using short film in worship

Hopeinfo.co.uk has been relaunched with a number of new films. The latest ‘girl musing on train’ Big Hope is quite similar to the ‘man musing on bus’ Fresh Hope, but it does have a vox-pops start that roots it in real life, and it should be widely useful in mainstream churches.

There’s also the iMatter series of ordinary people talking about their own hopes, and I quite like these. I was particularly impressed with Working on Hope, about a guy who works at a dockyard. Perhaps I’m easily and boyishly impressed by big machines moving in the dark, but it really is very well filmed.

There are six films on Hopeinfo at the moment, all downloadable. The four iMatter films are also available on DVD from RUN.

The winners of the Jerwood Moving Image Awards have been announced, and I would really recommend spending a few minutes on their site, browsing the various finalists. There is some truly outstanding work to be seen, in a whole variety of styles.

The three winning films in particular are excellent, and all three are downloadable, so get them while you can.

Sophie Clements’ ‘Evensong‘ is a gentle visual poem, using twilight landscapes and sophisticated light painting techniques. It’s “a melancholy celebration of dusk and stillness - an essence of something else”, and it’s oddly beautiful.

Readers of Creative Review might recognise this shot from Johnny Kelly’s animation ‘procrastination‘, which was on the front cover in September. It’s a clever and amusing “investigative and exploratory hands-on, gloves-off study into the practice of putting things ‘off’”.

Finally, Rosie Pedlow and Joe King’s ‘Sea Change‘ is a slow and thoughtful film, based on a long tracking shot repeated at different times of day. The caravan park depicted was bulldozed at the end of the season, so this is a documenting of a place and time.

The animations are coming in today, and they look great. Can’t wait to see what reaction they get. It’s not too late to join, and if you want to help promote the series, please feel free to crib the jpeg above, with a link to www.sgmlifewords.com/easter.

I keep meaning to post these, and have just never got round to it. Hopeinfo, the online face of Hope08, have a couple of films to view on the theme of hope. You can download them too. Fresh Hope is a personal reflection based around a bus journey. Broken Open is a piece of performance poetry by Jude Simpson.

They’ve got a new film for Easter too, which I’m looking forward to seeing. I’ll post a link when it’s online.

“The goal of all of this effort”, says CEA’s Gareth Squire, is “to enable people to engage with the hope we have in us… As well as the impact of the films, the website is facilitating conversations about hope and encouraging and enabling visitors to contact CEA to learn more about Jesus.”

Click here to join the journey 

I’ve just been working on our Easter site this week, and it’s coming along nicely. Still a number of things to upload, and I’ve got a whole bundle of ideas for prayers and reflections that I need to get down on paper and post. So, I ought to be waiting a little while before I start blogging it, but I’m excited about it. And since it’s one of those things most people will discover too late, I thought I might as well start talking about it now.

What we’re doing is a kind of reflective journey through Holy Week. I’ve written a series of meditations that begin with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, and end with Easter Sunday. We’ve commissioned the excellent Sparks collective to devise some artwork for each one, and we’ll post an animation a day for eight days. The guys brought the draft artwork in last week, and it looks great. I’ve made a couple of stills into desktop wallpapers, including the image above. Check them out here if you’re interested. We’ve added a blog too, so you can leave your comments or suggestions if you wish.

To take part, visit the SGM Lifewords Easter site and leave us your email address. At the beginning of Holy Week we’ll send you an email with the first reflection and a link to the day’s animation.

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, the crowds poured out of the city to meet him. They tore down palm branches and waved them like flags. In extravagant worship they took their cloaks and threw them down before Jesus.

This Easter, will you lay down your cloak?

Neat little triplicate animation project over on Duelity.net.

The first film tells the story of creation in scientific language.

The second tells the story of evolution in spiritual language.

The third puts the two side by side.

An interesting little experiment. Take a look, and tell them what you think on their blog.

And downloadable here.

Just posted this over on make wealth history, but it can go here too, because I like it.

If you need a bit of an antidote to Christmas shopping fever, this’ll do it. You can also download the story of stuff if you wish.

Okay, it’s been a while, but here’s a little something. Douglas Coupland has collaborated with animation house Crush Inc to produce a series of short spots for Coupland new novel, The Gum Thief. Each has the author narrating an excerpt from the book, with animated sequences about the characters, and they’re great in a bleak and deadpan sort of way that should be familiar to anyone that knows Coupland’s writing. They’re all on Youtube, and you can download them here if you want something more versatile.

They’re all different, but this one in particular caught my eye for it’s staple based animation:

The futureshorts season picks up again in October. Check out where your nearest screening is - always a great programme of shorts. For those of you in London, I’ll be at the Brixton Ritzy one on the 15th if anyone wants to join me.

I thought I’d also mention the Filmstock festival, which runs from the 1st to the 11th of November in Luton. I’ve been spending quite a lot of time in Luton lately, and this puts my mental list of ‘things worth going to Luton for’ up to a grand two, my girlfriend being the only other entry. Filmstock looks like a neat little festival, and I’m going to try and get along. They’re announcing the programme very soon, so I’ll keep you posted.