Newly restored documentary about a dying parish miraculously restored to life is now available on DVD and will be broadcast to 230 million homes worldwide on September 25th. 

Watch our new trailer below to get a good feel for this newly restored and digitally remastered, time-tested documentary "Saint John Cantius, Restoring the Sacred".

"Saint John Cantius, Restoring the Sacred" on EWTN Wednesday, September 25 at 5:30pm CT; Also available to watch online and on DVD at storytel.org/cantius

Standing the Test of Time

In the years following this program's premiere on EWTN in May of 2009, the fame of Saint John Cantius Church has grown and people everywhere have connected with our presentation of this amazing true story of how an all-but-abandoned huge, old church, destined for the wrecking ball, became a thriving religious and cultural treasure again.

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StoryTel is delighted to welcome Phil Halpin as its first full time in-house video editor and Vice President of Production. Phil will oversee the post production process on all our projects, and be responsible for making sure our productions meet their milestones, deadlines and broadcast dates.

We've hired Phil away from a successful, 15-year career as Vice President of Marketing at U.S. Inspect, which included a big emphasis on corporate video production as well as web-based marketing. Phil has also often worked or volunteered his time on Saturdays and holidays for StoryTel, and has been my preferred video editor for over 20 years. He shaped all of the On Assignment documentaries, and was the primary editor on some of our most acclaimed films, such as Saint John Cantius, Restoring the Sacred.

We’re very excited to finally be able to fully tap into his full attention, talent, and creative energy. We look forward to increased output and the development of many concurrent projects.

The Archdioces of Omaha just published good article about Sancta Familia, the non-profit clinic located right next store to our main office. Sancta Familia is a medical apostolate in the Archdiocese of Omaha, which means it's a lay organization devoted to the mission of the church in the world.

StoryTel Foundation helps them promote their good work so more prospective patients in Omaha area are aware of them as a resource. Much like we view ourselves as God's tool for mass communication, we appreciate how they view themselsves as God's tool for healing:

Thanks to all at Sancta Familia for their continued good work.

Behind the Decision to Close Caption ON ASSIGNMENT Documentaries

It was Christmas time, 2008. We had just completed the new master for Saint John Cantius, Restoring the Sacred and I was eager to show it.

I was sitting in the living room with my best friend from high school, John Caton, at his house in Kansas city. I put St. John Cantius, Restoring the Sacred in the DVD player and pressed play as John’s daughter, Megan, sat down at the end of the couch to watch.

After two minutes, she was asking enough questions that I paused the program. “What’s the matter?” I said. John turned to me to explain,

John Caton and his daughter Megan as Santa and his elf.“Megan’s asking, ‘What about me?’ because she’s hearing impaired and can’t understand what it’s about.”

My excitement turned to guilt. I had never considered that a hearing impaired person would miss out on the message in our film.

That day motivated me to adapt StoryTel productions for those with hearing loss by adding closed captions.

Nearly 14% of the people in the U.S. have some amount of hearing loss, with a large share being at least 65 years old (Gallaudet Research Institute).

That is a large group of people who could benefit from our programs. Networks like EWTN, expect third party programming, such as our ON ASSIGNMENT documentaries, to arrive with closed captioning already encoded on the video.

In 2008, we were not a foundation and we had very little in the way of production funding. Today, we are still very small by industry standards, but we are now able to make it possible for Megan, and others like her, to be inspired by StoryTel productions.

We’ve just begun utilizing technology, which allows us to encode the closed captioning directly onto our videos before they reach EWTN or DVD, making it possible to view the closed captions on any television made after 1993.

From now on all ON ASSIGNMENT programs will offer closed captions.

I am happy to announce that the ON ASSIGNMENT programs, St. John Cantius: Restoring the Sacred, St. Peters: Where Heaven Meets Earth, and Miles Christi: In the Mission Fields of America, will also inspire the hearing impaired across the United States and around the world.

Our first "short" is a one minute mini-documentary about confession. Excerpted from our "St. John Cantius: Restoring The Sacred" documentary, this short video shows Fr. Frank Phillips' approach to confession. "As long as the door was open and the sign was out, he had business. So, same thing for us."

We're pleased to announce, StoryTel Shorts. Storytel's mission is to distribute to as wide an audience as possible stories of ordinary people doing God's work. StoryTel Shorts are one-to-five minute videos that can be easily shared across the Internet and the social networks. They are often segments from within our longer documentaries, but also are sometimes stand-alone original videos.

These videos can be seen on StoryTel's youtube channel or on our screening room page. 

Check out our first short on Confession.

And check out our second short on the Corpus Christi Procession in Omaha.

We made it safely to Argentina late last night after a bumpy ride with some passengers getting ill because of it. There were complications with Customs entering the country. Seems there was some sort of "formal presentation" that should have been prepared ahead of time by us or Miles Christi about the whole project simply because we are bringing in $40,000 worth of equipment. We did not know we needed to do this. Miles Christi did not know either.

The Customs agents were nice to us but they were going to hold our equipment for 24 hours or more until we or Miles Christi accomplished this step properly. The priests who came to meet us were talking to the man for us and it was friendly but serious and not looking good. In the midst of their trying to explain their religious order to the man who had not heard of them, one of the priests mentioned their founder Father Yanuzzi.

The customs agent said, "Father Yanuzzi?"

The priests said, "Yes."

The man said, "Father Roberto Yannuzi?"

The priests said, "Yes."

The man said, "Father Roberto Yanuzzi was my confessor when I was 18 years old! So he has started an order of priests?" Well Good for him! I love Father Roberto! How is he doing?"

He pulled out his cell phone and called his boss who was in the parking lot just getting into his car to go home for the night. Five minutes later the boss came back in to the airport and talked with the agent and the priests for a couple of minutes and then said, "fine, whatever the agent here says is fine with me."

And so the customs waters parted for us and we were waved through without even having them look at any of our stuff or filling out any paper work at all. The priests only had to give him Father Yanuzzi's mailing address and promise to say hello for him and give him his best wishes. And so it seems God wants us here for sure.

Shooting is going very well thus far. We still have not had enough sleep and it's 11 pm now. We just finished dinner about 45 minutes ago. They eat dinner very late here.

We're excited to announce that in January we're planning to do some more major filming for our long term documentary about Miles Christi. We will be traveling to Argentina to capture footage about the formation of the priests that work in America, which takes place in Argentina. We have also been given the oppurtunity for a rare interview with the founder of the order, Fr. Roberto Yannuzzi. 

This marks the first time StoryTel has done any International filming. However, our Dirctor of Photography from our first two On assigment Episodes, Bob Barwegen, has international expereince and he has been wonderful in helping us with all the prerparations. 

So, we're busy with production planning and equipment and travel arrangements. It should make for some amazing footage.

Our latest video premiered this weekend. On Friday it played at a fund raising dinner, and Saturday it played as part of an event with Fr. John Corapi at the Qwest Center.

After Father John Corapi's 3rd talk of the day on the topic of "Spiritual Warfare," 9,000 people watched "ON ASSIGNMENT: St. Peter Catholic Church, Restoring the Sacred in Omaha" (A 15 minute program that is now a fundraising film soon to be expanded into a documentary for EWTN) on 2 big screens down front and 3 jumbotron screens dead center arena today!

The crowd was tired after three one hour talks by this great preacher but they watched and listened closely, became emotionally involved when we hoped they would, and at the very end they laughed when we wanted them to laugh, and they followed up that laugh with a big round of enthusiastic applause! A collection was taken up, from this crowd (who had already paid $30 a ticket to get in) during our the showing of our new film and the ushers who did the collecting credit our film with keeping people in their seats long enough to donate and inspiring them to give big time to give more. 

No final report on the collection but one supervisor is estimating in the neighborhood of $20,000 right now.

On Friday night we showed the new film at a $500 a plate VIP Fundraising Dinner attended by 160 VIPs, including Father Corapi in the audience. It was a huge hit at this event as well.

All proceeds from ticket sales for the entire event go to help Saint Peter Parish with the interior renewal of this great old church. There is so much more to report on this but there simply hasn't been time to get to you with information because we've been too busy editing to meet this deadline. Here's the video and we'll post pictures from the event soon.

THANK YOU to our all of our StoryTel Foundation donors for helping to make this happen!

Why Are We Shooting This? 

We're excited to announce this shoot begins production on an extremely high end, fast paced, investigative documentary look at the Real Presence. This new episode of ON ASSIGNMENT for EWTN will report on recent and past purported Eucharistic miracles while profiling what the Real Presence means to everyone from the Pope to the person in the pew. The Corpus Christi procession will tie all parts of our new documentary together.

More New Productions!

We are also developing an ON ASSIGNMENT that will document the restoration of the sacred at Saint Peter Church in Omaha. Another, shorter program on this same topic will be produced and shown on a huge screen to the many thousands of people who will turn out to see and hear Father John Corapi speak live and in person in Omaha on September 11th, 2010. Segments from the Corpus Christi procession will play key roles in both of these productions. And finally, EWTN would like us to produce an ON ASSIGNMENT segment that focuses solely on the Corpus Christi procession itself.

So You Can See Why I Say This is a crucial shoot for StoryTel. This is why we're pulling out all the stops. This one full day of shooting is essential to the success of two, and very important to the success of at least two more StoryTel productions. Plus images from this event will continue to find their way into our productions for many years to come.

Please Pray For Good Weather On Sunday, June 6th!