We work with existing and possibly future colleagues on some music and media projects.
We've been keeping pretty busy these last few weeks trying to capture and organize footage including finished television shows, shows that are being edited, and raw footage (called "rushes" if you're a film guy...). This is only a portion of the total number of shows that we hope to organize and prepare for broadcast in the near future, and it wasn't a particularly fun job to sort through batches of video cassettes that were "sort of" labeled, and try to decipher production notes that were hastily written by several different people. (You can click on the pictures in this article to see larger versions.)
We were very thankful for the presence of Alex Sims, an australian who has been helping us with a variety of projects these last few months. He was with us last summer and helped a lot in working on our roof, and since that time has been doing some networking with a variety of groups in several different countries. This year he's been in probably three or four different countries, and is very interested in using the arts to communicate the message of Hope to people around him, and has a real heart for the people of North Africa.
Although he hadn't had a background in audio and video production, he jumped right in and took on the majority of the work involved in sorting through the stack of media, coming with ways of organizing it, and then capturing hours and hours of video, most of which was in languages he didn't understand. We set up a makeshift office in our studio, which Alex called the "bat cave", and he spent the best part of two weeks working on these projects.
In between some of this mind-numbing work, we kept going on parallel projects, one of which is preparing testimonies for a new series that will be broadcast (hopefully) this year. Another one of these parallel projects is writing and producing music for use in the video productions we're doing. There's a saying in video production; "Audio is 60% of what you see." When you're working on a video production, the part where you start adding the music is called "Sweetening", and it's amazing how much emotional impact is added by the music.
Marj had some song ideas that we had been working on, and had already started recording herself playing piano, flute, and we were ready to add some of the finishing touches when some PROCLAIM! International colleagues, Chris and Carole McDonald came over for a little visit just after Christmas.
Chris is a talented guitarist and singer, and has led several of the PROCLAIM! International tours we've been involved with, including the last tour we did to Moldova. He gave me a few pointers on how to set up my electric guitar, and agreed to add some guitar tracks to Marj's song. We ended up adding several tracks of acoustic and electric guitar including some great sounding solos.
One of the things that Alex has been doing while waiting for the video captures is to practise his Jembé playing (a Jembé is a type of African drum), so we suggested he add this to the mix of instruments as well.
Writing and producing music like this can be quite time consuming, but it also can be quite rewarding to see your song take shape and receive input from different musicians. The final mix is always the most enjoyable part as you craft the final product and see a work of art take shape.
We are hoping that the same thing will happen in a few months, as Alex has decided to come for at least a two year period starting, we hope, in June. He will be working on video and audio production, and as he is a trained visual artist, we are really looking forward to having him come join the CNA and PROCLAIM! International team.
Just as we all joined in to add our parts to produce the final song, we are hoping that we can all add our talents, work, and creativity to the tasks that we have at hand, and that God will be able to take and use these small gifts for His glory.
Thanks for your prayers and support which make this work possible.
Russ & Marj
ps. In case you're interested, here's an mp3 version of the finished song, Life, composed by Marjorie Speiser:
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shows, shows that are being edited, and raw footage (called "rushes" if you're a film guy...). This is only a portion of the total number of shows that we hope to organize and prepare for broadcast in the near future, and it wasn't a particularly fun job to sort through batches of video cassettes that were "sort of" labeled, and try to decipher production notes that were hastily written by several different people. (You can click on the pictures in this article to see larger versions.)
