Christian Music Industry is Dying, Will Film Follow?

by S. David Acuff

I think it’s time we checked in with the CCM industry because as I’ve stated in ourChristian Film Wakeup Call – as it goes with the Christian music industry, so it will be with the Christian film industry.  It’s just that they are 20 years up the road from us along the journey.

But before I do that, I wanted to clarify one thing that separates Wired4Film from other Christian Filmmaking sites: We are not promoting the Christian Film Industry.

Gasp!  I know, let me explain.

Bob Briner is the author of a seminal piece of writing that is one of the first books any Christian Professional needs to read called Roaring Lambs.  It is simply a call to action for the Christian Community and explains how to be Salt and Light in the Secular world.  In it he chides us:

“We have created a phenomenal subculture with our own media, entertainment, educational system, and political hierarchy so that we have the sense that we’re doing a lot.  But what we’ve really done is created a ghetto that is easily dismissed by the rest of society.”

Today, there are some well intentioned voices out there calling Christian filmmakers to arms to build a Christian Film Media Empire or “Replacement Industry” which will in the end serve to broaden the Christian ghetto that Briner speaks of.  

Wired4Film is not about funneling filmmakers into the Christian Film industry.

Wired4Film is a movement to create paths out of the “ghetto” or what Phil Cooke calls the “Christian Bubble” and into the marketplace to be that salt and light that Christ has called us to be.  

To acknowledge that we are wired for a purpose: Filmmaking.  And that purpose is not to preach to the choir.  As Jesus said in Matthew 9:12, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”  So it’s not to preach to the secular world either.  It’s to heal them and tend to them and make them whole.

In early 2007, during Fox’s “On The Lot” series, this convo was overheard (and recorded) in a chatroom:

Member #1:  Hope you enjoy [my film]!  And let me know what you think.  I am a Christian Film  maker from Liberty University

Member #2: what is a christian filmmaker?

Member #3: If it’s anything like Christian Rock, it’s a film maker that sucks.

I don’t know about you, but I had to laugh at that one.  Because I know exactly where Member #3 — who went by the screen name “bocephus” — was coming from.

So is Christian Film going to be the answer to our cinematic woes?  Or will it be part of the problem?  Well, here is where we look to the Christian Music Industry. 

Currently, I’m in the process of reviewing Phil Cooke’s book,The Last Televangelist: Why the next generation could care less about religious media  – I haven’t finished it, but even so, it’s already on my top 5 list of books along with Bob Briner’s that Christian Filmmakers need to grab hold of, read, and fully comprehend.

Here is an excerpt called “What About Christian Music?”:

In the July/Aug 2008 issue of Collide Magazine, Scott McClellan wrote a feature story based on music producer Charlie Peacock’s assessment that the Christian music industry is dying.  According to Peacock, the five most important issues are:

1) The major labels aren’t in danger of going under anytime soon, but they’ll be forced to depend on dwindling revenue from their song catalogues

2) The term CCM, or Contemporary Christian Music, will go away.

3)  Christian music that matters won’t have any affiliation with the Christian Music industry but instead will be written, recorded and released in the mainstream.

4) Worship music serves a purpose within the church, which guarantees its survival

5) The big names from CCM’s glory days (Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant, Steven Curtis Chapman, etc.) will survive but many artists from the last decade will be left looking for a reason, roaming through the night to find their place in the world.

While, as McClellan states, the charges aren’t exactly blasphemy, they did set off quite the controversy within the industry.

David Sessions, editor of Patrol, an online music and media magazine (patrolmag.com) agreed: “The best thing that can happen is for people to forget entirely that they once specified whether their music was ‘Christian’ or ‘mainstream.’ That divide has been the single most damaging idea to Christianity in the modern world.”

Peacock echoed that indictment: “Anyone who has studied CCM knows that it’s front-loaded with a very specious strategy that is, the creation of a youth-oriented music to counteract the undesirable youth-oriented music of the culture at large. [That strategy] probably looked righteous in the beginning but proved very flawed.”

If it didn’t work for Christian Music, why would it ever work for Christian Film?  This section continues…

McClellan covers both sides of the issue, but the article does point to a deep divide in the world of Christian Music.  Should it continue to exist as a niche industry?  Should Christians move more into mainstream music?  Can the business model hold up – should it?

In a feature story in Christianity Today magazine on the issue, music marketing consultant Mark Joseph points out:

“…Think of it this way: Would a plumber advertise himself as a ‘Christian plumber’ if he wanted to serve both believers and non-believers?  Perhaps, but then many non-Christians with clogged toilets might not hire him because of that designation.  But if he simply presents himself as a “plumber” — still intending to do a great job and prepared to discuss his faith with any interested clients — he’s likely to get more business, earn a better living, and interact with more non-believers.  Using ‘Christian’ as an adjective – whether you’re a plumber or a musician – is little more than a weapon, used to beat back people who might otherwise be interested in the service or product offered, but upon hearing that it is ‘Christian’ are no longer interested.”

Recently I was editing at the Billy Graham Evangelical Association (which was awesome by the way in their respect for high-end production value) and overhead some people giving kudos to the FIREPROOF filmmakers because their entire film crew was made up of Christians.  

Someone else agreed that that was the way to go, especially on Spiritually sensitive shoots, but I don’t buy that.  For one, I don’t buy that God is limited to only working through Christians.  It simply isn’t so.  And I’ve been on many many shoots of a spiritual nature and brought along non-Christian production members who were deeply moved by the experience and thanked me later for including them.

See, I thought that’s what our job was…not to insulate from the world, but to connect with them.  To me, that’s what “love your neighbor” is all about.  Bringing them on set to see Christ being modeled.  

Welcome to our industry where “show it, don’t tell it” is the golden rule!

I’m gonna be honest…if I need an amazing Director of Photography, I’m looking for one that can handle the job.  It’s important that the personalities mesh, but I’m not concerned if he or she is a Christian or Buddhist or Atheist.  If they are a professional they’ll do a bang-up job.  And if I’ve bathed the shoot in prayer before hand, that person will catch a glimpse of Christ somewhere along the way.   

So, let’s take a good hard look at Charlie Peacock’s CCM assessment, because it is the writing on the wall for the Christian Film Replacement Industry as well.

We’ve been warned.

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Trailer-Telestory-AngelWarsTheMessengers

ProdCo: TeleStory Productions
Title: Angel Wars: The Messengers
Distrib: 20th Century FOX

 

Angel Wars, The Messengers from Angel Wars on Vimeo.

INTERVIEW: Angel Wars (Part 1)

Wired4Film is branching out here with our first exclusive interview on a 3D Animated series called Angel Wars. Check out this interview with Chris Waters as we discuss the evolution of Angel Wars!

Our friend Chris Waters is one of the co-Creators of the show as well as writer, Producer, etc.  Last year they inked a distribution deal with 20th Century FOX Home Entertainment and are about to release a new DVD on March 17 called “The Messengers”.  If you haven’t seen it you should check it out. If you ask me, Angel Wars is like Biblical Heroes with an Anime Makeover.  
 
With sales of the first three releases topping 450,000 units, Angel Wars: The Messengers marks the first feature length title in the Angel Wars animated saga.  It’s aimed at the tween market (ages 8 to 12), but it’s also a lot of fun for big kids like myself.  Some people will call it an “overnight success” but little do they realize, that it all started a long long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away….

WIRED4FILM:  First off, Chris, thanks for taking time to talk to Wired4Film.  I know you’ve got a product launch coming up in a few days and a million other things going on with Angel Wars.  Not to mention an amazingly talented and beautiful wife and 3 of the world’s cutest kids. 

CHRIS WATERS:  Well, actually it’s up to four kids now so I’ve been a busy producer on that front.  

W4F:  Four kids?  Wow, I’m firing my research intern as we speak!  [PRETENDING TO TEXT MESSAGE ON PHONE] Oh wait!  That’s me!  Okay, anyway, let’s dive right in, shall we?  What are you doing today?  Right now?  What’s a typical day for Chris Waters?

CHRIS WATERS:  My typical day would bore your readers to death!

W4F:  Give it a shot.

CHRIS WATERS:  My typical day begins with hair and makeup.  I usually roll out of bed at about 4am and then it takes about three hours to get my battle armor on, then another two hours to get my hair to look just right.  Then after dropping the kids off at school I’ll fight off raging demons bent on annihilation and world domination before having a bowlful of manna for lunch.  Then it’s off to Heaven for session meetings and back to earth in time for my eldest son’s baseball practice.  

Or something like that.   Like I said, my typical day would bore your readers to death!

W4F:  People don’t realize, that being a superhero takes time.  You think we just roll out of bed looking this good?  I don’t think so!  Now, we’ve got so much history to cover (almost 10 years, people may not realize) so this is Part 1 of a 2 Part interview.  Talk about the origins of Angel Wars beginning with your dad’s original.

CHRIS WATERS:  I grew up loving comic books, and also fascinated with Milton’s Paradise lost.  My parents had a very old edition of the poem illustrated by Gustav Dore.  My dad is an engineer but his dad was a hollywood actor who appeared in some great films including Best Picture winner How Green Was My Valley, so my dad has the entertainment bug and I loved comics and we’re both Christian, so Angel Wars was something that developed naturally as we discussed our interests and passions.  

Seeing there was very little interest in comics from Christian retailers and watching Veggie Tales’ success we decided animation was the way to go so we abandoned the comic pretty early on.

W4F:  You and I met at Regent University (let’s give a little shout out there) where you were on the Producer track at the same time you and your team were working on Angel Wars: Soul Quest – the Pilot episode.  That was in 2000, I believe.  When I first saw the concept art it blew me away.  Finally, a Christian story that would actually be told well.  That original art had a very Marvel type look to it.  How did that come about?

Angel Wars Early Concept Design - Marvel Influence

CHRIS WATERS: The look developed over time, I have to give all the credit to Dan Wang, our conceptual designer.  It wasn’t until he came on board that I really fell in love with the look of the world and characters.  

W4F:  Where did your original funding come from on Soul Quest and how did you personally come to be involved?

CHRIS WATERS:  Family and friends, mostly my dad, and a few of his friends.

W4F:  The Soul Quest story centered more around a few humans on an adventure of their own with help from the Angelic host.  How did the narrative evolve along the way to include Eli and Kira, the Anawim (Angels-in-training)?  To the point now, where the humans are almost the bit players and the Angel world is the central plot?

CHRIS WATERS:  The biggest challenge with the series is meshing the human world with the angel world.  Kira and Eli have sort of replaced the original large human kid character cast we had in Soul Quest.  We loved those kids but it felt like two different series.

W4F:  What was your process for selecting an animation studio in Virginia Beach? 

CHRIS WATERS:  We tried doing it just me and one other guy and got overwhelmed with the deadline.  I was going to Regent and knew some of their team so we brought them on board to help get it finished!

 W4F:  I recall you trying to make a deadline with one of the Catalogues.  At what point did everyone realize you were all in way over your heads?  What were some of the surprises and challenges of animating a half-hour show that you hadn’t anticipated?

Angel Wars Original Logo

 CHRIS WATERS:  I was in over my head from the beginning.  I had no formal training and lost a lot of sleep and probably a few years of my life.  The toughest part was to work so hard and not be satisfied completely with the results.  Animation is tough, there is so much that can go wrong, even more can go wrong in CG animation than 2D because of the non-human issues like rendering that can go wrong for no good reason.  For this reason scheduling CG is much harder than 2D, experience is king and we had none.  Lots of learning, lots of heartache.  

 W4F:  Now, in your own words, how was the second round of Concept art with Southerland Studios different from the Original Marvel type art?  Also, didn’t the technology tend to have a Jetson’s inspired retro-future look?  Talk about that.

CHRIS WATERS:  That was really us finding our look.  I ended up abandoning that as it just wasn’t me.  We worked with another artist on the original design who is now successfully working in Hollywood on video games and his own short film.  He did a fantastic job, but we ended up taking it in another direction after Soul Quest.

W4F: One of the huge issues, I remember, was creating 3-D characters from the 2-D art?  Because didn’t you have different teams who did the different functions?  Later, didn’t you want your Concept Artists and your Modelers to be the same group for that reason?

CHRIS WATERS:  Yes, it helps for your conceptual team to at least understand the process so they can anticipate things.  But in the end its the modelers job to interpret the 2D piece into CG, so it’s not just a mechanical process but a creative one as well. 

W4F:  At what point did you realize that the East Coast wasn’t going to work for TeleStory?  How has working in L.A. helped you?  It’s worth mentioning, too, that L.A. is your home.  So you weren’t just striking out for Hollywood.  You were going home to family at the same time, right?

CHRIS WATERS:  Yeah, after all that hard work and not feeling great about the final product, I knew I needed to go to a place with more funding and a deeper talent pool, and LA was home so that was a natural fit.

W4F:  As I recall, too, you were birthing babies the same time you were birthing this series.  Haha.  So which one was more challenging? 

CHRIS WATERS:  Movies are much easier, I get to control the actions of my characters, whereas my kids have this pesky thing called free will.  As to which is more satisfying, it’s not even close, watching my kids develop and mature is the greatest joy in my life.

W4F: Soul Quest was a trial by fire.  You learned so much about every single aspect from the Scripting, to the Animating to the Sound Design and Edit, to the distribution.  Do you have a favorite part?  Talk about some of those early lessons and how you changed things by partnering the next time with Backyard Entertainment.

Backyard Concept Design - Angel Armor

CHRIS WATERS:  The development phase is my favorite part.  Even though it’s like pulling teeth, particularly early on in the series’ life as you define your characters and the characteristics of the world.  I love seeing it all come together, but it all starts in development.

W4F: There were a few years between Soul Quest Pilot Episode and AW:Episode 1.  What was taking place behind the scenes?  I know you were actively seeking investors and trying to find an audience at the same time?

CHRIS WATERS:  Moving to LA, pitching distributors, finding funding and developing the new look.  It felt like forever at the time, but it was another huge learning experience.

W4F: I think one of the hard lessons early on which we discussed was the mistaken notion that all you needed was a great looking product available in stores and magazines and it would just “sell itself”.   What was wrong with that philosophy?  Talk to us a little about what you observed with the marketing machine that was Veggie Tales versus your own difficult task of fighting for shelf real estate. 

CHRIS WATERS:  Veggie Tales came out when there was little competition and DVD sales were just starting to explode. It was the perfect storm.   My marketing philosophy is very much influenced by thinkers like Seth Godin, and you quickly realize successful marketing is about more than a great product, it’s about a great story.  Can you find a compelling story about who you are and what you are about?  

With Angel Wars we’ve succeeded because we are not marketing DVD’s as much as we are marketing ourselves as a company that is trying to reach tweens.  We purposely targeted a different demo hoping that we could speak to mom’s dad’s and grandparents in a way other animated series could not.  If you have a 7 year old boy who loves Star Wars, and you want that boy nourished in his faith, then we have something to dialogue about and we have something that is going to really be attractive to you.  So I guess most important thing is, make sure you start with your market in mind.

W4F:  The Angel Wars animation took a gigantic leap forward with the Backyard team.  Why is that?  Was it just the tools?  Bigger team?  What?

CHRIS WATERS:  Better artists, committed partners, great people.  I can’t say enough good things about these three partners.  Rob is an incredible, hard-working producer, Dan our insanely talented designer and Jason our incomparable director and me.

W4F:  Let us in on some of your early discussions about the redesigned forms and figures, because I see the Angelic Team has this great Rescue Heroes look with the big feet and forearms.  What other styles/looks were you going for with the technology and characters and weapons? 

CHRIS WATERS:  We were really influenced by anime, it’s funny you mention rescue heroes because the big legs little heads is the one thing we’re looking to change moving forward.  While we love the look it makes it hard to fill the frame with the characters heads in dramatic shots and hard to animate with those giant feet and tiny hops.  

Plus, boys may get bad body image since these proportions are impossible to develop in a living human.  [GRIN]

 W4F:  There’s that to think about.  Sure, sure.  You wear a lot of hats on this series.  Do you feel the Producer (dream squasher) creeping in while you’re trying to Write the ultimate battle sequence?  What have you learned about the limitations of animation?   Has Pixar ruined us?  Of course I mean that tongue in cheek, but they’ve set a pretty high bar haven’t they?

CHRIS WATERS:  I think knowing the pain of production makes those kinds of calls easy.  There are no limitations to creativity.  Ultimately your audience doesn’t care about excuses, they don’t want to hear how much money Pixar has, they just want a good story and it does not take 180 million to tell a good story.  (I don’t mean to suggest we can compete with Pixar on box office, but we need to understand our audience and find a way to make something we don’t have to make excuses for because the audience won’t care!)

 W4F:  At some point, you began outsourcing animation.  What facilities were you in discussions with and whom did you finally end up with?  I know you spent some time in India, what did they bring to the table?  How was the animation broken up between Backyard and your outsourcing partner?

CHRIS WATERS:  We spent time in India, South Korea and China and finally ended up in New Zealand at Huhu Animation Studios.  We went there because we realized you had to be on site and two of my partners had kids and NZ was the one place they could mention to their wives without fear of reprisal.  So we’ve done it all in one studio, all with artists under our direction, and the new animation is the best thing we’ve ever done because of it.  

We had Disney guys, Weta guys and just some amazing people working on the show, and it shows!  In fact, things went so well we were asked to stay on at Huhu and run the studio, so that’s what we’re doing.  In an ironic twist of fate, I’m now working on Veggie Tales.  We do all production on the series and we’re so proud we get to be a part of that world as well!

Backyard's Angel Wars Logo

W4F: That’s amazing.  And then the Angel Wars Universe expanded.  You’ve got Action Figures now. How fun was that process?  Do you sorta feel like George Lucas in the beginning?  What other products are currently out there because I know there are a lot in the works (comics? Board games? Video games?).  I personally will not rest until I’ve got a pair of Archangel Michael Underoos.

CHRIS WATERS:  We’re working on books, we have a board game as well, you can see it at Cactus Games web site.

W4F:   Finally, you’ve been fortunate to speak in some different places and meet some great fans.  Talk about those fans and the excitement they have for Angel Wars.  Do you find their enthusiasm contagious?  Does it inspire you to keep going?

CHRIS WATERS:  YES.  We love hearing from fans, and have received amazing encouragement from all around the world, including a Sergeant in Iraq who carries a copy of Angel Wars under his fatigues for comfort!  

W4F:  Thanks, Chris.

(END OF PART 1)

Distributed by 20th Century FOX Home Entertainment, the DVD will be in stores Nationwide on March 17, 2009 and is available for presale at Family Christian Stores and Amazon.com.

Angel Wars, The Messengers from Angel Wars on Vimeo.

Trailer for the all new DVD coming March 17, 2009