Photo courtesy of Brett Varvel
When Brett Varvel was five years old, he had an epiphany – he wanted to be a follower of Jesus Christ. As he moved through his teens and early 20s, he decided he wanted to become a filmmaker: little did he know that these two passions in his life would soon converge. Now he runs a production company called House of Grace Films. Based out of his home state of Indiana, House of Grace is dedicated to producing faith-based content spanning movies, short films, documentaries, and even music videos.
“I discovered the faith-based industry by accident in many ways and was welcomed with loving arms into the community,” Brett says. “I had some previous production experience, but nothing to the level of big-budget Hollywood type stuff, before entering the faith-based industry. I made the switch from broadcast into doing what I do now, and I haven't really looked back.”
For Brett, choosing to be a faith-based filmmaker was a highly personal decision rooted in his own personal faith. “I didn't even know that there was a faith-based industry. I just knew that I wanted to promote the message of the Bible and inspire people with hope through film.”
Brett found that some of the faith-based content already in the marketplace was not of very high quality. “We found that faith-based audience would be willing to watch some really bad content just to get access to the messaging… there’s been a stigma about faith-based content that it’s cheesy and it’s not taken seriously. But that’s starting to change. The storytellers are getting better. The budgets are getting bigger.”
With the recent announcement by actor Mark Wahlberg that he will be focusing primarily on faith-based content in the future, these sorts of productions are gaining more focus and attention, and Brett is excited to see where this leads his industry. “At its core, I would really describe the faith-based industry as very much still in the independent sector,” Brett explains. “There's very few mainstream faith studios and distribution companies that have the budgets to do things at an extremely high level. So there's very much an independent spirit about a lot of the stuff I work on.”
In his day-to-day work, Brett has found Final Draft screenwriting software to be a trusted partner in all aspects of production. “I use Final Draft on a very regular basis. The way I use it covers the gamut from actually writing screenplays to writing treatments, creating story spines for documentaries, and breaking down and prepping the script for budgeting. I’m not a writer at heart, but I do write, and I partner with other writers. There’s very few people I’ve worked with who use anything other than Final Draft for writing screenplays, and those that do, once I show them how easy Final Draft is to use, they make the switch.”
When it comes to working with artists on music videos, Brett finds the Final Draft templates to be handy in helping to generate ideas. “I’ll be approached by an artist and they want me to come up with a basic idea for a music video, and I’ll use templates and the Beat Board tools to create a treatment for them. I can’t speak highly enough of Final Draft. I think it’s really changed how I develop ideas. I always felt a little bit of a chasm just trying to figure out my ideas, and now I can put structure to it early on and give concepts teeth. As a visual learner, it’s been really helpful to me.”
Brett sees the market for faith-based content continuing to expand, and is excited to be part of its future. “I think now more than ever in our day and age, we need hope and encouragement. There's so much darkness in the world… people are sick and tired of being down and discouraged. Light always shines brightest in the darkness and, that’s what we’re trying to do with our content – create hope and inspire people.”
More information on House of Grace Films is available here.