Top Ten Most Flattering Portrayals of Christians in Film

Brett McCraken, a grad student at UCLA who writes film reviews and such for Relevant Magazine and Christianity Today has a blog up and running called The Search. It looks to be a very promising blog. On it, he's posted a list of what he considers the Top Ten Most Flattering Portrayals of Christians in Film. My favorite film on the list is #9. But I've only seen two films on the list, so it looks like I've got some homework to do. Click here to check out the list.

Teenage Affluenza Spreading Fast

Came across this video on YouTube this morning. From the view count, I'm far from the first one to see it (441,000 views and counting), but I wanted to share it anyway. It makes such a great point in such a creative way. I found myself laughing and feeling ashamed in the same breath. Very well done.



If you're reading the fee, here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFZz6ICzpjI

Two Great Short Films

Check out these shorts by Hallmark. The cinematography, acting, writing, direction. Man these are good. I want to be able to pull of shorts like this, to tell stories this well, to move people this much in our space. Man.





If you're reading this on a feed, here are the links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRX7tdh1Ww4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-rMgkctHPo

These are two of my favorites, but you can find lots of these great Hallmark spots on YouTube.

Back to the old drawing board.

Up Early With The French New Wave

If you're ever in our neck of the woods at 5AM on a Monday morning, you can join us for a movie screening at our office. Yes, I said 5AM. For years, Lee and I have been wanting to find more time to watch and study classic and influencial films. But with running the business and keeping up with our wives and children, it's been really hard to find the time. Thus, "the 5AM" was born. If you're willing to get up at 5 in the morning, you'll find there are far fewer demands on your time.

For the last couple of weeks, we've been checking out films from the French New Wave. Here's a blurb from Wikipedia about the movement:

The New Wave (French: la Nouvelle Vague) was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced (in part) by Italian Neorealism. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and their spirit of youthful iconoclasm. Many also engaged in their work with the social and political upheavals of the era, making their radical experiments with editing, visual style, and narrative part of a general break with the conservative paradigm.

So far we've taken in, Truffaut's 400 Blows and Godard's Band of Outsiders. Interestingly, Band of Outsiders in French is Band A Part, and that's where Tarintino's company that produced films like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction got its name. If you watch Band of Outsiders and you know Tarintino's films, you'll definitely pick up on some of the influences there. I really liked both films, but Band of Outsiders was my favorite of the two. I just love the way these films feel real and alive and stripped down. The way that you can sense the filmmaker behind the camera. There is a joy in them. The joy of filmmaking and of storytelling and of trying to say something that matters.

If you have any suggestions for films we should definitely see, let us know what they are and we'll add them to our list. I get to pick the next film and I think I'm going to switch us over to an Italian track and pick up a copy of Bertolluci's The Conformist.

The Editblog

I've had some feedback that folks reading our blog would like some more information on editing. If you're an editor or are interested in editing, I wanted to point you to a blog that Lee and I try to keep up with. It's called The Editblog (click here to jump to it).

The Editblog keeps up with all the latest updates to programs like Final Cut Pro, Premiere and Avid (all the professional editing apps). It also points out good places to see film and video clips on the internet and handy little applications like the cool little widget posted about today:

VideoSpace is a dashboard widget from the good folks at Digital Heaven. According to the Digital Heaven Freeware section it is:

“a free widget for Mac OS X Tiger which calculates the disk space required for a given duration, codec, frame rate and audio setting. It works in both directions so you can calculate time to space or space to time as indicated by the direction of the arrow between the two input areas.”

And one of my favorite recent posts points you to where you can check out some of cinema's most famous long takes:

If you are looking to kill some time this weekend the check out The Long Take post over at the Daily Film Dose. They’ve put together a huge collection (thanks to You Tube) of some of the “greatest long tracking shots in cinema.”

There may be some questionable content in these clips. I didn't have a chance to watch them all. But you can definitely learn a lot by watching long takes done by some of cinema's greatest storytellers. My personal favorite is the shot from Goodfellas. I know it's a really violent film, but the shot they've chosen is one I've studied in film school and in a Steadicam workshop I attended in CA. It's one of the most famous shots ever committed to film. Watch the shot and check out how much is conveyed about the character played by Ray Liotta by this single take. I've embedded the clip from Youtube below. Magic.


For those of you on the feedreader, here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=666F4QWgjpU

I'd love to hear what you think about the Editblog and let me know what your favorite long take is.

(I wanted to put an image here but I didn't want to steal it)

Been Caught Stealing

So... I saw a video this morning on a certain distributors website which shall remain nameless. The video is a "Christianized" copy of a video put out by the ONE campaign. The ONE campaign video uses highly recognizeable faces and a stark black and white aesthetic to draw attention to the startling statistic that a child dies every three seconds from AIDS or extreme poverty. The video is really well done, highly creative and very effective in communicating its message. Click here to watch it now.

Imagine my surprise when I'm looking through the new releases on a certain website and I come across a video that is an exact copy of this video. It's black and white, shot on a white background, the people in the video aren't the same celebrities but they are snapping every three seconds. Then the text comes up and it's been changed to reflect that every three seconds (same as in the ONE video) six people die. The point the video is trying to make is that people are dying every second and a lot of those people don't know Christ as Savior. I get that. And I applaud the filmmakers for trying to make that point. I just wish they would have taken inspiration from the ONE video and used that inspiration to creatively come up with their own original idea. As it is, to me it seems they've just stolen the idea. They give no credit to the original creators and they are passing it off as an original work. I could go on but I think I've made my point.

This isn't the first time I've seen this in the church video space. It's one of the most blatant copies I've seen, but it's not the first. We need to be innovators. We need to be drawing on the creativity that God has given us to come up with original and powerful ways to communicate truth. And we need to be above reproach. There is a difference between parody and stealing. There is a difference between homage and rip off. And it just seems wrong.

I would really love it if you guys would weigh in on this topic and let me know your thoughts. I really feel like this is a discussion we all need to be having as makers and users of media and most importantly as bearers of the image of Christ.

An Unconventional War

How real and present is evil? Why does evil seem to be concentrated more in some places than others? I know that most of us who profess Christ believe that satan is real and that demons exist, but I think the belief tends to be rather cursory. We feel tempted by satan. We talk in terms of the devil did this and tried to get me to believe that. But do we really believe that evil in the form of demons and darkness and hell is present in and around our every day lives? Really present?

I watched a documentary last night called An Unconventional War. It's a remarkable story of faith and perserverance in the face of incredible evil. It centers on happenings in northern Uganda, where a rebel group calling itself the Lord's Resistance Army has been terrorizing people in unimaginably horrific ways for over twenty years. The documentary is the story of how the faith, prayer and persistence of a small group of people reverberated and eventually broke the back of this incredible evil. Here's how the film is described at the filmmakers website (The Sentinel Group):

A remarkable modern-day saga of prayer, forgiveness and deliverance.

For nearly two decades, a bizarre predatory cult known as the Lord's Resistance Army abducted over 25,000 children and turned them into sex slaves and killing machines. The resulting carnage has displaced 80 percent of the region's population.

This powerful documentary chronicles how fervent prayer and unique church-state cooperation played a pivitol role in taming one of history's most brutal insurgencies in northern Uganda. It is a message of hope to lost and oppressed people everywhere - Issuing a challenge to invite God's presence with abandonment and expectation!

I definitely recommend this video. It is an incredible story about the power of God. About how circumstances and things happening in the darkest of times can be used by God to bring about miraculous changes. Watch this video and tell me that the devil and demons aren't real. More than that, watch this film and tell me that God doesn't do amazing things through the body of Christ when people respond to Him in faith and step out to confront evil in the name of Jesus. And then imagine what God can accomplish through the Body of Christ if we are willing to move forward in faith and believe.

A Video Set Up for a Home Run

In my years as a Media Director at Gateway Church here in Austin, we spent a lot of time in Programming Meetings discussing the purpose of Sermon Illustration videos. That is, videos used to set up or to set up a main point in the pastor's sermon. In broad strokes, we talked about what our videos should do for the Pastor? How much should they say? Where should they leave off?

We came up with a pretty simple metaphor that we used as a guideline. The metaphor goes something like this: You're on a ball field playing softball. It's a slow pitch game where you pitch to your own team. The pastor is at the plate. You're the pitcher and the ball is the Sermon Illustration video. Your job as the pitcher (film/videomaker) is to throw up a nice slow pitch for the pastor so that he can knock that pitch out of the park.

So, let's break that metaphor down. First, it's a team effort. Programming and doing church on Sundays takes a team of people all working together toward a common goal. The big goal being to reach people with the life changing message of Jesus Christ. Each week, the pastor gives a message and that message is the anchor of the weekly service. Every element in the service should function to help set up that message, to set up that home run.

You are not the batter. The video is not there to hit the homerun. The pastor is the batter. The message is hopefully the homerun. What do I mean?

In the context of church, video Sermon Illustrations are not the message. Often times, when used well, they function to set up the message. In this way, they often raise questions that they don't answer. The videos can give voice to the thoughts, fears, doubts and questions that the people in the congregation have. Following this, the pastor can come up and speak to those thoughts, fears, doubts and questions. He can provide answers from God's Word.

Oftentimes, this means leaving things open ended in our videos. We need to leave room for the pastor's message. When viewed alone, one might think the videos don't give a strong enough answer, don't resolve enough, but we have to remember that in the context of Sermon Illustrations and church, these videos are not designed or created to stand alone. And they aren't designed to give the message. That is the pastor's job.

Remember, throw up a nice slow pitch and you'll be able to watch with joy as the ball sails out of the park.

Watch This: Two Sites With Top Notch Content

If you're creating videos. If you're a storyteller. If you aspire to get better at making, presenting, explaining things through video, graphics, animation... Then you have to be a student. You have to be checking out what other people are doing and what's being done by the best and the brightest content creators out there.

Below you'll find a couple of resources we really like. We hope you'll use them to learn, analyze, absorb, break down, emulate, critique, and get ideas from. Then you can go make your own great, informed, unique content!

Motionographer

(From Their About Page):

Motionographer (pronounced like “oceanographer”) seeks to be a source of inspiration for filmmakers, animators and designers by sharing:

• outstanding work from studios, freelancers and students
• feature stories that give readers a closer look at influential studios and individuals
• commentary that sparks discussion or introspection about the creative process
• miscellaneous items that Motionographer contributors find interesting

Boardsmag's Screening Room

(In My Words):

The Screening Room posts commercials, music videos and short films from all over the world. And the main Boardsmag site has all kinds of articles and other resources.

These aren't "Christian" resources, but these are films and videos made by really talented people. Sometimes the content or the message is questionable, but we can still learn a lot from the imagination, skills, and techniques that are being used.

If you know of other good places to tune in and see great things. Resources you use. Sites you're always checking out. Please leave a comment and let us know about them. We are always looking for more solid resources. And we love watching movies!

Living As An Ordinary Radical

Here's a great story that has inspired me. I just finished a book called The Irresistible Revolution: living as an ordinary radical. It's a book by a guy named Shane Claiborne who is part of a group in Philadelphia called The Simple Way. I've got to be honest, this book made me really uncomfortable. It is a book that raises the ugly issues of poverty, inequality, and warfare. But it's never about throwing the issues in your face so you feel guilty or bad or defeated. Instead, it seeks to bring these issues to light so we might have the courage to imagine a world where they no longer exist. It's about what it really means to follow Christ fully and completely, written by a guy who is doing his best to do just that.

At times, while reading the book, I wanted to dismiss Shane as a hippie idealist, as an over zealous activist, as some kind of left-wing nut... but I couldn't. God wouldn't let me off the hook that easy. Shane lives in voluntary poverty in inner city Philadelphia at a house where he holds all things in common with his community. It's a hospitality house, where the door is always open to anyone with any need. In college, Shane followed Christ to India, where he worked with Mother Teresa and ended up living, serving and loving his neighbors in a leper colony. Recently, Shane was led by the Spirit to journey to Iraq, where he worshiped, encouraged and communed with the Christians living there (while the bombs were falling!). This is a guy who puts his proverbial money where his mouth is. He is a voice calling us out of the complacency that so easily infects us in this American life. Shane may be a little crazy, but he's crazy for all the right reasons. And I know he's crazy about Jesus.

Here's what Rob Bell (NOOMA, Velvet Elvis, Mars Hill) says about Shane:

Be warned, my friends: Shane is a poet, a friend, a brother - but underneath it all, he's a prophet with a fire in his belly and a story to back it up. If you listen - or in this case, read - you will not be the same.

AMEN!

Nike and The Art of Storytelling

Speaking of great storytellers, I think Nike does an awesome job of storytelling. I don't know if there's any other corporate entity that taps into our hearts, our dreams, our desires, like Nike does. They want to tie our longings and desires to their products. We know the only place we'll find satisfaction for those desires is at their source - God. It's easy to say that Nike is able to tell such great stories and do so much because of all the resources that their wealth provides. I often find myself using excuses like that. But sometimes, Nike does it so well and so simply that it lays my excuses bare. We can tell stories like this. Stories that inspire, encourage and point people to the Source. Watch this short video about Brazilian soccer superstar Ronaldinho and think about the stories you want to tell:

Bono, Bill Gates and The Art of Storytelling

While headline surfing this morning, I came across an interesting article in the online edition of the New York Times. Citizen Bono Brings Africa to Idle Rich details how Bono is guest editing the July issue of Vanity Fair. Here's my favorite quote from the article:

“We need to get better at storytelling,” Bono said, sitting in the 22nd floor of the office of Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair. “Bill Gates tells me this all the time. We’ve got to get better at telling the success stories of Africa in addition to the horror stories. And this magazine tells great stories.”

After digesting the surreal sound of "Bill Gates tells me this all the time," I thought about the need for better storytelling. I've mentioned it before, but I really believe that one of the big keys to breaching the walls and defenses that people have, to really reaching people at a heart level is good storytelling. But what is good storytelling? Bono makes another great point later in the article:

“We are trying to deal with the Sally Struthers thing,” he said... “When you see people humiliated by extreme poverty and wasting away with flies buzzing around their eyes, it is easy not to believe that they are the same as us.”

In this context, warning against what he calls "the Sally Struthers thing," good storytelling requires that we are careful not to give people an easy way out. Our stories need to do more than point out a need or guilt people into responding, they need to connect "us" to "them" in a way that makes everyone appear more the same than different.

Like Bill Gates says all the time :), we need to get better at storytelling. With Easter coming, let's use our God given imagination and talents to think of new, exciting and better ways to tell the most incredible story of all time!

The Story's the Thing...

The single most important thing you can do is tell stories! Let me explain.

The Bible is the very Word of God. We read it to know Him. And He uses it to speak to us. It is His Story... History.

We just finished producing a video for a local missions organization called Mission Possible of Austin. The project will be shown this weekend as part of their annual fundraising banquet. In the process, we had the opportunity to meet and interview three incredible people. People whose lives have been transformed by the power of God, through the ministry of Mission Possible. There was a woman who found herself pregnant and on the streets. There was a well to do foreign business student at a major university, whose family had an emergency back home that used up all his money, and he too ended up on the streets here in America. And finally, a young man with a Father in and out of jail and a Mother addicted to drugs who found himself all alone. Mission Possible helped all of them find a relationship with our living God, as well as helping them meet physical needs. And now all three are actively serving the body of Christ and giving back because they've been given so much!

I know there are similar stories of radical transformation and the incredible grace of God playing out in your local body. Those stories illustrate how your church is living out its' mission. How you are enacting your vision. You need to tell those stories. Stories connect the body to what God is doing through us. They show us that we are a part of something so much bigger than ourselves. And our people need to hear them.

So I encourage you to find creative ways to tell the stories of what God is doing. - globally, locally, and personally. Help people to see. Inspire them to act. It's all part of HisStory.

If you need any ideas on how to tell the stories of your people, even if you don't have many resources, email me at storme@eleven72.com. I'd love to help you find a way to get your story out!

What Does That Look Like? Using Movie Clips to Make Your Point

We all know that movies can be powerful. And we all know that movies are huge cultural influencers. Because of that, we can use clips and scenes from movies to help our audiences see or get a mental picture of what we're talking about in our messages.

This last week, our Pastor showed a clip from Ice Age, the animated film that featured Ray Romano as one of the last Mammoths on earth. He showed a scene from the movie where a squirrel chases an elusive acorn. The squirrel just keeps chasing the acorn and he can't ever quite seem to get it. On the surface, it's just a simple, silly clip. The congregation loved it, laughed at it, and was entertained by it. The fact that it was simple and funny made it easy to remember. This made the clip sticky (more about "sticky" here) and, when attached to the Pastor's message, made his point stick.

The message was the first in a series called Ka-Ching-Enomics. The series contrasts God's Economy with the world's economy. Here's how the pastor set up and came out of the clip:

Pastor:

We live in a world that lies to us about reality. And the foundation of worldwide ka-ching-enomic theory is this falsehood known as If Only. "If only I could be that, if only I could do this, if only I could obtain that, then I’d be happy. It would be enough. I’d be full. There’d be contentment in my life." Watch this clip:

This is where he played the clip and then this is how he came out of it:

Did you ever feel like that squirrel? There’s this acorn and it’s so good that you can smell it but you can’t quite grasp a hold of it. Well, our story begins today not with a prehistoric nut but with a prehistoric fruit.

Then he went on to read from Genesis and talk about how the evil one sets us up just like he set up Adam and Eve. "Hey, if you just do this, you'll be happy. If only..." And for the rest of the sermon he could refer to that acorn and we knew what he was talking about and we knew how we can sometimes be just like that squirrel chasing that nut. It was so simple. And it worked so well.

The sermon was preached by Ted Beasley at Gateway Church here in Austin. If you're interested in hearing how he set up and wove the metaphor of the clip into his entire sermon, you can listen to his sermon here.

Sermon Illustrations, like the ones you can find here at eleven72.com and clips from popular movies can be such a powerful addition to your sermon. The power comes from how you tie the clip to your message. Set up the clip. Show the clip. And then tell your people what it means. This will give them a visual picture to attach to your message and that visual picture will help make the message stick.

If you're looking to use a clip or scene from a popular film, here are some great resources to help you find what you're looking for:

CVLI.org - A license from Christian Video Licensing International, just like CCLI for music, gives you the right to show clips from thousands of movies, including movies from a lot of the big studios, in your services and Sunday school classes. With the license everything is on the up and up as far as copyright is concerned and all that. To learn more visit the CVLI website.

Textweek - Textweek has a Movie Concordance that has movies indexed by title as well as theme. Along with the title of each movie, you'll find a brief synopsis of how the movie or clip mentioned ties into a biblical theme. Textweek was my first stop when I was the Media Director at Gateway Church. While you're on the site, check out their other resources like their Scripture Index, their Art Index and their Resources For Use in Times of Terrorism and War. You can find it all here.

IMDB.com - The Internet Movie Database a great site for mining information on movies. Who made them. Who's in them(shameless plug- I'm even listed in there). For our purposes here, IMDB is great because there is a drop down menu that let's you search specifically for Quotes and Plots. So if you know that you're preaching about X or you need a clip where a character talks about Y, you simply select the appropriate search criteria from the drop down menu and then type whatever you need into the search field and up comes a list of movies with the plots or quotes you're looking for. It's awesome. Click here to go to IMDB now.

I know there are many more resources out there that I don't know about. If you know about any, we'd love to share them with everyone. Email me at storme@eleven72.com or leave a comment on the blog. What are your favorite movie illustrations? Where do you find them? What do you think? Let us know!

Cut It Out

Steven Spielberg. Ron Howard. Martin Scorsese. Mel Gibson. You heard of these guys? Of course you have! They're famous Directors of big time feature films. But what about Walter Murch, James Haygood, Zach Staenberg or John Wright? No? They're pretty famous in the movie biz too. They're actually the editors of movies like The Godfather, Fight Club, The Matrix and The Passion of the Christ. We don't typically hear about them because they are behind the scenes (most likely locked in an editing room for weeks on end) But they are just as integral to what we see on the big screen as the Directors are.

Editor Walter Murch, (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, Cold Mountain, Jarhead) says "Film editing is now something almost everyone can do at a simple level and enjoy it, but to take it to a higher level requires the same dedication and persistence that any art form does." Yes. Anyone can purchase a computer and some editing software and get to work, but the best editors are great story tellers. They can take hours and hours of footage and beautifully piece it all together into a 90 minute film. This is what is so great about editing! Taking a vast amount of information (ie. footage, photos, music, etc.) and putting it all together to get your audience to feel something.

There tons of resources out there for editors. Lots of books, videos, schools & training. You can learn a lot about how to place a clip in to a timeline or how to set keyframes on your music selection, but the biggest art of editing is in the story telling. When should I cut? How long should that shot be? Should I use a close up here? Should we pace this faster to illustrate that the actress is frantic? All of these depend on what you're conveying to your audience and what you want them to take away from that scene/video/movie.

If you're making a video for your church, youth group, small group etc. continually ask yourself "How does this fit in with our story?" Understand what you're trying to accomplish BEFORE you sit down at your computer to start cutting. And then see how each shot and scene adds to what you want your audience to see and feel. It's not that much different than writing a sermon/message...just a different way of communicating.

Here's some good resources to keep you busy if you're interested in editing:
In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch
American Cinema Editors
Videomaker.com
The Digital Filmmaker

I'll post again soon with more resources on editing ideas, tips and tricks.

Lee