Church: Faith Promise Church
Submitted by: Briauna Hankins
Church Size: Over 5,000
Location: Knoxville, TN
Category:  Best Life-Change Story
Gear: RED Raven, Fisher 10 dolly

This project was dear to our film team’s heart as we were sent Lilyanah’s story two years prior, and we knew we wanted to tell her story. We tried three separate times to work her story into upcoming events, but each time we wound up going a different direction; until Easter of 2020. Our church’s theme was ‘Beauty From Ashes’, and Lilyanah’s story was just that.

My team and I worked tirelessly for months writing, storyboarding, scheduling, and building everything for this shoot. Of course, in the midst of filming this story, COVID-19 was just then hitting full force and we had no clue if we were going to be able to finish filming safely or not, but luckily our last day of filming was the day before the official quarantine.

For this project we had 3 full days of filming as we had 3 different interview setups, and then multiple different locations for b-roll coverage. For the interview setups, we converted an abandoned warehouse space by one of our campuses into a makeshift soundstage where we constructed and designed our 3 different walls to match up with each stage of Lilyanah’s story. Then, for the b-roll shooting we traveled all across Knoxville, TN to various different locations from parks to attendee’s houses.

As far as equipment for this project, we shot on 2 RED Ravens the entire time, and we also utilized a Fisher 10 dolly with a 45 degree curved track for all of our interview set-ups to get the perfect smooth motion that also perfectly highlights our crafted sets.

Overall, this project was a labor of love to perfectly tell a beautiful story of beauty from ashes within our church community.