Once More Unto The Breach Dear Friends

I have lost count of the number of times I have written about being "almost finished" with The Umbrella.  So I won't say it, I'll say "I'm getting close."  I have started working on one of the last 2 creative portions that I will be involved in for the film.  These are ADR and color correction.  I am now working on ADR.  You might recall, that we already did ADR (having the actors repeat lines that might have had bad sound). We have sent the film to a sound mixer in LA to put a final polish and clean up some parts.  He has found a few more parts that need more rerecording of dialog.  And so, I am back into the recording of it.  I am excited to get to see and hang out with the cast again after a few years, like a mini reunion.

The 1%

I was reading the Story of Gideon in Judges (Judges 6-8) And I have become very impressed by Gideon.  I think I identify with Gideon more than any other Old Testament character.

We meet Gideon in Judges 6:11 chilling in the bottom of a wine press threshing grain.  I had always seen this as a cowardly thing, hiding from the raiding parties of the enemy.  But it specifically states he was trying to save the grain from the Midianites.  He isn’t a coward, he is cautious with what God has given him.

The next big plot point in this story is Gideon asking for God to give him a sign that a fleece will be dry but the ground wet.  To me this is wrong, asking for a sign is not trusting God.  But He did trust God, he acted on the word of the Lord first, gathering Israel and then he asked for a sign. And he only asked for the signs because he was careful of what God had given him, this time 32,000 men.

Gideon was a leader and God was very specific what people He wanted to let serve Him.  So God wanted to winnow the 32,000 men who gathered.  32,000 was too much because Israel would say they did it by their own strength (Judges 7:2).  So all those afraid are given leave to go home.  22,000 leave.  All of the 32,000 would have heard about Gideon’s tests with the fleece.  The 10,000 that stayed shared a quality, faith.  They believed that God would deliver them like He promised.

But these 10,000 are still too many and there was another quality God was looking for, readiness.  Gideon has them all drink and most kneel down, put their heads in the water to drink.  But 300 put their hands into the water and brought it to their mouth.  Now imagine those two methods of drinking.  One is almost laying down, and you can see nothing around you.  The other is a much more alert posture, ready to move, able to see what’s going on.

300 men down from 32,000.  That is less than 1% of those who came out to serve God that were able to. It challenged me to think, am I in that 1%? Am I one of the willing who is also able?  Gideon is an incredible example of living out God’s call.  He is careful with the charge God has laid on him.  He listens and is ready to move.  I am a careful person, generally slow to move until I am sure.  I used to feel this was an undesired quality, I thought this was just fear, until I met Gideon.  Until I realized I am in that 1%.

Clever titles are just words if they don't have actions

No More Fear.

A few years ago I wrote a blog called "Skydiving is just flying until you step out of the plane" This was actually a very stripped down version of what I had originally wrote.  What I had originally wrote was about taking a step of faith, and not being afraid to have no other option than to see God miraculously provide.  At the time I didn't have the faith to post it, I wrote a smaller, "safer" version.  A version that if God didn't provide wouldn't look bad on me.  Unsurprisingly, I didn't really get the financial abundance I was expecting from God, abundance He was telling me to have faith for and to expect.  I acted timidly.  And I received timidly.  As I read over the original blog, I felt like such a coward.  Here is the God of the universe saying he wants to provide for me a big ways and all He was asking me to do was step out in faith and declare his faithfulness.

No More Fear.

The School of Digital Filmmaking and School of Acting for The Screen starts shortly after I get back from Hawaii.  We have heard from a lot of our students fear of being able to raise money to come and do a school they knew God called them to.  This prevented many from even applying.  Last Tuesday, right before I posted here, I sent a post to the students of the SAS and SDF, I told them:

For those of you who are worried about getting the money to come, in a week I am going to Kona Hawaii to volunteer on a feature. At this point I don't know how I will get there as I am roughly $2000 short of what I need (don't even have plane tickets). In about a week I'll post a picture here from Hawaii. God is faithful, and I know he will follow through with where and how he has called me, and he will follow though with you too.

 After I wrote this I was afraid.  If I didn't get all the money, then I would let down my students.  How would they feel then?  What would their faith do?  God simply smiled at me and said "Let's get to work"  3 days later I bought my plane tickets.  God is faithful.  When you take the big steps, God shows up in big ways.

No More Fear.

7 More Sleeps

In a week I leave for Kona and the next film opportunity.  As it gets closer and closer I am finding myself more and more excited.  I am so glad to be able to work on a feature again, and to be able to minister on a film set again.  I have already ready raised over $1000 $1200, and now I just need to see this last $2000 $1800 come in.  

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Thank you in advance, I can't wait to post some pictures from on set in Kona!

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The Next Step

Our sister production company in Kona, Hawaii is doing their third feature, and they have asked me if I would be their sound mixer.  This is an amazing opportunity and I can see God’s hand in it.  Not only will it help me expand my network of contacts and get more on set experience, but it will also be another chance to minister to people in the film industry on a set that is full of God’s light. I’m very excited to be able to feed into this project, and continue with the calling God has placed on my life.  We start filming on July 28th
I will also be teaching one of the SDF interns how to properly record sound for a feature, so I am excited to get to help develop others.
This project is being done in a similar way as The Umbrella, and I will be volunteering my time, along with the rest of the people on this film. I will need to raise all my own funds, about $3000.  So far I have received about $500 meaning I am only needing to raise another $2500 to be able to go.  Please consider giving, I want to see this film get made and I want to be able to minister with the rest of the team, pursing God’s calling.  If you want to partner with me, check out the donate tab for more information on how to give.

Nearly There

For those of you who haven't been following the journey of the umbrella, you might not be aware that for the past 2 years I have been working on a feature film.  "Feature films don't take 2 years to film" you might say, and this is true, actual filming on many films is about 2-3 months.  Of course that is just the production process.  The post production process, where the film really gets made, is a much longer process, especially when you have a large number of special effects, and action sequences.  The Umbrella doesn't really have any of those, but we have had a long post production process.  Much of this has been down to the fact that we are learning, and still trying to figure out how to make a feature film. 

The long journey is almost finished now.  Right now I am finishing up a week in the studio with our sound mixer to get a good 5.1 surround sound mix.  Then back to the office to perfect the color correction.  Following that I'm sure there is some other process to make the film even more stunning.

The amount of work involved has been incredibly more than I imagined going into this.  So many little things that add up and all need to get done.  However recently I turned a corner.  Throughout this process it has just been a large cloud of tasks stretching out beyond the horizon.   I knew somewhere, out there, there was an end.  If I kept working at it and kept on, eventually I would reach the end, despite not being able to see it.  A few weeks ago I realized I could actually see the end.  And its a good view.