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Recently, Faith Visuals spent some time talking with Storme Wood, half of the dynamic video-producing duo that is eleven72. (Lee Rothenflue, eleven72's other half, was unavailable at the time.) Storme shared details about the origins of eleven72, how they got started, and offered a behind-the-scenes look at a couple of their videos.

Okay, I have to ask: Is Storme Wood your real name? 

Yeah, that's the name my parents gave me.

I only ask because I think it's a great name.

Yeah, that's okay. Everybody asks me that. I've even been asked to produce my driver's license to prove that that's my real name.

Okay, let's talk about eleven72.  How did you and Lee get into this?

I was going to film school at the University of Texas, and I started going to a little church in Austin, Texas—we both live in Austin. The associate pastor found out I was in film school, and he was immediately interested in having me start helping out, making videos for the church. This was ten years ago, so the church was ahead of the curve on wanting to have video as an important part of their services. 

Eventually I was brought on staff part-time. I was the media director for the church, and when I met Lee he wanted to learn more about editing. So he bought a computer and one of the first versions of Final Cut Pro. I started to mentor him and teach him how to edit, and I started giving him projects. Eventually I became a full-time staff person at the church, and he became my most dedicated volunteer.

So that's how we started becoming a team. And that's when we started talking about what we could do with this passion we have. Eventually we felt that God was calling us to do something beyond just creating videos for our church, and so we spent a week in prayer and decided we were going to start this company to make media for the worldwide church.

Have you ever regretted it?

No, I've never regretted that choice. Running our own company has been quite an education. Not just being a filmmaker, but also having to balance the books, make the right choices, pay all the bills, and all that kind of stuff. That's been a challenge, but it's been worth it.

So where did you guys get the name eleven72?

We talked a lot about names and at some point we decided we didn't want that to hold up our getting started, so we tell people that's when God started the company, because we were both born in November of '72.

The same day?

Not the same day. But we were both born in November of '72 and we both are married and we both have two kids, and the daughter is the older one and the son is the younger one and they're about the same age. So we're definitely in the same life stage all the way around.

So you and Lee are pretty much indistinguishable except that you have a better name?

Ha, I guess so. But we don't look the same.

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