This short film was an introduction to our 2010 church Christmas play titled "Life's Battlefield". Director/Writer Mary Sue Mangino thought the newsreel would be a great way to introduce the characters and set the time period for the play. Starring Bob Walton, Stacey Sanchez, and Brian Brown.

Watch the Film

Production

Our shooting schedule was "how quick can you get it done?" This meant that we had only a few minutes to drive across town, do the shoot and get the guys back before play practice resumed. Because of a delay in receiving the costumes/uniforms, we could not film until less than a week before the play was to be performed.

On that Sunday afternoon, we drove to the mesa that rises above town and found a large ditch on the side of the road, which looked like a nice war time trench. The guys being guys, the three jumped right into the war mindset with no problem. All those years of playing soldier really paid off. They shot and threw grenades like old pros.

Cinematography

The first part of the film is original World War II footage. Though the play focused on Europe I am fairly certain that the original footage was all from the Pacific front. It was sufficient for our audience to enjoy.

The remainder of the footage was shot on a Canon 7D using a 1:3.5-5.6 18-135mm stock lens mounted on a home brew shoulder rig. I kept the camera moving and fluid to simulate the original handheld footage.

Clouds came out just as we were heading to the shoot and that gave us some great diffusion for the lighting. No need for extra equipment, though I don't know that we would have been able to do much with three actors and myself already busy with the shoot.

We wrapped it up in just a few minutes and headed back to the church. Everyone was surprised when we came back so soon.

Visual Effects

Aging of the new footage was done with color correction in After Effects along with the Video Copilot Twitch plugin. This tool allowed me to quickly randomize the exposure, color, and time remapping to give that flicker and stutter of the World War II footage. I also placed a 8mm film overlay on top of the footage for the old frame look. It included dust and scratches to help with the appearance of age.

For the muzzle flashes, dirt hits and explosions I used the Video Copilot Action Essentials 2 stock library.

I motion tracked rocks or other items in the original plate, then applied that data to the effects footage. Several explosions were combined together for the blast at the end. Again, motion tracking was used to lock it in place.

The most difficult shot involved the fire fight where there were many gun shots and dirt hits occurring in just a few seconds. What I found easiest for the muzzle flashes was to stabilize the footage, add the flashes, then reverse stabilize to get the muzzle flashes matched back up with the original plate.

Audio

The sound for the film was very simple as the format allowed me to eliminate the motivated audio (gun shots, explosions, foot steps, etc.)

For music, I used the Digital Juice MusicBox collection for the patriotic theme, and their SoundFX library for the projector sound.

Narration took me 15 takes to master the nasally timbre of the old newsreels. What I found difficult was not getting the voice right, but maintaining it throughout the sequence. I would start strong, but the accent, tone, and pitch drifted away each time. Keeping that obnoxious voice going to the end was the hard part. Additionally, the stress on my throat left me sore for a few hours afterwards.

The voice over was recorded on a Rode NTG-2 microphone onto a Marants PMD 560 digital recorder.

Call to Action

Not all of our Christian films are going to be directly related to sharing the gospel. In this case, it was a doorway to a world that would unfold over the course of the play. What I can say is that at least one person accepted Christ at the end of the production thanks in no small part to a young girl who, without practice or a script, stood before the crowd and shared that we all need Jesus.

So, regardless of the overt message of your film, it can lead to any of a number of ways that we can share God's message of love and salvation.

Go forth and shoot! And my God bless your Christian film.