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.]

Anyway, the filming went very well and hopefully will bring glory to the Lord! Thanks to Travis for coming along and being our "teleprompter" operator. Dallas spent the afternoon editing our new material. It's coming together!

---

Greg

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.

---
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.

---
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)

---
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.

Thanks for helping us out! http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RXLPTMJ

---

Greg

Zeroing In

As we work in postproduction, the following is our guide to help us with those difficult editing decisions.

Target Audience:
Bullseye - Homeschooling fathers who sense God’s pull to be greater spiritual leaders in their homes
Circle 1- Wives of the “bullseye” fathers
Circle 2 - Christian homeschooling parents who haven’t yet considered the above need
Circle 3 - Christian parents who don’t homeschool, but need to be challenged to take greater responsibility in discipling their children
Outer Circle - Church leaders who are willing to see the need to teach and support parents in their God given responsibility to train their children

Purpose: to challenge Christian men to take up the responsibility that God has entrusted to them, namely to be the spiritual leaders in their homes, to train up their children in they way they should go, so when they are old they will not depart from it. Our prayer is that, whether they choose to homeschool or develop a home business, they will choose to step up to their calling to be vigilant in their role as spiritual leaders.

Reason: Christian families are losing their children to the world in unprecedented numbers due to the breakdown of the Christian family. We have a family leadership crisis, more specifically, a fatherhood crisis, which is having a devastating impact on the spiritual condition of our children. Parents need to make their children’s spiritual welfare their number one priority. Fathers, in particular, need to make this their personal responsibility and not just leave it to the “experts.”

Synopsis: This film highlights the efforts of a few Christian men who take extreme measures to directly train up their children in the way they should go. They do this by not only educating them at home, but by developing businesses which allow them to be with their children on a regular basis, living side by side with them, following the commands of Deuteronomy 6.

---

Greg