League of Super Churches

Here’s my latest BADD video, created for last week’s service.

It occurred to me that some of y’all might be interested in the process of creating some of these shorts.  So rather than just show them, I’ll give a few glimpses behind the scenes.

Our team has a writing committee of about 8 or so writers.  We get together, go over the upcoming services and video requests, spitball ideas, then assign scripts.

In this case, we knew the pastor would be speaking about the book of Acts, and wanted to include a message on how the church needs to learn to work together if we really expect to get anything done.

And by “church,” he meant “Church” – the collected body, not just those that we decided agreed with every little thing we thought of.

This plotline suggested itself:  “People who have the same mission don’t get along and therefore don’t win; but then they band together, and are able to accomplish great things!”

Or, as we geeks like to say, the plot of every Silver Age team up or group comic book.

So I pitched the idea as a comic book, with different churches represented as superheroes.  It would be written and drawn as a comic, but filmed, with the camera drawing our eyes across the page.

After I wrote it (and rewrote it after various notes sessions with the writers’ committee), it was passed to an artist on the team.  He did up the pencils, and corralled a number of other BADD members to ink and color.  Some of the color and ink work was done by computer, some by hand.

Meanwhile, a recording session was held for the voice actors.

The recording and artwork were then passed on to the editor, who added the camera movement.  Once it was timed, our composer got it to add a score; and final sfx were put in.

All told, done in about three weeks.

The Tuesday before the service, the vid was screened for some of the church staff.  They raised some concerns, which led to a last minute recording session and re-edit to come up with the final product.

(In the original, Penny spoke in tongues, which comically confused the more undemonstrative Presbytron, although she was easily understood by Agape.  This was thought to risk offending someone – although whether they meant Pentecostals or Presbyterians, I don’t know.) 

And now to the only question you really had:  How on earth did you get Stan Lee?

One of our team members worked on “Stan Lee’s Who Wants to Be a Superhero,” and called for a favor.  Stan thought the idea was a hoot, so allowed a small crew to show up at his office.  As simple as that.

Just my thoughts,

Sean