Last night, we also set up a pretty cool green screen studio in the garage and we will be filming all the information segments there today (hopefully).

It’s a new challenge (we’ve never worked with this kind of setup before), but our first tests in combination with Final Cut were very encouraging. We can use all your prayers, because we have to wrap up principal photography today – tomorrow I’m heading back to Holland with all the material to start post-production!

Fr. Roderick

Since we had almost no preparation time for this project (it was a spur of the moment idea), my first task was to come up with scripts. The original idea was to produce seven episodes of about 5-6 minutes each, and talk about religious symbols and themes in the existing three movies (we don’t know much about the plot of the upcoming movie).

I wrote texts for the first four episodes on the second day of my stay in the US. And we started shooting almost immediately after that. And that’s when the problems started!

First problem: the weather. First day: hot sunshine. Second day: cold, mist, rain. And we wanted to shoot hot desert scenes! Not easy.

Second problem: we had no shooting scripts for the small Indiana Jones type videoclips. We had to make up the stories and the shots on the fly.

Third problem: stuff you write down at your computer doesn’t automatically translate well to a video performance. I had gathered lots of information via Wikipedia, but I discovered that I just couldn’t memorize the lines! I guess the jet lag and the huge amount of other things that required my attention just made it very hard to focus. So we had to do a lot of retakes, and I’m not even happy with what we eventually managed to record.

Fourth problem: we got sent away from a shooting location. We wanted to film some stuff over at a university, but we were chased away because we didn’t have permission to film there. We lost lots of time searching for an alternative location.

Fifth problem: I got sick. Really sick. High fever, sore throat, coughing. After a round of antibiotics we restarted production today, even though I feel as if my brain only operates on 50% CPU power.

Sixth problem: audio quality. Wind noise, cars, airplanes, people walking around.. it just seemed impossible to finish a full take. We went back to filming short movie sequences instead of trying to do more talking shots.

Seventh problem: locations. We hoped to film at a train museum, but never heard back from the museum after requesting permission to film there. We tried to film at a river, but the water had risen so much, that we couldn’t get near the water. It’s very hard to find good locations that match the looks of the Indiana Jones movies without requiring us to fly to the other end of the United States!

Where are we now?

So where are we now? We’ve shot almost all the movie sequences for the first four episodes, and we have scripts for those first four episodes as well, but none of the information parts (where the ‘meat’ of the episodes is) have been shot. I need to write three more scripts for the final three episodes, and come up with at least three more mini stories to shoot.

Solutions we’re looking into to speed up production: we’ve been calling some local studios to inquire about green screen studio rental, but the prices are very high (at least $1500 a day). Too expensive for such a small production.

I think we might try to use a super low-cost solution for all the information parts of the seven episodes: we’ll use a Mac in combination with a firewire camera, a set of lights, a green screen and a software program called ‘VideoCue’.

That program has an ‘auto-prompter’, that will enable me to read the texts from a screen without having to memorize them. The result will be less dynamic than if we would film everything on location, but it would speed up production time tremendously, and it might even allow us to wrap up production before I head back to the Netherlands this coming Friday.

We can definitely use your prayers to make this all work out. I am learning a lot, but it’s a very challenging and exhausting experience for all of us. We intend to reach thousands of new people with these videos, and it might be their first encounter with the Star Quest Production Network. So hopefully, it will all be worth it!

Fr. Roderick

First of all, a long documentary is very labor intensive and expensive. The BBC makes great, hour-long documentaries, but they have excellent writers, camera people, editors and lots of archival or licensed footage.

Secondly, these conventional documentaries work great on TV or DVD, but our primary method of distribution is the internet, where movieclips are generally between 5-8 minutes max.

Long documentaries can be conventional and boring if not done right. It’s very hard to keep people’s attention for 30 minutes or an hour. I’d like to do something dynamic, funny, combining entertainment and information.

So here’s the format I’m thinking of right now:

Intro movie – We start with a short, 30 second introduction movie in the style of the Indiana Jones movies. The clip ends with a cliffhanger. We’ll have to be very creative with settings and costumes here, since we don’t have the budget to go filming in Tunesia or in Venice -unless someone sends us a big check of course

Title sequence – After that introduction clip, we’ll have our title sequence. Again, in the style of the Indiana Jones movies. I’ve asked my brother, who is a composer and has done a movie score in the past, if he can create the theme music in John Williams style. I hope he has time to do that, otherwise I’ll have to look for some royalty free music.

Info block 01 – After the title sequence, there’s a first block of information, about 2 minutes long. This will be me talking about religious themes in the Indiana Jones movies. I’m not sure about the setting yet. We could create some kind of movie theater backdrop, or film it in a library setting to evoke the academic background of Indiana Jones, but that might turn out to be too static. We could also do a walking shot, but that’s tougher to film, and where do you shoot it? I want to atmosphere to stay in the 1940-1950s.

Movieclip 02 – After the first block of information, we return to the movie-style sequence, with a follow-up on the cliffhanger video at the start. Hopefully we’ll be able to create some funny storylines. And I need a Fedora and a German officer’s hat!

Info block 02 – After that movieclip, we continue with a second block of information.

End Credits – This is followed by a goodbye, the address of the website and the end credits.

Bloopers? – We could end with some bloopers after that, especially if Greg Willits films the whole thing – after all, it’s his trademark ending first introduced in That Catholic Show

Preproduction time is running out fast. I’d love to be able to shoot most of this series during the next two weeks when I’m in the United States. But I haven’t even started writing the scripts yet! Oh well. I work best under time pressure, so perhaps we can make it happen.

In this blog, we will try out something new: in a production diary you will be able to follow the preparations, production and post production of this new series step by step! So keep an eye on www.sqpn.com for updates about this exciting new production!

EPISODE #01

I had the idea for a series on the secrets of Indiana Jones about two weeks ago, when I saw the trailer for the fourth Indiana Jones movie (link).

I’ve been a big Indiana Jones fan every since I saw the first movie as a kid in a cinema theater in The Hague. How could I combine my interest for the Indiana Jones stories with the mission of the Star Quest Production Network?

I went back to the existing Indy trilogy, and while I was rewatching the movies, it struck me how many religious themes are woven into the stories:

- The Arc of the Covenant
- The Ten Commandments
- The theme of idolatry
- Religious symbolism in other cultures
- The fascination of the Nazis with supernatural phenomena
- The cross at the beginning of Indiana 3
- The quest for the Holy Grail and eternal life

Great material to explore in a series! At the same I thought: “we could do this as a video series!”
Wouldn’t it be great to create a visual texture akin to the Indiana Jones movies (without using any copyrighted material of course), add visual humor and somehow recreate the exotic locations we know from the movies?

That’s how the creative process got started. I’ll tell you more in the next episode of this blog!

Fr. Roderick