Loose Ends
The locked version is in the hands of our composer, Jurgen Beck. Please pray for Jurgen’s wife, Shawn, as she is now recovering from surgery for breast cancer and for creativity and wisdom for Jurgen as he composes the score.
We now have a few other items to take care of. We are refining all the text portions of the film, which is relatively easy. One of the most difficult jobs is “cleaning sound.” One of our interviews had an air conditioner running in the background, which gives a very loud hum. When cutting in and out between others’ interviews this hum is very noticeable, so we are taking on the job of removing it. This is a very difficult process and usually leaves an unnatural vocal tract. I think of it as an icy sound with lots of pops and other artifacts. Others liken it to recording in a glass bottle. We need prayer on this one! We are also working on the special features and trailers. The special features will include a full interview for each family. This will be full of the wisdom that had to be edited out of the main feature, so I’m hoping people will take the time to watch these!
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Greg
Locked!
Yes! We have finished editing and have sent our locked version to our composer, Jurgen Beck, for the score. A locked version is basically a promise to the composer that we will not tinker with any of the time code, so that he can confidently do his work. Dallas still has a small amount of work to do with the graphics and text, but this won’t change the timing of what we sent to Jurgen. Next is work on a trailer and special features. I am working on the script of our next mini-project, an educational film about the definition of urban and rural. We have a goal of pre-production, filming and post in one week. We’ll see! We are also brainstorming for a new major project. Our goal is to be increasingly time efficient!
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Greg
Narration is Done
Last week we recorded the final take of our “readers.” Dustin’s good friend, Jason Buzzard, has a nice deep, resonant voice and did a really nice job of reading the male voice. Shauna (my wife, Dallas’ mom) did the female voice. Throughout the film there are quotes from the web, books and scripture. Their job was to put voice to the text as the viewer reads it. Thank you Jason and Shauna! I wish we had taken a photo of your recording sessions!
We also found a fairly major mistake in time to correct it. One piece of the host’s narration was in the wrong place and the piece that was supposed to be there was never recorded! It was good to find this in time to correct it. We had a mini-taping session in the backyard in front of the greenscreen, which enabled us to put me (the “host”) in the downtown setting where the rest of the narration takes place. We did it outdoors to have the same lighting as the sun shone in my eyes, making me squint. :0) Fortunately, it was only a few sentences and Dallas did a great job of making it fit right in!
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Greg
Arrow Shots
Today we went out to Erdmans’ farm to “shoot” Daryl “shooting.” Arrows, that is. We needed a model to shoot for a silhouette of a warrior archer in the act of shooting. We found a nice outcrop of sandstone with bare trees behind. Very nice shot, I think. Dallas will be taking the footage and adapting it for the title sequence of Entrusted with Arrows. We are very close to a locked version, which we will send to Jurgen Beck for the original score.
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Holiday Videos
To see all the entries click here: http://www.christianfilmmakers.org/contest/2009-12/
Marry Christmass and happy new year!
Dallas
Filming Narration
Today we got the weather break that we needed to film our narration. The temperature was just above freezing (3ºC), winds were light and the sun was shining. I love this view of downtown Calgary, which we chose to represent the world’s culture and its worldview. The mountains behind are pretty spectacular, too, but I’m not sure they represent anything – other than the beauty of God’s creation! You can see the Saddledome on the left where the NHL’s Calgary Flames play hockey. It was built for the “88 Winter Olympics. Some of you may be old enough to remember that! Those beautiful towers were built by our “dirty oil!” [Ha! Don’t get me started on Copenhagen and “climate change!” Anyone have an extra trillion dollars? Hillary? Hillary? Perhaps this blog is getting off topic.]
Edit of “Entrusted With Arrows”
We forgot to tell you that last week we got our edit down to 57 minutes! Exciting! (For us anyway :0) ) This took a lot of prayer and thought, as our “interviewees” gave us such wonderful material to work with. The difficulty was deciding what NOT to use. Very difficult! It’s a rather unique link we have built with each person we interviewed, as we daily watch and listen to what they had to say as we edit. It is painful each time we have to hit the delete button! We have decided that because there is so much helpful material, and that no audience wants to watch a three hour documentary, that in our special features we will have a mini-documentary for each family. Unfortunately, we are not able to use the children’s interviews in the main feature – we’re sad about that! But we will include them in the special features mini-docs. I feel badly when we have someone do an interview, then we don’t use it. It feels disrespectful to what they had to say. Hopefully people will watch the mini-docs and benefit from the wisdom and experience these people have to share!
We now well on our way to inserting “B-roll” over the interviews. Dallas has created a new “Documentary Snapshot” that has a bit of a different look than it did in November. This due to the new B-roll and the narration placeholders. (We have a still shot of our location covering a rough reading of each narration sequence.) Compare to November 23. Dallas says to tell you that if this one looks longer, it’s because it has a more frequent frame capture.
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Greg
Filming Narration
You may recall that after our trip, our camera started to literally fall apart. We are very thankful that we are able to borrow a Canon Vixia hv30 to film our narration sequences. Thanks to our friend, Sharon Krushel, for sending it down from the far north! Meanwhile, during our trip and since, we have been writing and rewriting the script for narrations. It feels a little better each time, but when is it truly finished? I guess the answer to that is – tomorrow, since that is when we begin filming. Our desire was to film outdoors before the snow started to fly, so we would have an autumn look. Two blizzards with four foot drifts and a -30º deep freeze have definitely eliminated all feelings of fall. It is definitely winter! The good news is that Monday’s -34º has given way to temperatures around the freezing mark, so it is much more manageable weather for us to film outdoors. We will try to minimize the snow in our shots and still go for the “autumn look” as much as our location will allow. We are also praying for sunny skies and minimal winds. We will film indoors, as well, to see which has the better look.
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Greg
Our New Title!
After much prayer, thought and consultation with you through our survey we have arrived at a title for our titleless film. It is “Homeschooling entrepreurial dads who want to be more active and available to their children in order to seriously disciple them as commanded in Deuteronomy 6 and Ephesians 6.” Actually, that was our second choice. The title we will actually use is Entrusted With Arrows. In our survey it was the runaway favourite, which confirmed our conviction that this was God’s idea.
It was interesting how God answered this prayer. For months every time we thought of title ideas or key words, we wrote them down. After adding Psalm 127: 3-5* to our script, I wrote down “… Arrows” on the line after “Entrusted with …” When Dallas was reformatting the text of our brainstorming list “Entrusted with … Arrows” came up on the same line! When we thought of how our children are the arrows that God has entrusted to us, it made perfect sense. This is what our script had already said about arrows in the narration: “Our concern is not only for our children’s salvation, but also that they assume God’s character, becoming more and more like him as they grow – eventually maturing into warriors for God’s kingdom – attacking the gates of Hell as it shows itself in their generation. Psalm 127 says that our children are like arrows, which we can launch into the battle where we are unable to go.” God has indeed entrusted us with these arrows. Will they hit God’s target, drop to the floor or fly where we don’t want them to go?
*“Sons are a heritage from the LORD,
children a reward from him.
Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are sons born in one’s youth.
Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
when they contend with their enemies in the gate..”
~Psalm 127:3-5 (NIV)
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Greg
Help us with our title!
Can you please help us with our title? Please follow this link to a survey about which title to use.