NRB Chronicles- Kappa Studios - Christian Film Finishing Fund

Oh, one more time with feelings. That was Mark Berg.

Is that Berg? Don't get mad, just get paid. I'm like, Mark, I don't think that's really the philosophy we're going for here.

I actually like that. Don't get mad, get paid. His business partner used to always fly off the handle. These guys weren't believers.

He'd fly off the handle and chew them out or whatever. The rational one would say, Chris, stop getting mad. Just get paid. Go home. Call it a day.

Call it a day, brother. That's really, really good. That same guy went on to produce. He owns the Saw franchise. He probably made a hundred million bucks.

Incredible. I mean, it was like... He got paid? Yes, I got paid.

As soon as they said that, I'm like, oh, I just blew the punch. To build the kingdom. To just be at the NRB where we see how God's doing this with people that walk by every few minutes. And this morning, I was at the devotions for the NRB and had a chance to hear Stu speak on the Book of Acts, which is always fun.

One of his passions, that's for sure. And I met some folks with Kappa Studios. And they are working on a very really cool project right here. It's got Brad and Paul.

So Brad Silverman, Paul Long. So how did you guys meet? I guess there's a good question.

You want to lead that off, buddy? Yeah, so I was a filmmaker. I am a filmmaker and had been doing a project and needed post-production. Editing, sound design, color and so on.

And we had shot all night. And we're at my church in Southern California. And I believe it was your wife, Karen, who was talking to the dad of the producer. And long story short, she finds out that he's been making this movie. It doesn't make any sense, Robbie, but he's making this movie. And he finds out that Paul and Karen own this incredible post-production facility called Kappa Studios in Burbank, California.

And so they said, well, why don't you come by and visit? It was sort of like Reese's Peanut Butter. We were the peanut butter. He was a chocolate or something. And it was like, we had this film that needed post.

He was this post house looking for films with redemptive value. Match made in heaven. In beautiful downtown Burbank. Beautiful downtown Burbank.

That's right. I shouldn't tell this story, but I'm going to, since we're right here. I grew up in Albuquerque to some extent. Graduated from high school.

El Dorado High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My buddy and I decided we're going to move to California. That's what we're going to do. So we load up the VW Bug.

This is 1977, maybe. It's a cliche. It works. Keep going, Robbie.

This is great. Yeah, we're with you. We're with you. And we're going to go to Los Angeles.

Of course we are. And you just take Interstate 40 and you just keep getting it. And eventually you're going to be in California. So we get into California and we're like, where are we?

We have no idea. But it didn't matter because we had nowhere to go. And then all of a sudden I see this sign that says Burbank. And I went, we're in beautiful downtown Burbank.

Because everybody back in the day heard about beautiful downtown Burbank. Is that like Tonight Show? That was Johnny Carson. Johnny Carson, yeah.

Yeah, he was big on that. Beautiful downtown Burbank. So I've been there. And yeah, we just might as well drove in the ocean because we had nowhere to go because we were lost as we could be. But I was in California. And so whenever I hear Burbank, it breaks me right back there. Me and Peter Sommers in the Volkswagen.

Totally lost in the big city. That's awesome. But we weren't making movies. But you guys were.

We were. So, wow. Post-production, being that I do a lot of production work with the Christian Car Guy Theatres of something that I do, this is huge. There's so much that people wouldn't know that's in a movie that is post-production that's totally incredible. The difference between a really great movie and a spectacular movie, right?

Yeah. They say, this is a very well-worn saying, but I think it might be appropriate now, you make a movie three times. First you write the film and then what you direct and shoot is different than what you wrote. And the third and last time is the editing. And that's a pivotal time because your film can take a shape. You have an idea. You come through. The Post is that place where all these ideas come to rest or come to die, whatever it is, but they come right there. And at the end of the day, it has to come out.

It's like sausage. It must come out. So you, Brad, had made this. Right. And then you met Paul.

Right. And what was that movie? So that was called No Greater Love.

I've seen that movie. Yeah, that came out in 2010. So that's what, over 11 years ago now? It was a while ago, yeah. Well, this had to be like 2009 when we were still making it. Well, good point.

No Greater Love was the name of the film. Spectacular. Yeah, and we ended up going to the same church, and then we visited Kappa. Paul and I became fast friends. And then famously, for three years, we prayed together. And when the Lord's timing was right, I came on board with Paul.

And as the story goes, Kappa Studios went from secular Hollywood studio to a studio that exists to honor Christ. How awesome is that? Pretty awesome. And so today, part of the reason that you guys are at the NRB is you guys are part of the chosen project? Is that what's... Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Well, yeah. Paul, so successful in post-production. Very, very successful studio with Kappa Studios for so many years. And as the Lord worked on both he and his wife's heart and just really moved, just drew them both to him. Not really knowing what do you do with that in Hollywood, right? When you're existing to glorify God in Hollywood. Well, when the company pivoted, the Lord really put it on Paul's heart to pivot the company just to exist to glorify God.

It was a couple of very, very lean years, Robbie, as you can imagine. But then in time, projects started coming, including this one little show about the life of Christ told from the apostles. None of us knew it was going to become this global phenomenon. At least I certainly did. No, we didn't know. We thought it was a good show.

We didn't know. Yeah. Yeah. God's Not Dead, Unplanned. These are some other shows that have gone out through us.

Yeah. We're grateful to be there, but I will tell you that just as an encouragement for listeners, I spent many, many years in the secular industry. And the stuff I put my hand to, I probably shouldn't have. And I was very focused on making money and what money could do. And I wanted you to say, hey, do you like me? I like you, man.

You are awesome. I wanted to hear that. And so going down and worshipping the money took me down a pathway of just doing whatever came over. And I always told myself, well, you know, you got to make the payroll and you get people and you got to make things work.

You know what I mean? And so those the vicissitudes of that, I was telling myself it was very, very important to make the payroll. But what I never knew is that I never made one of them. God made all the payrolls. But you couldn't have convinced me back in the day.

It wasn't there. I didn't understand that. And God brought me to a place of seeing that. And then fast forward, Brad and I, we just went, you know, we got to do it this way or just stop.

So we'll see what the Lord does. And so, I mean, this is incredible. So you were the post-production on Unplanned as well, and you were in God's Not Dead series. You guys did that one? The first one. The first one. Yeah. The big one. Well, from my standpoint, that was just absolutely huge. It's pretty big, yeah. So, yeah, can you take me back there, like 2011 or whatever, so you guys decide, okay, this is what we're going to do.

How's this going to happen? And you guys have been praying. So, yeah, I did a couple films with Paul pre-God's Not Dead. As a filmmaker with my producing partner, Russ, we did a couple films, brought them to Paul.

We were clients of Kappa Studios. And those films were? It was No Greater Love and Grace Unplugged. Those are the two. Oh, I love the Grace Unplugged chart.

Yeah, so those are the two that I wrote and directed that brought to Paul. And I was just like, this place is incredible. See, I grew up in Los Angeles, so I didn't have to drive in a VW, you know, to get there, Robbie. I was already there.

Cheap shot, I'm sorry. I'm jealous, man. You had the adventure. That was easy, Brad. Come on. I had just hopped on the 222 bus to go there.

I didn't have to do anything. Right, right. Yeah, so all that to say, I had, you know, doing that, it was while I was doing that last project that there was so much downtime that that's when Paul and I, we were at the same church, and for about three years, we would pray together.

Which, looking back, that may as well have been 30 years. I mean, think about praying. I've never prayed for anything for three years, right? And not that we were specifically praying. We were just praying just for the Lord's leading, the Lord's guiding. And then about 2015, 2016 is when my schedule opened. The Lord just timed it right, where that's when I came on board.

So, yeah, up to that point, he'd already done God's Not Dead, and then later would come Unplanned. But it wasn't until 2016 that the, okay, we're going to make it publicly known, let the chips fall wherever they may, let's burn the ships. I don't care what happens. Lord, this is your place.

You're going to do this. And that's when, you know, that's when things really changed. And then the shows really would eventually come in like Unplanned and, of course, Chosen and some others. Right. That's right. It's been about five years since we really, really pivoted the company. And it meant, you know, we had a layoff. I laid off about half the company, you know. And, you know, these are people with me for a long time, 12 years and 22 years and 15 years, 18 years. There were people that were there a long time. And so that was a hard day, you know.

It's kind of hard. You have no idea how I can relate to that because I was a car dealer. And when I burned my ships, God burned them.

He lit the match on you there. I had to let them all go. Yeah. Or close the company. Yeah.

And go into broadcasting. It was kind of an interesting thing. But so I really, really am with you that it's through God's strength that these kind of things happen.

But he obviously gave you a gift, both of you. Right. And I find it interesting that you've made films pre-production and you've been doing this post-production. So you bring these two visions together. And so I'm curious from you guys' perspective, why would God put Brad and Paul's visions, giftings, together?

I mean, my first thing is practical joke on the world. I don't know. No, I mean, that's a great question, Robbie. I mean, we don't overthink it, probably. I'm sure Paul has his version.

For me, I remember looking when I was a client there. I'd be thinking, here I am, sort of this creative spark, if you will. And Paul's got this incredible facility with know-how and structure and resources and knowledge and wisdom and order. And I just remember thinking, gosh, this is such a perfect playground. It just felt so right. And what about the coffee machine?

Don't forget that. When you put the coffee machine in, one of those grind the beans as they go. It makes one perfect cup of coffee. Enough. I'm in. I'm in.

Sold. So yeah, it just felt like, yeah, it did feel like complementary skill sets. And you know what's great? Above all that, yes, we have complementary skill sets, Robbie, but I think above that, Paul, you can comment on this, brother. What anchors the whole thing is not so much the complementary skill sets, but it's the complementary theology. We both just have such a similar understanding of scriptures and who Christ is and what our role is before a holy God and just who we are before this holy God. And what scripture is in our lives.

We don't really have any conflict anymore, but early on, I'm just a dumb, prideful guy. And so the conflict that would happen, we could just resolve it through scripture, through prayer. And so that's really the anchor. And then through that, yes, the Lord just put what appears to be complementary skill sets together. And hopefully when you look at some of the work out there, hopefully that comes through. So Paul, one of my visions, creative visions, when I started, Stu gave me this idea for this show, was that if people would listen, God's got something for them. Like, you know, He wants you to work together with a Paul or, you know, there's somebody in your life that He's been calling you to or some thing, like, you know, would you do this for my glory rather than where you were thinking about going? And if you had those people in front of you right this minute, those people listening right this second that are trying to decide, man, I don't know, I can feel this pressure to do this, what would you say to them, Paul?

Well, you know, that's an incredible question. I would tell you that what we've recognized is that we needed to wade into the concept of radical dependence. And we needed to jump into that. And what that means is, you know, what is that next thing and how do you honor God? How do you rightly divide the word and then live it?

How do you do that? And what we concluded was this. We need to be in prayer every day. Read the word. We don't even start working until we hit the books. He's at home reading the word. I'm at home. We come together.

What do you read? And we do that. And sometimes we've had folks join us, but not too much.

It's usually just he and I. And we pray for the employees. We walk through what's going on.

And then we say, Lord, bring us the people. Show us what it is you want us to do today. Forget about tomorrow.

What about today? How can we serve you today? So we had to bring it down to that. And I think in a certain kind of way, that's how we've done anything that's worth doing. The Lord has moved it, but it's by not presuming.

I can tend to want to manage, organize, push, do. And in that activity, God has lowered down and we're up. So it's a question really of the idols of the heart. So the idols that people, and some of them are good, they can be good idols, but they still, they diminish the Lord.

They pull him down. And so it's that. And so that's probably one of the foundational things. And without our theological, what I'll call matchup, which most people, you know, everybody's got different ideas. The theology we have is consistent. So we don't argue about stuff like that.

That allows us to walk forward in the film, him writing that film. If we had theological, we'd be fighting about that. We didn't.

There was nothing to fight about because we knew the messaging, what wanted to create, what wanted to go out. And even my wife and I both, we just looked at it for things. How would people interpret certain things? But it was never like, oh, hey, I don't believe what you're doing, man.

That's not for me. That I don't believe that. So that was, that's another very, very important element of this. But I think radically, depending on God and recognizing that you got nothing and to get to the place of jumping off the roof in the business, I had to get to that place. So that's kind of how we landed.

We went there. But once you jump off the roof, it changes things, you know. And I've been to the edge many a time in business, but there was a time before this of jumping off the roof where I just couldn't see any way to manage out of it. I couldn't figure it out. And I had a friend. And this is before I was even saved, really.

I was just kind of rolling around. I wasn't living for God. But I had a friend who was kind of mentoring me, and we went up the hills at a park, and we were in the Word all day long. He just took me through scriptures.

We just read the Word and prayed all day long. But what had happened is I just got to this place where we were kind of just trapped. And what we realized is don't go to the left or the right.

Just go right down the middle, whatever that looks like. Get out of bed. Just go, here I am today. Here I am today. Trust you today.

Start to depend on you today. And so in doing that, it was funny because this guy over at Disney, and he called me up one day, and he sent over in that week $150,000 of the business. It was crazy. And he said, I went down the hall for you, man. I said, what are you talking about? He said, I went down the hall. Oh, you did?

What? He said, listen, it's another apartment. They don't know you. I went down the hall for you, and you better not mess that up. These guys will go away.

They'll be quiet if anything goes wrong. He said that for you. I said, all right, check. And that was the beginning of one little step and then another. And little by little, the Lord just brought in people and jobs and all that. And that was a sort of pre-faith understanding of it.

I could sort of see that. And that was powerful to me. But when we jumped off the roof this other time, that was the kind of end of the end, saying, okay, we're going to do it this way. We're going to stop.

When that happened, that forced me into a place of being very motivated to want to do it this way. And the joys and rewards are crazy good. No, and the pleasures at his right hand are forevermore, as they say. We know that well, yes. 1611, right, baby?

1611. Yeah, we talk about that all the time. That's a good speech. You make known to me the paths of life.

And it does, man. His presence is fullness of joy. So, Brad, as I listen to Paul and I think, oh my goodness, you guys have a really huge gift that God's given you, just in each other. Totally. That it's like the body of Christ.

It's arms and legs. Yeah. What, as you look into your future projects that you're working on, which one is bubbling up that you're like, man, I can hardly wait for this? Ooh, that's a good question. We've got an answer, or two. Do we? I don't know if we have the same answer, but we can answer. Before I get to that, you mentioned something a second ago that I'm only recently, Robbie, learning to not take for granted, and that's this brother right here in Paul, that what's beautiful about this is, look, I'm prone to wonder. I'm an idol factory. What's beautiful is I'll be thinking, oh, Paul, what if we such and such and such, and I'll have this grand idea or whatever, and I'll be drifting in my thinking, and Paul's like, I thought we were doing this for God's glory.

No conditions. And what I'm really saying is, no, it's for God's glory, as long as blank. And inevitably, that's an idol, right? And so to have this brother in my life who's just like, nah, I think we're getting off track here, or just to keep each other accountable and just to keep each other on point, I think that really just drives the whole thing. And Paul's leadership, just of the company, it's just such a joy in all regards.

It creates such a healthy environment, and this is me absolutely stalling to try to answer your question. Well, let me just go down your rabbit trail since we're there. A moment ago, we sit at his right hand and his pleasure is forevermore, way back up in the 16th Psalm, I think the third verse, maybe the fourth. The sorrows of those who chase after other gods will be multiplied. Oh, I know the sorrows, man. I know the sorrows.

Yeah, very well. My wife knows the sorrows because of me. My kids know the sorrows because of me. Yeah. But the more I thought about that, the more I realized what a loving response that is. Oh, if we found sustainable joy in it, we'd keep doing it. Right. God is going to allow you to get as far down that until you get to the point where you're so miserable that you're going to turn back to find, right, in his presence, his fullness of joy, because where you're going, you're out in left field. We often talk, Robbie, about Psalm 32, where you hear David talking, oh, my bones ached, life was taken before me. I mean, that sounds like a depressed, just miserable human being when he was in habitual sin in his life. Right. Yeah.

When he was in that state. Don't take your spirit from me. Don't take your spirit from me. And you see, you hear that groaning, that just horrid life. This is a man after God's own heart who had fallen into just horrid sin, habitual, unconfessed, unrepentant sin.

And to your point, my brother Robbie, like, yeah, you bet. It is God's mercy and grace that when I go down in those paths, it's horrible. It's miserable. It's lonely. It's awful.

Who wants to stay there? You repent and restore to me the joy of my salvation. So, amen. Yeah. And the beauty of that is what you were speaking of there.

It's his power that will just raise you up and go, oh, you were fine all along. I got you right here. Yeah. Yeah, I know. That's right. That's a mess over there, by the way. I got you.

That's right. So, bubbling. What's bubbling? Well, what's exciting to me, we have a couple of shows. We have a couple of film projects we're working on. And they're kind of, I don't want to say political hot buttons, but they can be, although we don't try to dabble in politics.

We don't want to, you know, but things do kind of cross over, whether we like it or not, but just issues that we believe are honoring or dishonoring to God. But we have one particular film, which may be a little premature, just not for the sake of secrecy or anything, just to process for the sake of communicating to an audience. But another thing we have is a talk show idea that we've been brewing. It's really an episodic show idea that really plays to our strengths. See, Kappa is located in beautiful downtown Burbank, right in the epicenter of Hollywood, right?

Sure. You've got Warner Brothers, Disney, Universal, NBC, ABC, Johnny Carson, everything. Burbank is really the epicenter.

That's where we are. So to have a show emanating from there, from a true Hollywood studio-ish perspective, but yet totally for the honor of Christ. So it would be just sort of the who's who in the faith film world.

It would be just the events and just the issues of the day as it relates to media. Just a Christian media show from Hollywood. Because there's so many people that truly want to serve and honor God, and they're afraid, or they don't know how to do it, or they don't know what it looks like. And they feel like they're the only ones.

And they feel like they're the only ones. Exactly, brother. And I think what the Lord has done through Paul, I'll say this on his behalf. Let another man praise you.

He would never say this. Paul has inspired people. We have a five-minute video that talks about Paul's story from secular to when the Lord moved him into that. And then we have another video talking about our nonprofit. But when people hear Paul's story, they get inspired. So we want to do that show that really inspires people.

Yes, it's a Hollywood-themed show, but it's really to inspire anybody in any field. Guys, life is short. Burn the ships. Go all in for Christ. Quit playing in both worlds. You're not going to win either one.

You're going to lose on both sides. So the show, if anything, it's an inspirational show for people in the workforce to really just get motivated to just go all in for Christ using Hollywood and movies and themes and TV shows as sort of the catalyst for that. You got me. So where were you? I thought, yes.

We have one viewer right now. I need to record this and play that because I didn't know what I just said. There might be a pitch in there somewhere, but that's what I'm going to say.

Paul may have different things that he's doing. We have a number of projects in the works. We have a lot of projects.

I think what's happened here is we were sitting on at least six projects and we came together to create those projects and get them out. That was the goal. What's happened here is we got the first one. Yay.

That's all happened. And now we're seeing the rivers are flowing towards this nonprofit, the Christian Film Finishing Fund. We're seeing ourselves moved over there.

It's very natural. And I call it just the needful things because we've recognized, my goodness, we see these things and it's like, why are we not dealing with it? And we started out doing that, just helping the filmmakers, because faith projects can make a difference for Kingdom. So those projects were thinking, well, we need to help those folks. Then when we started to understand the dynamics are one after the other, people are stuck on the bench and they don't make films anymore. And when their investors burn out and they burn out and they question themselves and then I run ahead of God, when all that happens, they sit on the bench. And so we've recognized that I think what a devilish plot to park all these people on the bench. So what we've recognized, we can unlock each one of those. And in so doing, their film goes out, they make their money back or some of it, they're going to do it again.

And that's what we realized. We need them to do it again and again so we could deluge the culture with great materials that point to God. So the name of this nonprofit that you just described is what now? Christian Film Finishing Fund. Yeah, what's happened, Robbie, is that we have our own projects and we have been obviously working on some other higher profile projects like The Chosen, though there aren't anything else like The Chosen, but you get my point. And through that, as our profiles raise, we realize that God's given us a platform. Now, what does faithfulness to that look like? Because I guess of what I do or how I've been involved, there are some incredible, in my mind, talented Christian filmmakers out there that are right where I know of their project.

I know these people are benched. What you just described, Paul, I'm like, man, you know, at the Christiana brothers, I've done work with them. And Ann Alt, the lady I talked about at the Christian Car Guy Theater, she's working on a film.

These people have been trying to pull it off for I don't know how long. And then there's this guy, man, I haven't seen a movie from him in a couple, three years, and I'm hoping you guys know who he is. I've seen all his stuff on whatever I've seen it on, Amazon TV, and his stuff is like, God, this guy is so awesome.

But nobody's ever heard of him. You know how those are? It'll come to me, obviously, as soon as I turn the mic off. But the point is, you see these people that have, to whatever extent, they've taken the step to walk with God, and now they're left out there to dry. And so the Christian Film Finishing Fund, this is part of what you guys do. But what if those guys get on the rail again?

What happens? I'm telling you, it's magical, because all those things will come together. And the culture right now is being bombarded with all kinds of messages. And it's almost like an onslaught.

It's just continuous. And I've told many, many people, we don't need to throw rocks at those guys. We need to show the public what is good and right. Point them to God, let them see who God is.

Let them see those stories of faith that are difference makers, because the Lord uses those. We don't have to worry about it. If we can complete the project, and it's a God-honoring project, you get it out, game over. It will find its place.

There'll be people that watch it, and those lives will be changed. And I use the example of sitting in church. We can be in church together. We hear something different. He's saying the exact words to us both.

Why? Because where my life is and yours and his and his, whoever's in that row sitting on the bench, we all hear it as it applies to our life right now. And that's the indwelling of the Holy Spirit will take you and change each person what they hear.

And I believe that is restorative and God can use that. So my thinking is, don't critique how great the films are. Do as best as wonderful shows. Help them get a level of excellence that we've spent our life doing. Take the value of them up, the quality.

Make them look and sound great. Do something good and get them out there. Everyone's not going to be God's not dead. Everyone's not going to be, I can only imagine. But there's a lot of great projects that point people to God that need to get out. Oh, my soul.

I am so, so, so grateful God allowed me to meet you guys. I mean, I sense God's excitement in all these guys that are out there. Creative people are delicate people. Yeah. Sure.

You know, they put their stuff out there that, you know, and then, you know, Satan uses that to just beat the heck out of them. Oh, yeah. And so, wow. How cool. He's got you guys out there like ambassadors.

Yeah. Well, imagine getting that phone call from us. Hey, you're short on money. We're going to take care of it. And you don't have to give us any points in your movie. We don't want to own your movie.

We're not doing anything. We're going to help you get it done. What we ask is that if your movie profits, take, just throw it back into the nonprofit so it can go, pay it forward, right?

So it can go to someone else down the road. But we're not making... We don't require that, though. Yeah, there's no requirement. We don't require that. If you want to, that's your business. But we aren't, we're not asking for anything because it's Kingdom. Well, as always, I'm way out of time before I'm out of show.

Paul and Brad, and you can see there's more future here on The Kingdom Pursuits with Kappa Studios and the Christian Film Finishing Fund. I can be more excited myself. I hope you are. And, you know, you're listening and you're thinking, what can I do? Well, you can pray. That's what you can do.

You can pray for the Christian Film Finishing Fund, certainly for Kappa Studios. But, you know, as you partner with God and what He's doing to encourage all these people out there that have burnt their ships or whatever they've done along the way, that God sends people like this. It's just so encouraging to me. I hope it is to you listening that, man, these guys are out there. God's using them in the Kingdom in such amazing ways, and He wants to use you. Thank you for listening.