Director Mr. Dan Boone works with actor Mr. Alex Fields of the Division of Music while Mr. Bill Kimzey photographs the scene.
ShowForth releases new DVD
BJU’s ShowForth DVDs will release today “The Great Awakening,” a video documentary featuring a blend of two-dimensional photography and three-dimensional animation, and detailing a crucial period of religious revival in colonial America.
Produced and directed by Mr. Dan Boone, the documentary sails through a sea of visual images of the people and events of early 18th-century America. Narrator Mr. Bill Apelian walks on camera through computer animations and introduces subjects, and BJU faculty offer expert analyses, while original texts from the era speak for the historical participants.
“It’s a time period that a lot of people in America do not fully understand,” said Mr. Dave Eoute Sr., the executive producer. “We wanted something that would be suitable for not just scholarly study or viewing but for the layperson.”
The documentary content is primarily historical so that it can be used in secular classrooms, although its producers ensured that it was inspirational as well. Its creators hope that it can be used in a variety of settings such as Sunday school, Wednesday night services, history classes and family devotions.
“I wanted to be able to include the gospel in a way that it was non-confrontational so that if it was in the public schools, it wouldn’t look like just a Christian school product,” Mr. Dan Boone said. “The gospel would be there, but it wouldn’t be so branded so that it would not be used.”
Contributing and adding to the narration and original texts are the images, which the camera navigates like a three-dimensional scene. Mr. Boone decided on the format because few images from the original Awakening period remain.
“It’s not like you can go back and see a picture (of the time period),” said Mary Beth Hawley, cast management coordinator for the project. “But we’ve recreated that to help you see what it looked like.”
The documentary features more than a thousand images of more than 110 different actors from BJU faculty, staff and students. Using in-house stage resources, ShowForth producers were able to outfit their cast with period costumes that reflect the various years and regions in which the Awakening took place. These images were then placed amid photos of preserved period locations or animations of period scenes, creating effects as varied as a family leaning on the rail of a ship to hundreds of people listening to the preaching of George Whitefield.
“If you’ve ever seen History Channel documentaries, the modern documentary style is high visual re-creation, animation, with a budget that fits that type of production,” Mr. Boone said. “I was trying to come up with something that not only communicated the information that we wanted, but also a style that we could afford to do.”
The photo shoots were all made against a green screen at the BJU Press Distance Learning studio. Some photos included props, but most did not, presenting a unique challenge for the animation team. For example, in one photo of a man and a dog (Dr. Rachel Larson’s dog “Buddy”), while the man appears to be holding the dog, he was not actually holding the dog for the picture.
The photo shoots took as long as 90 minutes, with time needed for the actors to dress in costuming and for the photographer to take the pictures in different poses. Pictures were even taken of the heads of the characters so that they could be used in a shot of a crowd listening to Methodist evangelist George Whitefield.
Several characters in the documentary are recognizable faces on campus. BJU staff evangelist Mr. Mike Shrock appears as an Awakening preacher, while Dr. DeWitt Jones of the communication faculty is Jonathan Edwards, and Bill Pinkston of the Academy is William Tennant.
Once the pictures were taken, the characters needed to be digitally cut out of green screen background, both automatically and painstakingly by hand.
The pictures were shot in high definition, and the music, written by graduate assistant Mr. Brian Buda, was recorded in stereo, with a soundtrack in 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound. Today’s release, available at the Campus Store for $19.95, is in standard DVD format, but there are plans for a future release of the documentary as a high definition DVD.
Although much technical wizardry and hard work went into the project, those who worked on it said they desire mainly that God will use it to win souls.
“I am so burdened that pastors, evangelists and family members will get a vision of sitting down with their family, their friends and their neighbors and share [the DVD] with them,” executive producer Mr. Eoute said. “When [other people] see something like this, they’re going to come away saying, ‘Did that really happen? How could it happen again today?’”
