A total of 200 gathered in the Tarleton State University planetarium across four screening to witness “Mission,” a documentary made by Tarleton Student Diego Campos, 22, spotlighting the St. Brendan Catholic Campus Ministry and the way it promotes faith and fraternity in those it reaches.
The Stephenville native produced the feature-length program under Holy Coyote Studios and compiled footage from 2022 to 2024 to be included.
“When I began filming in 2022, my intention was to create a short series of You-Tube videos,” said Campos. “I wanted to promote the ministry in an aesthetically appealing way. This intention carried into just before the next school year, 2023-24.”
“By then, I had established the three tenets of our group: Scire (To know), Amare (To love) and Juvare (To serve),” he continued. “I made three videos following each of these themes via short interviews.”
He then realized he had enough footage to expand it into longer videos. The episode count grew from three to eight and then he decided to edit it into a feature which was shown in the planetarium Feb. 25, March 3 and March 8.
“The most challenging aspect was deciding what to cut and keep,” the young director said. “Really, I knew what worked and didn’t work for the narrative, but it was difficult to cut out scenes that I had envisioned from the beginning.”
Fortunately, Campos had started to see what did and didn’t work on screen thanks to his previous work. He has been a composer for several years, performing work for the religious fantasy film, “The Light of Virsa” as well as commission work on projects like short films. This collaboration helped give him extra insight on editing as did “The Complex,” a 23-minute documentary he made about the Eastland Kidd Complex fire in 2022.
Campos said the original vision of “Mission” was to present hope to those in despair and show a place where people care about each other. Through his relationships with many of the students and people in the ministry, the director was able to get candid interviews about life and faith and follow his subjects’ stories as they evolved across the years.
Campos found these moments of human connection to be among his most fulfilling, but he also enjoyed coverage he had of the April 8, 2024 eclipse and Seek24, the national conference organized by Fellowship of Catholic University Students.
The final edit was locked in just five days before the first screening.
“The screenings went well,” Campos said. “Overall, across the four screenings, more than 200 individuals showed up. One evening, we were at capacity. This was the evening when I was able to read the audience better, since the size of the audience determines how reactions are expressed. It’s a safety in numbers type of thing.”
Campos said he is happy with the final product but thinks the experience will help get a more cohesive visual and narrative style in his future project which includes “Southern Lights,” a pilot he began work on four years ago and has been on the shelf for the right moment.
Campos is in talks with Eternal Word Television Network to be the exclusive distributor. If approved, it will be free from EWTN+ For more information on this and other projects, visit holycoyotestudios.com.