Our "First" TV Appearance

Actually, we did about five over a year ago...but they are pretty primitive. We have spent some time and cash to make these new vignettes a little more "high quality".

In watching the following performance, we noticed that we need to work a lot more on the interaction between the human and the puppet, and also raise the quality of our lighting. I was also not completely satisfied with the final result of the interaction between the two puppets at the end.

We have worked on correcting these issues, and hopefully you will note a difference in next-week's posting (which is almost completely edited already!).



This episode deals with a "missing link" that was discovered about a month ago in Rio de Janeiro. Manú (the girl) and Júnior (the puppet) talk about it in light of what the Bible has to say about creation. In the end, Júnior allows as how he thinks he has discovered a missing link, and displays a photo of Chico. Chico is none too pleased.

If I get some time, I will try to makes some captions so you can understand all of what is said.

After months of preparation, false starts, and scheduling conflicts, I am thrilled to be in regular production again.

Filming

This is a cross post from our ministry blog. We are finally filming again at the Cidade Feliz.

First, we went to the First Baptist Church, where filming was in progress for "Reason to Live", which is the "parent" program that hosts our Cidade Feliz segments. There we did a little promo spot, announcing the return of the Cidade Feliz program.



Nice readies Júnior, and Pastor Francisco readies himself for the camera.



Júnior and Pastor Francisco

Pastor Francisco Fabiano (pictured above) is the host of the "Reason to Live" TV program, which is a ministry of the First Baptist Church. We are very grateful to them for giving us space on their program.

After filming that little spot, it was on to the seminary, where we set up our green screen and filmed one episode of a segment called "Cidade Feliz News".



Setting up the camera



Sound table



Manú and Júnior clowning around

After resolving a few glitches with equipment, we were able to film the episode. Currently the film is in post, scheduled to air a week from Saturday. This first segment tackles the evolutionary concept of a "missing link". Tomorrow we will be filming another couple episodes.

Cicero, our production assistant, took some footage on his digital camera against the green screen. I used it to practice my chroma key technique. Below is my very first attempt.

Making Puppets

So you want to start a puppet ministry, but you don't have the money for the exorbitant prices charged by some companies for puppets. Maybe you want your puppets to have their own personality--as opposed to using something mass produced and probably used by a myriad of other church puppet groups. Or perhaps you live in a part of the world where puppets are not readily available.

In truth, all three of the above challenges apply to our ministry here in Brazil. In the face of these difficulties, we have found the following resources to be of great help.

1. Puppeteer Paul Muller has posted an outstanding series of videos on how to build puppets. Anybody who is interested in making puppets should watch it. The puppets produced are very basic, and use easy-to-find materials.

2. If you are interested in starting out with some classy patterns for some really nice looking puppets, no place is better than Project Puppet. The patterns they sell are reasonably priced, and easy to use.

We have taken aspects from both of these outstanding sources, as well as things learned from disecting a few Puppet Productions puppets, to make the puppets for our project. We are still in the process of character development, but below is the latest effort.



Do any of you have other sources for patterns or materials? Let us know!

Audition Video Tests

In the world of professional puppetry, someone with a project (and a budget) gets the word out to the puppeteer community that they are hiring puppeteers, and soon they have a cast. In the parallel universe of Christian puppetry, however, the puppeteers are mostly homegrown. This is especially so on the mission field.

For our Cidade Feliz TV project we have discovered that it will be necessary to train our puppeteers from scratch. This process has been helped by the puppetry seminars we have administered in local churches, where we have discovered some latent talent.

During the past two Saturdays we gathered these hopefuls together and held intensive training sessions. The video you see above is from those sessions. The camera quality is horrible, as is the sound and filming. Yet this is the embryonic beginning of what we hope will be an effective TV program.

Facing the (Media) Giants

Christian Movies. The very name congers up images of the cheesy flicks I watched at youth rallies where everybody wore bell bottoms and had 70's hairdos. They were made mostly to be played in church, and quality was obviously not the number-one priority.

Christians have a lot of catching-up to do in the movie department. Perhaps it is because for so long going to a movie theater was considered a sin. Perhaps it is because we were suspicious of any method of communicating the gospel other than preaching, Sunday School lessons, and door-to-door evangelism.

Without knocking the afore-mentioned methods (and those who know me will attest that I am particularly insistent on passionate expository preaching), I must say that insignificant attention has been made in Christian circles to the power of story-telling. This is odd, because our Savior communicated to masses of people by telling them story, not to mention the fact that God has revealed His will to us through the Scriptures, which are--for the most part--a collection of stories.

How then has this art been lost on us? There are of course some fine examples of Christian storytelling--the works of John Bunyan and C.S. Lewis come to mind. But how is it that up until recently, while the medium of film began to tell stories as never before, the best Christians could do was the flannel graph?

I say "up until recently" because some encouraging trends are starting to emerge. I believe it started with Veggietales. I don't know where Phil Vischer got the idea to communicate a Christian worldview using talking legumes, but it worked. For those of you who would contest otherwise, please read this.

Now along comes "Facing the Giants". It's a movie about a football coach. It was produced by a local church. It uses non-professional actors. It has the formula for being everything that I hated about the Christian movies of my youth, minus the bell bottoms and enormous sideburns.



But it works! It had me emotionally involved in the story. It made me re-evaluate priorities in my life. Most importantly (and I do mean most importantly), I jumped out of my seat and cheered when the final, game-winning, fifty-one yard field goal attempt went through the uprights.

Why do I say most importantly? Because this shows that, at least for me, the story did not get lost in the message--which is one of Christian film making's biggest drawbacks. We cannot seem to tell a story without preaching. Of course those who have watched FTG will know that the Gospel and the Christian worldview are presented numerous times throughout the film in no uncertain terms. And yet, the story WORKS!

My hat is off to the people of Sherwood Baptist Church, and especially to their philosophy of being able to change the world from Albany, Georgia. If they can do it from the state where the Devil goes looking for souls to steal (not to mention the fact that there are a lot of rainy days, midnight trains, and blackouts*) then perhaps I can do it from here in Northeastern Brazil.

You can be sure I am going to try. We are starting our puppet project out small--live presentations in churches, a TV program on a local channel. We believe, however, that if it will glorify God, and if He is in it, the sky is the limit.

*Oblique references to Rainy Day in Georgia, Midnight Train to Georgia, and The Day the Lights Went Out In Georgia.