It's about time.

This blog, comments on this video:

First, my comments that people should probably care more about, myself being a media professional.

I’m not previously familiar with this speaker, Mark Driscoll, or his thinking, or the size of his enterprise-slash-ministry-slash whatever.

But, this video was put together with, my count; Three cameras, only one with particularly good optics, a dolly, and a decent sized crane. Most of the footage comes from the A-reel, the head on medium shot, with a few b-roll cutaways to a camera that, while not being as good as the A-reel, it is being pushed as far as it can… it/they are being shot from very far away, zoomed very far in to enhance the footage to a cinematic look as much as possible.

All that jargon aside, the point is that this wasn’t done with anything more than an average sized church has. I’ve seen this level of equipment in Churches for years, upon years, and very rarely have I seen it’s presence there justified.

This is -the best- use of media technology that I have seen attached to a ministry, not because it is expensive or envelope pushing (though that would be very nice) , but because this is clearly a moderate amount of gear and technique being used to it’s fullest: The footage has been post processed either a motion graphics or node based environment… Not only across it’s levels and gamma curves, but it looks like somebody who knew what they were doing added a vignette. The reason it’s been post processed so much is to cover up the fact that the b-rolls are considerably cheaper cameras. On top of that, there are some intermediate-level luma keys early in the video, which don’t look perfect, but aren’t bad (they look a little surreal because the composite plate hasn’t been color corrected– but the keys are clean)

I know that this kind of talk just floats over people, but here’s the point:

It should. The average viewer should look at any video, and not be distracted by production concerns. If that post processing hadn’t happened, this video would be jarring, visually unpleasing to watch, and coincidentally, harder to listen to.

But, it did, it’s not, it’s exactly opposite, and It’s about frigging time. We aren’t just run and gunning media, here: This is a planned and executed attempted to paint a complete picture for someone: to support ideology with a package designed to intrigue, engage, and support the core elements: to affect the way that people think about things. This is why I’m a filmmaker.

Speaking of his core beliefs, he doesn’t say much that I take exception to. He’s on fire to bring men back into Churches, and I laughed out loud at the blog that was criticizing him. A few snipes:

“I have to admit that when I heard Driscoll say that young men want to know how to have sex with their wives once a day, I was stunned. I know Driscoll walks the edge, but this was the kind of juvenile distortion I don’t expect to hear.”

Distortion? Distortion? Distortion? I don’t even know where you’re coming from on this, man. It would be cause for great rejoicing if OUR BIG PROBLEM was that Christian Men were married and concerned about the quality of their sex life. The only thing I can do, is look at this, and see a socially cultivated prejudice that sex is about hedonism, therefor a man concerned with his married sex life is taking a hedonistic approach to his marriage, and “oh, we need to knock this guy down, because marriage is about so much more then that.”

Bull. Sex is one of the most important things that there is to talk about, and men having sex with their wives daily, and families being emotionally healthy and raising children to be the same: This is not something to be sniffed at.

A-freaking-men, is what I have to say, Driscoll.

It’s pointless and stupid to go on and on about exceptions to this approach to sex, a la

“You may give up sex because you have to care for a sick or ailing spouse. You have to put your sexual agenda at the bottom of a list of things like crying babies, the stress of daily life, emotional realities and physical facts”

This is silly… Marriage and Sex should be principally the same thing. They both describe the union of a couple before God. The fact that there are incidents that coincidentally (vs principally) affect their cohesion is pretty much meaningless to the point: Healthy Marriages include Sex, Christians shouldn’t come within a mile of debating that.

One last quote from the blog:

“But I cannot present the Christian life primarily as a way to great maleness.”

Perhaps we’re just running into semantics, but it is an offensive notion that somehow the base male spirit, as it is principally and widely accepted in situations where sin is not being commited, is not in accordance with the Christian walk? I’ll just stop reading now, thanks.

Anyway,

Back to what I’m most qualified to speak to: Driscoll’s website shines a little light on -what I presume to be- his interest in presenting things with effective media.

From Driscoll’s blogging website:

“As image-bearers of God (the master storyteller, whose story spans all of creation) we in turn have a yearning to both create and be entertained by stories.”

Again, it’s nice to see someone that understands.

I don’t know if Driscoll spent a bunch of money to rent out guys to shoot his little speech, that aren’t part of his ministry, but I sure hope not, and I don’t think he did: He’s based out on the west coast, where everyone and their mother’s dog works in this industry.

Even if it was the case, I would travel state lines to help him produce along this line of thinking, any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.