The song concept that became Wonderful Complexity was one that I’ve desired to explore for a long time. About five years ago, a friend gave me Arthur Pink’s Attributes of God and ever since then, I have been reading Scripture with an eye toward seeing God’s character. Nothing has contributed more to my Christian growth than growing in my understanding of God’s attributes. In an attempt to help others share in my own joy, I wrote Wonderful Complexity.
I was first introduced to the beat by Sam Pagel, the owner of Pelican Media who shot the entire video. The first time he heard Ryan Heeney's beat, he knew he wanted to create a video for it, so I was all in! After listening to the music plenty of times, I knew that it would be perfect to develop this concept that I had been contemplating for so long. As usual, I made plenty of alterations and revisions throughout the writing process until I thought that each word was purposefully placed and served the song well as a whole.
Lyrically, I attempted to communicate the complexity of the song’s content through the form by employing various poetic techniques, including personification, wordplay, alliteration, rhyme, and free verse. The latter portion of the song even adds contrasts in that it is written and delivered as a rap, whereas the former is more freeverse poetry.
Thankfully, God has surrounded me with amazingly creative people! I would never have created this video in a million years on my own. I gathered a range of artistic friends, each of whom possesses multiple talents. This creative team was made up of people who know music and are just good at a host of other things - J. Miles, a rapper with a Business Administration degree, Sam Pagel and Ryan Heeney, and Mike Jones, the Creative Director at Resound Creative. After each of us had spent time listening to the beat and reading over the lyrics, we brainstormed for hours, combining and revising our best ideas. The first meeting was fruitful and before we knew it, we had all our plans set.
One thing that I am learning, especially as it relates to making good art, is never remain married to your first idea. When I met again with my team weeks later, we decided to scrap everything we had planned last time. We went back to the drawing board. As opposed to illustrating the complexity of the song topic in a visually complex manner, we decided to aim for something visually simple, but captivating. Since we wanted to visually capture this abstract idea of complexity, we decided that using a variety of naturally (or supernaturally, rather) occurring features in creation would best serve the visual.
Having already scheduled time to be in California at The Master’s College for two weeks during the summer for classes, Sam decided to join me for a camping trip in Sequoia National Park where we would shoot half of the video. The scenes in Sequoia took the better part of 8 hours to shoot. Although we shot from afternoon to night, we compounded the visual complexity by playing the scenes backwards in the video, from night to daytime. The intent was to capture several complexities within creation - stone, soil, water, trees, flowers, the sky, clouds, moon, light, darkness, mountains, etc.
The stage scene took place at the Phoenix Theatre in Downtown Phoenix. We knew what we were looking for, but our options were scarce. Thankfully, God provided exactly what we needed at the perfect time. With the help of a couple connections, we were able to shoot on a stage that had been professionally designed for a series of local performances. The set design was amazing! I think, in person, it was even better than the video reveals. My formal attire on stage, versus the more casual, trucker-hat look in the forest, was also intended to visually complement the contrasts in the song even down to the prominent colors that I wore in both shots.
