Creative Constraint – Mashable

…no matter what the resources, budget, etc. we always push ’til there’s nothing left — and then complain about the limitations.

When there are no boundaries, the possibilities may seem too large. That’s why some of the greatest art and innovation has come from a situation of constraint.

My experience has been that, no matter what the resources, budget, etc. we always push ’til there’s nothing left — and then complain about the limitations. And I know I can do this whether I’ve got a million dollars or nothing at all.

Here’s a great article about what I’d call the blessings of constraints. I say that because I know that I do my best work when I am challenged. Actually, I’m spending my days now looking for those sorts of challenges – projects that are ‘impossible’ and with huge constraints from the start. Anyone up for a Turkish action-adventure film, a Maasai Opera, or a sitcom for refugees in South Asia?

Click this link to the Mashable article: Creative Constraint: Why Tighter Boundaries Propel Greater Results.

Love Your Audience

We want to speak about spiritual issues and confront worldviews that we see are damaging to human beings or against God’s desires for his creation. But we often approach our communication from a posture of harshness, anger, and critique that does not reveal our love for those to whom we speak.

Know your audience. Love your audience.

Does this sound insultingly obvious? It should be. I recently heard a speaker say this phrase as she was talking about Jesus’ communication style. Jesus understood and loved the people to whom he was speaking.

We want to speak about spiritual issues and confront worldviews that we see are damaging to human beings or against God’s desires for his creation. But, we often approach our communication from a posture of harshness, anger, and critique that does not reveal our love for those to whom we speak. Or, we speak in generalizations and abstractions that don’t take into account that there are real people behind ideas or systems that we oppose. Do we really believe that our ‘enemies’ are not people too, people who have their own reasons for believing the way they do, their own stories of what brought them to the places they are?

If we were to really love our audiences (even those we intend to critique), how might this change how we speak?

Hollywood’s Digitally Enhanced Religion

The gutted, empty model that Hollywood offers has all the attraction of that foamy white stuff in a bag that passes for bread in the grocery store.

Here’s a little more related to the controversy over the temporary removal of the words “Holy Bible” from a scene in the new film, Soul Surfer.

On Patheos.com, Frederick Schmidt discusses Hollywood’s Digitally Enhanced Religion.

My interest is in the implied notion of those films: the notion that spiritual and religious commitments can be generic and yet formative—the notion that the best faith is an undefined faith and a God without a name.

It is this notion that is both misleading and largely errant. A faith without content might sell a lot of movie tickets. It might generate a warm feeling or two. On a rare occasion an unnamed God can even get us started on a spiritual journey. The Apostle Paul knew that and so do those whose first steps on their journey are taken with a Twelve Step Program. But an unnamed God does not have much staying power.

Why? Because to name God is to name what God wants and with it the purpose of life, the nature of our values, and the shape of our commitments. The decision to name God is a decision to name what is real and, by definition, what is unreal—what is important and what is less important, or even trivial. Naming God, in other words, is itself an act of commitment.

…The gutted, empty model that Hollywood offers has all the attraction of that foamy white stuff in a bag that passes for bread in the grocery store.

Stick Us Next To “Stripper Academy”

I was looking at the release schedule for our film in Australia. The company that bought the DVD rights there is set to release our film mid-September, right alongside two other films, “Universal Squadrons” and “Stripper Academy”!

I’m kind of excited to be there. Rather than being stuck in a faith-based film ghetto, a unique story of God’s grace and power is getting out to places we’d hope it would go.