derek Moreland (actor), Jeff Moreland (actor), Robert Grossman (actor), Ben Botkin (composer), David Bowman (special effects artist)

(l to r) Doug Phillips, John Moore (director), Jeff Moore (actor), Gator Moore (actor)

(l to r) John Moore (director), Jeff Moore (actor), Gator Moore (actor), Derek Moreland (actor)

Becky Morecraft singing "How Firm a Foundation"

Picture Update #3

Municipal Auditorium

Auditorium Hallway, busy during a break

Doug Phillips casting vision for the festival

Geoffrey Botkin presenting on how to evaluate secular media properly

Video Update #1

Video quality will improve over time, the video is still currently re-rendering itself online.

Picture Update #2

Christian and myself, busily live-blogging

Video editing

Picture Update #1

John Clay Burnett collaborating with fellow filmmakers

Semi-Finalist Filmmaker, Jerica Henline


SLR videography: The filmmaking of the (not so distant) future.

Greetings From San Antonio

Hello everyone,

Wanted to give a quick update on the festival: Registration was up and running smoothly but with an unexpected plot twist (at least to me). Part of the viewings for the festival have been moved to the Municipal Auditorium, approximately a mile away from the Convention Center. This makes it rather difficult for Christian and me to tote our equipment back and forth.

Other than this, however, things are running wonderfully. So far we've previewed "Live to Forgive," a overwhelming story of a young man's journey through anger towards his step-father for killing his mother, forgiveness, and re-unity by God's grace. The story was incredibly powerful, leaving us to wish only that they had more money (and thus better equipment) to tell their story with. Sadly, this is the case with so many aspiring Christian filmmakers.

Speaking of aspiring Christian filmmakers, Right now Christian is previewing some short films. It's exciting to see these initial efforts made by budding filmmakers, and we look forward to seeing how they grow and hone their talents and gifts in the upcoming years.

A quick look forward: Hopefully sometime tonight we'll be posting a "recap of the Academy" video. Since we weren't able to be present for the academy, we're taking some insights and opinions from fellow filmmakers and attendees as to how they felt like the Academy went, and why they would encourage others to attend. Stay tuned for that, and more photos and videos.

And please, follow our twitter account so that we know that we aren't just tweeting into some abyss ;)

God bless!

Isaac Franklin

Live-Blogging: SAICFF

Hello everyone,

In the past my brothers and I have live-blogged the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival (SAICFF) through their website therebelution.com. Realizing that while many readers enjoyed the live-blog updates, the area of filmmaking is not one that applies to their members as a whole. So for that reason, we decided to move the live-blog here for this year, and simply re-direct people.

Christian Edmonds and myself are flying down this morning to live-blog the festival, and we'll be posting quite regularly here. For more immediate updates, please check out our twitter feed here.

Hope you you enjoy the updates, and I'll talk to you all again soon!

In Christ,

Isaac Franklin

Painting!

We spent a good part of today painting the kitchen. The living room, dining room and upstairs aren't finished yet :) I apologize for the mess, everything has been moved around and out of the way.

Aria Sono Harris

A relieved and tired mother :)

She is so precious

Welcoming the newest member of our family

Thank you God for this incredible gift.

The Days Are Crazy!

Wow! My days are so whacky and busy. Running all around, researching like crazy, but still finding time to check in on special websites.... or blogs ::smiles::

Yesterday was debate club, and the first time that everyone in club debated, so there was a lot of really nervous novice students :) But they all did amazing!!!! I was so proud of all of them. It wasn't perfect, but that can't be expected. They all did a great job of filling their speeches, I was very impressed. Ben and I debated negative against Joseph Cannon and Henry Frame (two awesome new students), and Ben was a beast :) It was so awesome, he was smooth, polished and eloquent. Really great round for him.

Next week Ben and I are both Ironmanning against other teams, because Chris and Liz will both be unavailable. I'm really looking forward to being responsible to cover all the speeches, something I've never done before. It's going to be a blast.

Tonight was Apologetics (our second meeting) and I was in charge of making sure each room had judges, time-keepers, and a correct list of student cycled through on time. Talk about crazy :) I have a new-found respect for hall-monitors and tabulators. Besides the hectic environment, it's really cool to see new students studying Apologetics. Crazy to realize this is my 4th year.

In other news....

I'M AN UNCLE!!!! (again)

My brother Joel and his wife Kimi had a baby girl last night, Aria Sono Harris. It totally made my week. Tomorrow I get to visit them and meet her. I can't wait to have kids :) :) :) I'll be posting pictures soon, hopefully.

Random thought: It's funny how crazy your life can become. Between Debate, and Speech, Apologetics, and other events going on in my life, there's really very little time for anything else. But I always make time to keep up with my dear friends, far and close (but mainly far) away :) Just a thought ::smiles::

Oh, and I can't wait for surprises :P :) ::laughs:: I'll stop confusing you now.

Happy 56th

Today is my mother's 56th birthday. Over the past years, there have been times when some of the family hasn't been around to celebrate it, but this is the first year that she isn't around for it either. Knowing that we'll never get the opportunity to celebrate it with her again weighs heavily on each member of the family.

Birthdays are funny things. When you're young, you eagerly anticipate becoming a year older. But as you get older and older, birthday's become more of a realization of your gradual approach to the end of your life. My mom didn't care. From year to year, nothing changed for her. Every year was dedicated to raising her children, loving and supporting her husband, glorifying God, and eagerly waiting for her true home. My mother wasn't concerned about age or beauty. Her eyes never strayed from those eternal rewards.

She's been gone for awhile now. In many ways, it's still very surreal. I swear sometimes I can hear her from my room, working in the kitchen, counseling my brothers, teaching James math, or helping Sarah pick out an outfit. Sometimes I can visit her in my dreams, and sometimes I make her live through my memories of places; sitting on the couch giving her a shoulder rub, looking through photo albums together, or taking walks with her after her varicose-vein surgery.

Sadly, at the end of the day we're all faced with the reality that it will never be quite the same here on this earth. She was God's gift to us. She was the reason to our madness, the caution to our adventure, the comfort to our pain, the order to our chaos, and the string to our kite. She supported everything, strengthened everything, held everything together, and without her, our family would not be who we are today. Life is different, life is hard, but God is so good.

I thank God every day for the hope that I have in Christ. Because of that sacrifice, I haven't lost my mother forever. She's simply waiting for me. In the meantime, I'm constantly reminded of her memory, especially on days like this, her 56th birthday.

My mom isn't celebrating her 56th birthday though. You know why? Human birth doesn't matter anymore. Neither does age. Guess what does? Re-birth through the blood of Christ, and eternal life. Happy 105th day in heaven, Mamma. We miss you.

Yay! Debate!

Tonight I finally got my wish: I got to debate! Man, I've missed it.

Ben and I got to debate Adam and Luke tonight, our team going Affirmative. It was a Start-Stop round, meaning that in-between speeches Mr. Wolcott would make commentary, give some critique to help the new debaters that were watching get an idea of how the round would work.

The round itself was awesome, we had a blast. Lots of jokes were cracked, analogies were made, and then turned upside down, and the turned upside down again. Great memories :)

Tomorrow we're having our annual Harris Family Cider Press Party, so I'll hopefully get some pictures from that :)

Bonjour!

A thought :)

You know what's funny? How useful your own advice can be. There have been so many times where I've been struggling with something, or confused about a choice, and my own words have come back to help resolve the issue at hand.

Recently, I've been unsure about some of the choices that I'm making about my life in the next couple of years. I've been confused about what God is doing and why He's doing it.

Then, I found one of my own quotes.

"Life is like one of those connect-the-dot puzzles, and we're the line. From our view, we see the closest dot and want to get there as quickly as possible. But God holds the pen, and He sees where the next dot truly lies, and, while it may confuse us at the time, His choices are the ones that will turn our lives into the beautiful picture it was meant to be."

Keep those dots comin', God.

:P :)

So I have these inspiration points... And they usually come late at night. Whether that's good or not, I have to take advantage of them, and it usually doesn't keep me up that late. Last night I only stayed up till 1am, in my defense.

But I got 10 more pages of evidence completed! I know have 35 pages of back-up evidence (which is more than I ever had last year) and a complete 1AC for next Tuesday's start-stop debate against Adam and Luke.

It'll be a lot of fun :)

And everything is good because I was able to sleep in. So anyone who is worrying about my amount of sleep per night doesn't need to :) "I'm fine"

Homecoming Fun

So to start out, I know these posts are extremely short, but right now I unfortunately don't have enough time for full recaps. I will provide one when I get back home though :)

In the meantime, I participated in the most awesome game of Ninja: 40 college players, with probably another 200 spectators. I only played one round, but I ended up advancing all the way to finals and winning :)

Thanks to Rebecca Turner for capturing all the festivities on camera.

Final Round