Christian Film Wakeup Call

Left Behind: The Movie

“Films are a lie that tells the truth.” (1)

This oft-quoted and astute observation was made years ago by Hollywood script phenom William Goldman (“Butch Cassidy & Sundance Kid”, “Princess Bride”, “Ghost & the Darkness”). Today, since almost every DVD on the market has “Behind the Scenes” features we’re all film savvy enough to know that what Goldman refers to is that everything which appears on the screen is a fabrication to service a story line.

Lighting is generated and re-directed from multiple fixtures, actors slip in and out of character, clothes and props are manufactured to a certain color spectrum to inform on a Character’s personality, in fact everything you see onscreen is placed there by the Art Department aligned with the Director’s vision to create the illusion of a world that exists only in the frame. If the camera tilts 12 inches up you would see that the “house” has no ceiling or roof. If the camera pans 12 inches to the left you see a big hairy Grip holding a bounce card to reflect and soften light onto the subject.

Filmmaking should be a natural fit for Christians, then, since we are supposed to be the guardians and purveyors of truth. That’s what Jesus was all about. He said he is “the way, the truth and the life.” (2) So isn’t it odd that so many Christian films do not grasp film making truth? For example you meet a character in Act I, his life is turned upside down and he gets preached at from every side until he repents and gets saved at a church or a Crusade and then everything good starts happening and the blessings pour down in Act III. Hallelujah. But, that’s not real life. That’s propaganda. Christian Propoganda.

There is a truth to film making. When to use a closeup. When to use a long-shot. There is a difference between what a handheld shot says versus what a steadycam or a tripod shot communicates. There is an art and a science to lighting…so much more than just to see an image. These are all part of a cinematic language.

Have you ever taken a foreign language course? Imagine taking one class and then going to Mexico to deliver an important speech, to preach the gospel, or to even take a taxi cab across town. Your hispanic audience is used to hearing their language a certain way, to hearing their verbs conjugated a certain way. If you come to town with your own pronunciations, your own jumbled word associations and little vocabulary to speak of, you can kiss your message goodbye. What you hope to communicate, no matter how good your intention, will be rendered completely ineffective, unless you’ve got serious Mime skills.

It’s the same with film. Those who do not take the time to learn the language of Cinema end up butchering whatever well-intentioned message is on the screen. But the sad fact is that there exists a gigantic library of Christian films that have specifically sacrificed Production value or genuine dialogue for the “greater good” of the film message.

This breaks one of the Cardinal rules of Film making: Films exist to entertain. The message cannot be the primary task of a picture, it must first capture and arrest the audiences’ attention. Once you have gained their attention, then you may make your point. This is not limited to Christian propaganda, either.

If you turn in your TV Guide Bible to 1 Ellen 3:16 we can see a good example of a secular show breaking the First Law of Film making. According to the Internet Movie Database the original Ellen Degeneres show ran from 1994 to 1998. (3) In April 1997 Ellen came out as a lesbian on her show. From that point on her homosexual ideology began to permeate every episode and became a central component of the show. She began to sacrifice entertainment to make her point and because of this new preachiness, her viewership declined so that in 1998 her show was cancelled.

Her viewers didn’t want to be preached at about homosexuality, they wanted to laugh. It was after all a sitcom.

In 1999, I decided to enroll in Regent University to attend their Film School because of a desire to learn how to make high quality Christian Films like “Chariots of Fire” and “The Mission.” It was at Regent that I discovered an amazing plot twist — “Chariots of Fire” and “The Mission” and “The 10 Commandments” were not made by Christians , but rather secular filmmakers.

So then my central question became, why is the secular world doing a better job of telling our stories than we are? It’s an interesting question that will take a lifetime to unravel, but in the meanwhile there are some interesting hypotheses. Maybe not popular, mind you, but interesting. Here’s one of them.

You see, there is another industry that currently exists with little regard to production value or plot, where films and videos are made on a shoe-string budget, with the lamest actors on the planet. It’s called Pornography. It is defined as “creative activity (writing or pictures or films, etc.) of no literary or artistic value other than to stimulate sexual desire.” (4) Porn preaches the very antithesis of Love and intimacy. And it will never be confused for art or be nominated for Oscars.

Many Christian films fall into this same category, except instead of stimulating sexual desire, they’re attempting to whip us into a spiritual frenzy. Christian Porn. They are not preaching Jesus as they have intended, they don’t utilize filmic language to communicate effectively – they are preaching something synthetic and secular audiences know this and reject this. The Christian audience loves them, but have you ever taken a non-Christian friend to one of these film events? I recall taking someone to see the Judas Project in high school. Big mistake. Christian Porn.

It’s a good thing God didn’t create nature like we create our Christian movies. We feel like if Jesus is not mentioned then the world will never know Him and His truth. Look around at God’s natural surroundings. Did he make every tree in the shape of a cross? Did he sign each of his animals with his name very prominent on their hides, lest we “miss” the point? Did he create a monochromatic musical scale on the piano based on Jesus notes? Is there a difference between a Christian sunset and a secular sunset? Or a Christian tide coming in and a Secular Tide? Nope. Silly, but nope. However, every year the entire resurrection story is told in the changing of the seasons. The birth, the life, the death, the resurrection. It’s played out before us in no uncertain terms.

In Dave Christiano and Barry Bowen’s online article “A History and Overview of Christian films” they open with the mistaken claim that:

The one major element that has always lacked for the dramatic Christian film industry is that there are virtually no Christian movie theaters. Without a theatrical release, it is very hard to get a film known. Hollywood produces a film, puts it in the theater, and this opens up every other door for television, rental stores, and home viewing. (5)

The assertion here is that Christian Films have suffered and been denied their fair share of box office receipts because there are little to no Christian theater venues. But the blame is not on Christian theaters or lack thereof. Distribution has always been slave to supply and demand laws of modern economics. Hence, because there were no high quality, entertaining Christian Films to distribute, the idea of a Christian theater chain is a bit anemic.

Incidentally, do you think for a second that Christian Billionaire Philip Anschutz will jeopardize his 6,383 screens in a chain of over 540 Regal Cinemas by playing only Christian films? (6) No way. He’ll play the films that make the money.

In fact, Christian films have always had the same distribution available to them as any secular film. According to Plunkett’s Entertainment & Media Industry Almanac there were an estimated 37,000 Movie screens in the U.S. in 2005. (7) Plain and simply put, every one of those facilities exist to make money. High risk, narrowly targeted films are not going to get screen time – whether its Christian Porn or “No Man’s Land part 24″. That’s what the Direct-to-DVD market is all about.

Every major theatrical distributor is looking for the next “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” or “Spitfire Grill”. They want mass appeal, something to connect with an audience, they’re not looking for a 90 minute poorly filmed Christian diatribe and badly woven tales of Christian propaganda from a world where characters exist only to be preached at.

They seek biblical truth. Have you seen “Lorenzo’s Oil”, “Amadeus”, “Gladiator”, “Tuesdays with Maury”, or any of the American Film Institute’s top 100 films of all time? Deeply moving in their ability to mirror life and inform upon the human condition. In fact, the most genuine salvation scene I’ve ever watched was not even in a Christian film, but in Spielberg’s “Amistad” where one slave takes another through the whole salvation story through pictures in a bible some missionaries have given him. Powerful.

Maybe it’s time to stop talking in terms of Christian films and to begin genuinely good story telling. Perhaps it’s even time to give up our Christian Porn and make films that the secular world actually wants to see. If we entertain them, we will not be able to pry them away from our films.

Madison Avenue has found this out. In a world where everyone is fast forwarding and TiVo’ing past commercial breaks on TV, imagine the innovation of BMWfilms (8) and American Express’ Seinfeld/Superman short films (9) which are attracting thousands of viewers and generating a ton of buzz for their companies. Because they stopped selling and started telling…good stories.

There is a cyclical nature to life which I have observed. I have drawn the conclusion that the Christian film market right now is about where the Christian Music market was in the early 80s. Remember way back then? Were you even born, yet? Sure you were! Anyway, the musical selection we had was relegated to Gospel Music, Hymns, real Hardcore evangelical songs by the Gaithers, Imperials and upstarts like Petra, Mylon LeFevre and some young nobody named Michael W. Smith. And now look around. For better or for worse we have every single rhythm and strain available in Christian form.

And so it goes with the Christian Film Market. We’ve currently got a steady stream of hardcore gospel films, end times flicks and bible dramas. But we’re beginning to see good stuff from Namesake Entertainment doing some Frank Peretti stories (10) and up and comers like Sherwood Baptist Church and their “Facing the Giants” Disney-like underdog story (11). I’ve already mentioned Philip Anschutz and his Walden Media film company responsible for such family fare as “Around the World in 80 Days”, “Holes” and “Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” (12)

Yes, it’s an exciting time to be a film maker. The landscape is changing, the tools are getting cheaper and YouTube and MySpace and Google Video have made it very easy to build an audience. There’s a film festival on every block and everyone’s the next Spielberg. But what will separate the next generation of wannabes versus IMDb superstars is vision, persistance and craftsmanship.

Let’s make a movie.

  1  ”Which Lie Did I Tell?” by William Goldman

  2   John 14:6 NIV

  3  http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001122/

  4  http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pornography

  5  http://www.christianfilms.com/overview.htm

  6 http://www.regalcinemas.com/corporate/about.html

  7 http://www.plunkettresearch.com/Industries/EntertainmentMedia/EntertainmentMediaStatistics/tabid/227/Default.aspx

  8  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeKl0tjVZzE

  9  http://www.supermanhomepage.com/tv/tv.php?topic=t-seinfeld

10  http://www.hangmanscursethemovie.com/

11  http://www.facingthegiants.com/

12  http://www.walden.com 

The Prayer of Josh Bell

We’re on a journey.  A journey, first, to understand the Art and Craft of Filmmaking and, second, to employ a higher standard on our own projects.  A higher standard that is not dictated by the size of your budget.  Of course more money can always help, but as Hollywood has proven time and again…(*cough* godzilla *cough* daredevil) big budgets don’t guarantee squat.    

What film would you make for $150K?  Or $1M?  Or think reeeeeally big…how about $20M?  Well according to Box Office Mojo, that was the budget for 8X Entertainment’s One Night with the King.  Right on!  I’d say we could all agree that $20M is a pretty decent production budget.  And on top of that it’s got Peter O’Toole for crying out loud…you can’t go wrong with Lawrence of Arabia.

I’ll let the following review from Josh Bell take it from here.  It was published the week of October 12, 2006 by Las Vegas Weekly.  It used to be here but has since disappeared.  That’s unfortunate because I feel like this humorous “prayer” sums up what the world thinks of Christian Film in general and certainly this latest film specificially.  I can’t find it online anymore, so I’m re-posting it here at Wired4Film.com because we need to chew loooooooong and hard on these words.  

Dear Lord, why must Your most ardent followers unleash such bad movies in Your name? Surely, as our Creator, You wish for us to have better entertainment than the cut-rate fare that passes for faith-based film? Is Your glory really best served by the Left Behind movies, starring Kirk Cameron, or toothless Mormon comedies, or conspiracy-theory obsessed series The Omega Code?

Perhaps You have been paying attention to the prayers of religious film producers, who no doubt are beseeching You for better scripts, larger budgets and bigger audiences. In particular, those who made The Omega Code and its sequel have been blessed in the creation of their new film, One Night With the King, as it boasts not only lavish production values but also actors with far greater range than their previous big star, Casper Van Dien.

In Your wisdom, Lord, You have delivered unto the producers John Rhys-Davies, Omar Sharif and James Callis, actors who elevate One Night With the King above its stiff storytelling and bland, declaratory dialogue. You have used Your powers to guide the filmmakers to the Old Testament story of Esther (Tiffany Dupont), a Jew who became queen of the Persians and saved her people from the genocidal Haman (Callis).

This story, the origin of the Jewish holiday Purim, is likely to appeal to more of Your followers than the reactionary Christian tales of religious films past, although You might want to send director Michael O. Sajbel a vision imparting to him that a really loud score and lots of sweeping camera movements do not a classical epic make. But his heart is in the right place, Lord, and One Night With the King sometimes succeeds as passable, third-rate entertainment.

But I despair, Lord, that such third-rate passability is all that exists to exalt Your name, and I bet You do, too. Although Dupont is a fine specimen of the beauty of Your creation, she plays Esther like a petulant teen. Surely, Lord, moviegoers would be thankful if next time You inspired more talented people to take on one of Your most beloved stories. Amen.

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