Marketing a new album can be tricky, and despite being one of the best-selling bands in Christian music history Casting Crowns is always looking to innovate. Their soon-to-be-released album “Only Jesus” was packed with evocative lyrics and amazing stories. Casting Crowns wanted a way to market the album as a cohesive package rather than a collection of individual songs, and they approached us to collaborate on a solution. Lot35  needed to find a way to bring the whole album together visually… so we made a Visual Album.

A visual album is a collection of music videos that, when watched in sequence, form a story. We took this idea to the greatest possible lengths by choosing to create an 11 episode story, one episode for each song on the album, and center the entire story around one home. This story would follow a family over the course of three generations as they deal with various challenges and seasons of life inside this family home.

“Our lead writer met with the band to get an idea of the album’s core ideas, and converted those themes into a 70 page film script.”

Our lead writer met with the band to get an idea of the album’s core ideas, and converted those themes into a 70 page film script. The script was written to perfectly mirror the message of each song without showing the content of the lyrics literally. Many of the songs on the album had stories and ideas that were never directly put on screen and this decision was very intentional. We wanted viewers to realize that the themes of this album are universal.

“Each episode highlighting a song on the album that listeners may have otherwise missed.”

After a grueling two week production schedule the Lot35 team began to work tirelessly on the edit. We released a new episode every week for 11 weeks straight, each episode highlighting a song on the album that listeners may have otherwise missed. In the end the episodes were shared repeatedly on social media, creating wonderful buzz for the album.

The Only Jesus Visual Album went on to win a Dove Award from the Gospel Music Association, recognizing the project as the best longform Christian video of the year.