Filmmaking in Africa

With hundreds of competitors in a nationwide Scripture memory contest, how do you ensure uniform implementation of the rules at all district matches which feed participants into provincial competitions, culminating in the national championship?  In our pilot year of 2024, two friends and I traveled to personally conduct the first seven contests.  Based of that experience, we wrote instructions for acquaintances elsewhere to hold others.  Their feedback, plus insights gained at the provincial and national levels, have equipped our team to provide detailed orientations to representatives across the country who will run district competitions next month.

But how do you effectively communicate the intricate protocols in an oral culture?  To be sure, we’ve written them out, but we decided to produce a video as well, to help our local contest organizers understand and implement all the rules.  We want to minimize inadvertent deviation from the procedures that could decrease confidence in our program and disincentivize participation.

Thus began my adventure of filmmaking in Africa!  Under the direction of the Bible Bee’s event coordinator, Jeremias, I adapted the written contest instructions into a narration script liberally interspersed with examples of what it describes.  Because it was so long, I divided it into a series of eight different videos.  I mapped out what should be shown on the screen during each of the 402 audio clips.  Sometimes it’s the narrator talking; sometimes it’s actors showing without audio what he’s saying; sometimes its actors demonstrating with audio after he explains something; and sometimes it’s a still image, a document, or a text animation.  Then I grouped the clips into production sessions based on the type of recording — audio only, video only, or video with audio — who should appear in it, and the scene in which it is set.

Jeremias naturally assumed the role of narrator in the videos.  He chose last Friday afternoon to record all of his own video and audio clips, with Saturday for shooting everything else.  He asked Calton to lead the film crew, but due to his packed schedule Calton suggested that we ask his team members Teque, Faizal, and Zarito to handle the project themselves.  They all accepted the invitation, and my director approved the use of our organization’s audiovisual equipment and space, so we moved forward to recruiting the cast.

To play the parts of the contest personnel — emcee, judge, monitor, timekeeper, and audiovisual technician — Jeremias tapped as actors volunteers who have served in these roles during actual contests.  To play the six competitors, he summoned two of last year’s winners, two participants in our director’s Scripture memory program, and two young people from our church.  All readily agreed and memorized their lines from the individual scripts I prepared for each character.

In the days prior to the production, I defined, created, printed, and filled in many documents to be used in the videos.  I arranged the sets and gathered the props.  I communicated with the cast.  I printed detailed guides for Teque, Jeremias and me to use on Friday and Saturday.  I prayed for God to be glorified in the project and fill me with His peace even if plans went awry.  Before I knew it, the filming weekend was upon us!

Shooting Jeremias’s 44 audiovisual clips on Friday afternoon (pictured here) took hours because he hadn’t memorized his lines and we didn’t have a teleprompter.  Sitting behind the camera crew, I evaluated when his ad-libbing was acceptable or what needed to be corrected.  The recording of his 177 audio segments went much faster, since he could read them.  He even managed to spontaneously correct many typos I had made in my rush to finish the script.  By 7:00 pm we were finished and went home.

Twelve hours later I was heading back for an exciting day of filming with the full cast!  The actors arrived at 8:00 am, as scheduled, but had to wait while the film crew, which wasn’t so punctual, struggled to set up all the equipment.  After we’d filmed a few scenes without audio, we arrived at one with dialogue, and I questioned the use of a large, handheld microphone with a cord.  The crew explained that the batteries were dead in all the wireless lapel mics except one.  God answered my prayer:  instead of complaining that this problem should have been resolved much earlier, I calmly arranged to send someone to town as quickly as possible to buy the necessary batteries.  I found a few audio clips we could record with a single microphone while waiting, and used the remaining downtime to organize the documents for the mock contest.

Once the new batteries were installed, we were in business.  Scene by scene, we filmed the various elements of the contest protocols.  I used my filming guide to coach the cast on what to say and do, and orient the crew about camera position and zoom.  Jeremias and I decided together whether errors were acceptable or necessitated recapture.  The technicians also sometimes requested a retake when something went wrong on their end.  The actors were well-prepared, but the process was still tedious.

We’d hoped to finish by noon and eat together at the restaurant across the street.  But when midday came, along with lunch appetites, we were far from finished.  Our team of sixteen, all volunteers, didn’t complain about the change in plans, but agreed to keep filming while Jeremias brought lunch from the restaurant to the set, then continue the work after eating.  And everyone kept that commitment.  I adjusted the shooting order to release early the few who had other obligations to meet, and we sped through the last scenes in our eagerness to go home.  Arriving at the end of my guide, we filmed the last scene — fittingly, a closing prayer — at 4:30 pm, and called it a day.

With the recording complete, we’ll now send to our editor Arcénio, also a volunteer, the five gigabytes of video, audio, and image files.  He will synthesize everything according to the master plan to create the series of eight videos.  The playlist will probably total about an hour and a half in length, and he’ll put it on our YouTube channel.  Then Jeremias will send the link to all the local contest organizers so they can watch the videos to ensure that they comprehend and apply the appropriate procedures in their district competitions.

Thank God with us that the filming went so well!  Pray for Arcénio as he undertakes the demanding task of producing the videos.  Pray that the local contest organizers will readily be able to follow the demonstrated rules.  Most of all, pray that the hundreds of Africans who are memorizing God’s Word for these competitions will meet Christ therein.  After all, His glory is the ultimate goal of my filmmaking as well as every other adventure that meets me as I serve Him in Africa.