Scenes from a young filmmaker’s life—and the faith and love at the heart of it
A former longtime member of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Parish in Indianapolis, Branden Stanley has traveled the world creating award-winning films in which he shares the depth and the beauty of the Catholic faith. (Submitted photo)
By John Shaughnessy
If someone ever makes a movie about filmmaker Branden Stanley, a crucial scene will involve his grueling hike up a mountain in Poland to a place that was special to St. John Paul II.
The scene unfolded during World Youth Day in 2016, shortly after Stanley began working for Spirit Juice Studios, a Chicago-area company that creates award-winning films primarily focused on sharing the depth and the beauty of the Catholic faith.
Yet as he hiked the mountain that day, Stanley was mostly feeling pain on his shoulders and soreness in nearly every other part of his body.
“I had only been in the company for a little bit,” recalls Stanley, a former longtime member of
Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Parish in Indianapolis. “We were traveling with the Knights of Columbus. And they hiked into the mountains where John Paul II had taken his youth groups, where he had written poetry up there.
“We didn’t really know we were going on a 14-mile hike that day with backpacks that weighed 30-40 pounds, with batteries and lenses. They told us we were going on a small hike. Honestly, it was one of the most grueling days I’ve ever had on set.”
In the midst of that pain, a different feeling filled Stanley as the group reached the mountain peak.
“When you looked over the Polish countryside and the mountain, and you’re reading some of the poetry of John Paul II while you’re up there, and you have a Mass up there, there’s something profound about it all,” he says. “And I never would have had that experience if I hadn’t pushed through that hike.”
Nine years later, that experience still impacts him, his work, his marriage and his family—the impact evident in that the picture of that mountaintop scene continues to grace his office.
“I find the trips and the film shoots that are the most grueling and the most miserable in the moment are also the most memorable because you have to push through something in order to achieve it,” says the 32-year-old father of three whose wife Alea is expecting their fourth child this spring.
“I’ve got a great love for the outdoors. As a family, we go hiking a lot. We try to spend as much time outside as possible. So being in a spot that wasn’t only beautiful from an environmental perspective—it wasn’t just beautiful mountains—it had a deeper meaning to it. It allowed me to think more about how the beauty of nature can help us in sharing our faith and in leading our faith.”
Stanley’s emphasis on the connection between faith and beauty shines through in in his work, which has resulted in 10 regional Emmys—awards for artistic and technical merit in the television industry. Yet just as meaningful to him is another theme that strikes the core of Spirit Juice’s films—the connection between faith and struggle.
That theme has been present in Stanley’s personal life in heartbreaking ways.
Love and heartbreak
That reality is captured in a second telling scene—as Stanley receives an Emmy for a short film that means so much to him personally, a film he wishes he never had to make.
In a span of six minutes and 40 seconds, the film Witness of Mercy: The Story of Jennifer Trapuzzano powerfully depicts love and heartbreak, joy and devastation, cold-blooded violence and remarkable forgiveness.
The film has its roots in Stanley’s time at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., where he graduated from in 2014. During his college years, he grew increasingly closer to a young woman named Alea, whom he had known since their connection in a homeschool production of The Hobbit during their middle school education.
Stanley’s years in college were also a time when he grew deeper in his Catholic faith, thanks to the example of two older friends, Nathan Trapuzzano and Chauncey Becker.
“Going to a non-Catholic college that wasn’t particularly friendly to the faith in many areas, I was able to take all those things that I learned through my home-schooling upbringing and my altar-serving and put them into practice,” Stanley says. “You can’t really be lukewarm and keep your faith in a situation like that.
“It was a lot of surrounding myself with people who were looking for the same thing. They were looking to build themselves up in their faith, whether it was through Bible studies or programs at the Newman Center. We knew we had to work on our faith together.”
At the core of that group were Nathan and Chauncey.
“Going to school, you look for the cool guys and you try to emulate them,” Stanley says. “Nathan lived his faith so earnestly and without any sort of embarrassment. Chauncey was another one who lived his faith vibrantly. Seeing the two of them, especially since they were a year or two older, gave me renewed vigor in my faith.”
His friendship with them and their impact on him continued, including seeing how Nathan’s marriage to his wife Jennifer was rooted in love, joy and faith—a marriage that led to the couple expecting the birth of their first child in 2014.
So Stanley was shocked and devastated when the news came that Nathan, at the age of 24, had been shot and killed during an early-morning robbery as he prayed while taking a walk in his Indianapolis neighborhood on March 31, 2014.
Stanley then marveled when Jennifer, who had lost the love of her life in a murder by a 16-year-old who showed little remorse, expressed her forgiveness for the youth in court, believing she had to embrace the most challenging part of the “Our Father”—“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Stanley movingly captured that range of realities and emotions in Witness of Mercy—Nathan’s and Jennifer’s love for each other, the joyful expectancy of the birth of their daughter Cecilia, the heartbreak of Jennifer searching for her husband that morning and discovering the crime scene, and the power of her forgiveness.
“There are many important stories that we tell here, but it isn’t often that I get to tell the story of a friend,” Stanley says. “That piece felt like a proper honor for Nathan’s life and for Jennifer’s witness of forgiveness.”
The tragedy of Nathan’s loss was compounded by the death of Chauncey to heart complications.
“I think about them regularly. We never really know what our time is,” Stanley says. “For me, it’s a reminder to live out our faith every day. Nathan was a super healthy guy, living his life and praying his morning rosary when everything happened. Chauncey was living his faith out every single day, and then he passed away.
“It’s a reminder to never get too comfortable. ‘Oh, I’ve got a lot of time left. I’ve got a lot of time with my family.’ But that’s not a guarantee. So, every day, I need to be working on building up my own faith life, but also working with my kids in ways that instill in them the love for the faith that I’ve got.”
A shocking phone call and a new start
In another life-changing scene, Stanley receives a phone call that shocks him, a phone call that questions his standing in the Church and the Catholic faith that he loves and seeks to celebrate.
It was a phone call from the Archdiocese of Indianapolis in 2020, a time when Stanley was in his late 20s.
“I was told that evidence had come to light that my baptism was never valid,” Stanley notes.
His godfather had recalled years later what he considered an irregularity in the baptism, called the archdiocese to ask about it, and it was decided that Stanley didn’t properly receive the sacrament as an infant.
“That was a pivotal moment for me,” Stanley recalls. “I wouldn’t say I had taken my faith for granted, but at the same time you get used to it. You get comfortable in some ways. But when you’re confronted with that, it puts it all in perspective a little more, and you appreciate what you got.
“I was baptized, confirmed and received my true first Communion on St. Nicholas’ feast day in 2020. It had been 20 some years since I thought I had received my first Communion. Getting to do it again and dwelling on it being the first time I would receive the Eucharist, it gave me chills.”
So did the overwhelming reaction of people to another one of his Spirit Juice films, The Veil Removed—a film about the Eucharist that has been viewed by more than 100 million people.
“It’s about what happens with the consecration,” Stanley says. “The idea is that a young man goes to Mass. He’s maybe not really feeling it. He’s a bit of a lukewarm Catholic, but he begins to see things through the Mass. When it gets to the consecration, he sees saints and angels around the altar, and he sees Christ elevating the Eucharist and Christ above on the cross.
“Filming that was just something special. Especially getting to see the amount of people afterward who were able to view it. It was well over 100 million people who viewed the video. To know you had created something that had allowed people to strengthen their prayer life—or at least understand a little bit more about what happens at the consecration— was really unique. It’s an experience I’m very grateful for.”
A defining experience from childhood
One of the realities of life is that everyone is influenced by the people and events who touch their lives in major ways and even seemingly small ways.
In his professional career, Stanley has worked with many Catholics who have an influential media presence, including Bishop Robert E. Barron, known for his Word on Fire ministry, and Jonathan Roumie, who plays the role of Christ in the television series, “The Chosen.”
“Those are just wonderful experiences,” Stanley says.
So was the opportunity to help capture on film the National Eucharistic Congress in downtown Indianapolis last July, when more than 50,000 people from across the country gathered together to celebrate Christ’s gift of the Eucharist.
Now the executive vice president of Spirit Juice, directing a team of 27, Stanley always views returning to Indianapolis as a homecoming. The city is a place close to his heart where his approach to life was shaped by a defining experience from his childhood and youth—when he was an altar server at Holy Rosary Church under the direction of a man named Gary Willen.
“When you talk about people who influenced me, I go back to Gary Willen, who still leads the altar serving corps at Holy Rosary,” Stanley says. “It’s easy when you’re an altar server to kind of look at it like it’s a stage. ‘I’m in front of everybody. I get to have this job or position by the altar. I’m really important.’ He was really great about washing away any ideas of pride in that respect.
“We were there for a bigger purpose. We were there to serve our Lord. And to offer ourselves up every day for the glory of God and to build the Church. And I don’t see this position I have now as being different from altar serving. It may come with some flashy things now and then, but in the end, the reason I’m here is not for me. Bishop Barron said it well: ‘Our life is not about ourselves.’ In many ways, this job I have is about doing whatever I can every single day to forward the Church, to forward the faith and to praise God.”
A touch of irony, the search for beauty
It’s a scene filled with irony, a scene in which Stanley and his wife Alea make a decision that they consider best for their children and their family.
About six months after Stanley hiked that mountain in Poland, the couple decided to remove their television from their home.
“I spend so much time surrounded by technology by necessity. I have to be up on the latest trends and techniques,” he says, before recalling the impact of that hike. “It was a good reminder that I need to step away sometimes. Go to the quiet. Have some time to contemplate.
“We do have a projector that I bring out sometimes, and we do home movies. I don’t watch much TV and not many movies for somebody’s who’s pretty deep in the film industry. It’s good for me, and it’s good for the kids to not have a screen going on very frequently. I’m still able to do my research and watch movies with an analytical eye and take new things in, but I’m not immersing myself in it to an unhealthy degree.”
That approach ties into the one constant that Stanley tries to keep in his life—balance.
“Balance between work and time with the family. Balance between intense ambition and contentedness. In every aspect of my life, I look for the balance, and while I can’t claim to have ‘found it,’ I can tell you that this constant internal struggle continues to make me a better boss, manager, co-worker, husband and father.
“What drives me to find this balance is the desire to create something of lasting beauty. This ambition has been the constant in my life for two decades. What has changed, however, is the shape that ‘lasting beauty’ takes. It may be an incredibly impactful movie, or it could be reaching a point where the team truly thrives under my direction. It could be a successful product launch, or it could be instilling the proper values in my children and seeing them flourish.”
That search for balance and lasting beauty all leads to another revealing perspective from Stanley—one he gives when he’s asked to share what he would consider as an ending scene for a film about his life so far.
A closing scene of love, family, faith
He starts the vision of that scene by talking about his relationship with Alea, his wife of 10 years.
“She has been a constant support, dealing with the—at times—long hours of my job or times when I’m traveling for extended periods with grace and poise,” he says. “Simply put, I wouldn’t be here without her.
“Communication and integration of our faith into every element of our lives has been what we’ve tried to do. We’re not perfect at it, but we try to live out the belief that our faith is foremost. And we’re not trying to live that out separately but together in ways that bring us closer together. I’m a firm believer that the family that prays together stays together.”
That thought leads to another important part of a closing scene.
“When I look at my work and my personal life, my legacy is not going to be what I do at Spirit Juice,” he says. “With any luck, the videos we make here will be remembered in 20 years. But the legacy I’ve really got is the faith that I’m able to instill in my kids. So, if I’m building what is the movie of my faith life, it ends with me instilling a love for the Eucharist and a love for being Catholic in my boys, who will hopefully be able to pass it along to their kids.
“My kids are only 7, 4 and 2 right now, but I’m a firm believer that we shouldn’t underestimate our kids’ ability to take it all in and be heroic in their own ways.”
As he focuses on imagining that ending scene of faith and family, his thoughts once again turn to his desire to capture and share “something of lasting beauty.”
“I’m not creating any unique beauty out of anything. The beauty is already there,” he says. “The stories we’re telling at Spirit Juice are not something we’ve created out of thin air. My part in all of this is trying to shine a light on that and trying to magnify that beauty. That goes for the stories we’re trying to tell, and it goes for the relationships we’re building.
“It’s all about the beauty that God has created, that God has given us in our faith and in our world and the people we interact with. What motivates me is being able to show that beauty in a way that people understand it differently or maybe understand it for the first time.” †
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