Film Festival Live: Dinner with Mr. Kendrick (and Expelled)
Today, I had the honor to have dinner with Stephen Kendrick, and was able to glean some incredible advice from him about filmmaking that he gave me permission to share with you. I hope you learn as much as I did.
He told me, all throughout your film, you should pray for “God ideas”. Pray for God to inspire you with the ideas he wants you to use.
He also told me that throughout their own film production, they would pray constantly for ideas for great scenes. Even when they didn’t have their whole film concept mapped out, they would receive ideas for scenes from God. These scenes are the most powerful scenes in their films. Scenes that people enjoy watching even out of context.
When writing your story, ask yourself continuously, “What will people be thinking when they leave the theater, what will they leave the theater with?” Make sure you have a story worth telling. If you don’t anything good to say, don’t say anything at all.
He said to make a good film, you should keep your audience curious. Don’t show them everything at once, or else they won’t be engaged. Humans are incredibly curious. So if you harness their curiosity, you’ll get a audience that is interested in the film all the way through.
Then, directly tying off the previous suggestion, he said you don’t always need to tell the audience everything that happens. Film is visual, so explain thing visually. For instance, in Fireproof, you discover that a doctor is married because he pulls out his wedding ring from his desk drawer. They didn’t need to have someone say it verbally for the audience to understand that.
Mr. Kendrick then explained that you always have to decide how explicitly you share the gospel in your movie. Jesus could be very straightforward when he spoke (Sermon on the Mount), but he also would use parables to convey his messages. Often times, his parables were his most effective messages.
Finally, he explained the “anatomy of buzz” and how you get it for your film. Buzz happens when expectations are exceeded. Far too many films sell themselves by telling everyone that they are a level ten film, and then people are disappointed. Mr. Kendrick suggests that if you advertise your film as lower, and then allow people to be pleasantly surprised. “Under promise, over deliver,” he told me (DISCLAIMER: This does NOT mean you set low expectations on yourself in the making of the film, merely that you keep others expectations of the film going in, lower).
Not too long afterward, they presented one of the Finalists videos, Expelled.
Expelled is everything I hoped it would be, and more. It challenge the norm and portrays evolution as it is. They force leading evolutionists and brilliant atheists to admit what they really believe, and allows the audience to see the errors in their reasoning. I would consider ‘Expelled’ the hands-down winner if there was not another powerful, thought-provoking film that’s in the running: “Fireproof” The next couple of days should be fun.
January 8th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
good tips! i loved the movie expelled also. It was very encouraging.
January 8th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Dinner with Stephen Kendrick?! Ho ho! That is so coool!!
Good post again! Thanks so much for sharing what wisdom you learned Isaac! It definitely is helpful for me!
January 8th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
That’s pretty cool! I saw expelled too, and it was an amazing movie! It was funny how the evelutionists/athiests couldn’t come up with one intelligent thing
Thanks for the post.
January 9th, 2009 at 12:28 am
It’s such a blessing you are able to get this great wisdom first hand. I think it’s so so exciting that there is such great advice available to aspiring Christian film makers from the wise elder, more experienced Christian film makers. Whoohoo!!!!
I’m enjoying the updates.
All the best. God bless!
January 9th, 2009 at 7:26 am
Yeah…ditto what Elizabeth said. If I have learned lots from all of your posts, I can’t imagine what you’ve learned from actually /being there/ and being able to talk to people like this.
Be sure to keep us updated when you start making a movie of your own! I’m sure you’d get a lot of support from all these rebelutionaries!!
January 9th, 2009 at 7:42 am
How cool that you got to have dinner with Mr. Kendrick! God has done great things with Sherwood Pictures. (Btw, did he mention anything about another movie?
)
Thanks for all the posts; keep up the good work!
January 9th, 2009 at 8:05 am
That’s a neat opportunity, dinner with Mr. Kendrick! He had some excellent advice, I can see. As I said before, I think Expelled is an awesome movie. (It’s hilarious, too!)
~Meg
January 9th, 2009 at 8:11 am
As an aspiring filmmaker, I enjoy reading the posts about the Film Academy. I believe that Christians should be involved in filmmaking in order to make a positive difference in the world. However, I also believe that we need to be concerned with making a good film, not just sending a good message. I’m excited to hear everything else that happens during the festival!
January 9th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Wow, you do look just like your brothers! Thanks for covering this–it’s really interesting. I’ve always been fascinated with filmmaking, but have never gone beyond 5-minute Lego-animation movies.
January 9th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Thanks for sharing =)
January 9th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
I think those are some great ideas….and ones that can apply to all walks of life (and not just film making.) Putting God first is the best thing we could do!
January 9th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Thanks for doing this blog, I have been interested in following the festival/academy this year, and reading through your posts I feel like I’m there.
Thanks!
January 9th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Dinner with Stephen Kendrick? Lucky! I really enjoyed what you shared about his advice…very good. I’m going to be coming back many many times to these series of posts when my brothers and I make movies!
January 9th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Thank-you again Isaac! My son Joshua met your Dad last evening! You are doing a great job of retelling all the information in a way that gives us, the readers, a pretty good idea of what has been taught. Keep up the great work!! What an honor to meet, and have dinner, with Mr Kendrick! I would be interested in knowing how to create the curiosity he specified to you that is needed in creating a film that draws the viewer in. A lot of great information and it would be good to know more of the “how-to’s” if you know what I mean.
Thank-you, thank-you!
God-Bless!
January 10th, 2009 at 7:05 am
Those are awesome tips! Thanks Mr. Kendrick.
January 10th, 2009 at 11:00 am
can’t wait to see who the winner is!
January 10th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Mr. Kendrick is definetly smart….I can’t believe you got to have dinner with him!! That’s awesome!
January 13th, 2009 at 12:14 am
I don’t know what film you saw, but the Expelled I watched was the worst kind of Christian cinema. It aped the least interesting aspects of Michael Moore’s films (ambush interviews) and bored me to tears with its endless repetition and pointless montages. There is a lot of interesting things that one could focus upon in the debate between creation and evolution, but this film managed to find all the boring bits.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:15 am
jonnyflash: I think you would appreciate the film more if you understood one thing: You see, it wasn’t a Christian film. Not in any way. It was simply challenging the assumption of our culture that Evolution is the only sensible explanation of life. The producers aren’t Christian. Ben Stein isn’t Christian. So it’s not a Christian film, per se. I think that Expelled was effective in making people rethink so called “givens” in our culture today.
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