The word evangelicalism has become a bit of a buzzword in the last few years. It comes up a great deal in conversations about where the church today. It comes up in political discussions. As Gerald McDermott noted in his book Can Evangelicals Learn From World Religions? it comes up a lot in the question …
In my first post in this series I noted how it's possible you can't literally show God or angels in a movie without it seeming cheesy. As Roy Anker puts it in his book Catching Light, big epic movies that try to adapt Bible stories and make them into big spectacles often fall flat. Anker …
There’s one kid’s video series that most Christians love: VeggieTales. As VeggieTales creator Phil Vischer has noted, the show became one of the bestselling direct-to-video series ever. Here are 4 lessons artists can learn from VeggieTales and its creator Phil Vischer. Many of these lessons are taken from Vischer’s book Me, Myself, and Bob 1. …
Continue reading 4 Lessons Artists Can Learn from VeggieTales
“Christian movies” seem to go through times when they’re especially popular. For example, the 1950’s and 60’s produced some excellent Biblical epics. Since the early 2000’s, Biblical adaptations and movies with faith-based themes have been very popular. People debate a lot of things about the new Christian movie trend, but everyone seems to agree on …
Continue reading What Filmmakers Can Learn From Passion of the Christ
(Part 3 of 4, based on a workshop on fitting faith-based themes or symbols in mainstream stories. Here’s Part 1 and Part 2 for those who missed it). Method 3: Include spiritual themes/symbols along with other themes/symbols in the story. Grant Morrison's graphic novel Arkham Asylum provides a great example of how to do this. For those …
Continue reading How to Fit Spiritual Themes in Stories (Part 3)
Let’s play a game. I’m going to present a scenario I used once before -- let’s say I’m sitting in front of you, with two objects in my pockets. I take out both objects and show them to you. One object is a sex education film, the other's a porn film. What's the essential difference …
G. Connor Salter 