Spend a couple days with us behind the scenes!

So, this is the beauty salon before we go into the studio.

Ready for the camera.

Yep, this is what you gotta do before you're on camera. That's why I always look so good. Alright, so let's see a brief tour of our studio where we film. It's just this little room that we're really cramped in.

The Small Studio Setup and Recording Space

So Bethany is getting ready. She's bookmarking the verses she's going to read on camera. And so this is our little table. And you can see this room is very small. This is supposed to be a master bedroom of some kind.

And so we've got these lights. So we use shower curtains to diffuse the light on these. It's a nice budget way. Let me turn on some of these. And then we have a little ring light to accent a little more.

Got a big pile of toys here and props. And then as you can see there's a lot of different things all around to keep the sound from being echoey. Having that echoey room sound. These are boards with these really thick kind of blankets that are really cheap at the store.

You can get these for like $10 or $15. And it's a lot cheaper than buying professional sound dampening stuff. Some pillows. And then over here we've got a blue screen slash green screen. More mattress material for other stuff.

And then more padding. We've got this whole window mattressed in. And then we've got this nice view out here. A little balcony with a hammock. And a view of the mountains of Oaxaca. And we've got this thick curtain to dampen the sound.

So we close this when we're recording. This is Bethany's beautiful art table. And she's working on a new landscape painting. She's doing the layers with oils here. Here's a recent cactus painting with oil pastels.

Editing, Soundproofing, and the Camera Rig

This is where all the magic happens with the editing. So we actually made this table together. So it's a standing desk. And we put this top on it and cut it and varnished it ourselves. So we got this computer set up and she's able to stand here or sit.

We got a little walking treadmill that she can walk while she edits on the computer. So she spends a lot of time there. And then there's this little booth that we built around. So that the echo from the roof doesn't cause problems with the sound.

So you can see we bought some boards really cheap at the hardware store. Then back here is the background. So this is a big mattress as well. So it keeps the background looking clean. But it also helps dampen the sound.

And then we have a green screen behind it if we need it. And then we light it up with these three lights. This keeps it nice and bright and looking good. Oh and also there's a light up here. You can see that it also helps light up our background.

So we've got a lot of lights. So if we count them we've got one down here. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten lights that we'll have on while we're filming. Then here's the whole camera rig that we're using.

And for a mic we actually have tried different things. But this little lapel mic works the best. So what we did instead of having the typical little clip on it. Took some Plasti-Tac with a paper clip embedded in it.

And then this just hooks right on your shirt. And it's a lot less visible. And this Plasti-Tac helps dampen the sound. So that's just like a $20 little mic that wires up to the camera.

A Hebrew Song Snippet and Wrapping Up Filming

I wasn't going to say et ha 'yam there. Tzva Mitzrayim met ba 'yam. V 'nei Yisrael o 'avru ba 'yabasha. Tzva Mitzrayim met ba 'yam. V 'nei Yisrael o 'avru ba 'yabasha.

Okay, so we're done filming. Just need to get this memory card out and hand it over to Beth.

I was so excited to get my hands on this footage and start editing right away.

And there she's off. She's going to get sucked into her world of editing.

It's a good thing I'm hungry or I would probably get sucked in right away and you wouldn't see me again for like three hours.

And so the file copying begins. These are massive files. We finish our evenings up here on the terrace looking at sunsets like this.

It's pretty amazing.

Dinner, Music Room, and Personal Collections

Here's Beth making her amazing granola for the evening. And if you taste this stuff, it's bitter than chocolate. So good.

We're recording now. So this is our living room and music room. Our piano, some of my artwork on the walls, which we just recently got hung up. It's a lot of work to drill into this concrete. Andrew loves dinosaurs, so basically all he ever asks for for Christmas or his birthday or any occasion in which I give him a gift is a dinosaur painting.

So I don't even have to ask. I already know what he's going to want.

So the collection is growing and he already has like three more ideas. He's like, oh, can you do this dinosaur painting for me? So I'm sure there will be more to come. And then over here we have a little Egypt section.

I usually say that if I had a second life to live, I'd probably be an Egyptologist in the second one. So I love ancient Egypt. So that comes out in some of my artwork.

I can't really see it with the glass reflection.

Yeah.

And you have to see Andrew's butterfly collection.

Absolutely must see. He's been collecting butterflies since he was a kid. And some of these are the original ones he collected when he was a kid. And then a lot of them are new gems. And so we just love being able to see amazingly beautiful bright colors God has created here in our dining room.

And this is some of your beautiful artwork here in Africa. What do you want to tell them about this thing down here?

Oh, yeah, we got to tell them about this. This is a little memory from our time in Equatorial Guinea, working with a musical group that was created by some friends of ours, brothers Nkowalong. This is a traditional Fong instrument from Central Africa called an Nkow.

And this is a CD of all the recordings of the scripture that we did together with them set in the Fong language and with original Fong music written by our brother Kanuto.

So this is a little memento of that period of our life.

Play it like this. Of course, with the CD in here, it doesn't work so well. You get different...

This is a miniature one.

This is a tiny one. Normally, they're like this huge, big ones.

But I can't.

And then here are some more butterflies. A little design I've made.

The books themselves, I mean.

Yeah.

And this is a cool thing she did for my birthday with beetle wings.

Work on the Mixtec Project and Glow-in-the-Dark Art

Oh, that's our dining room. Very exciting. So here's Andrew doing some of his work.

Hello.

Consulting for the Mixtec project.

Yep.

So this is Paratext right here. I've got Spanish and English translations, the back translation, the Mixteco translation, Hebrew, and a translation guide here. And my beautiful bride.

Oh, whoops. That's me.

And then, check this out. I turn this on. Voila.

Ah-ha. My glow-in-the-dark paintings. Although it looks way cooler at night, I gotta say.

Yep.

Thanks for stopping by.

Visiting Andrew's Parents and Heading Home

Hey, so now we're headed off to Andrew's parents' house. They live about 10 minutes away,.

And they invited us over for lunch today, so...

Most blinding entrance ever.

You don't need a... What do you call those screens? Hey, Dad.

Hi. Well, welcome.

We're doing a little bit of vlogging here.

Here's Andrew tuning his parents' piano. We're getting supper, or dinner, or lunch. Lunch ready over here. Hi, Janet. Here we are on our way home again.

Bougainvilleas. Oh, they're so beautiful.

Andrew's masterful backing-up skills in action.

I can't do this.