Mountains that bring prosperity

I wrote a devotional for Goshen College’s yearly Advent devotion series, entitled “Mountains that bring prosperity.” It was released today to go along with the scripture, Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19.

Check out the whole series of devotions here- they’re generally pretty good.

Services offered

I’ve added a new page to the site, Services Offered. I’ve been getting the occasional request for my services, and thought I would put up a listing of some of the things I can offer.

If you’re looking for any kind of video, design, or writing work, I may be able to help you out. And if it’s some kind of socially aware media, then I’m even more excited to do it.

Check it out!

Junk for those in need

I was at Kroger’s last night, and saw a table with a couple plastic and paper bags with some groceries in them. A large sign said “Donate food to the needy” or something along those lines.

There are bags for $3, $5, and $10. Customers can simply buy a bag, then leave it at the store, to be donated to charity.

Sounds good, right?

Well, kind of. Maybe. The problem is that I looked in these bags. And it’s awful food.

One bag had ramen noodles and saltines. That’s not even something people really want to eat, let alone healthy.

If you decide to give this Christmas (or ever), make sure your gift is worth giving. Maybe junk food is better than no food, but can’t we do better?

Letting their voices be heard

I’m currently working on editing the Guatemala piece, and realized that the script is currently twice as long as it should be- not a fun thing to do. So last night I was working on cutting things out, and got it down a lot closer to what it should be.

Here’s the problem: In my attempts to shorten it, I realized that I was losing a lot of the voices of the people, and leaving in the well spoken workers.

This is definitely a sad reality- the higher your class, the more well spoken you are. This means that the nun will speak of lofty things, and in really clear ways, while the farmer will be more likely to mutter and stumble around.

So it’s easy to take out the more bumbling quotes. And that’s what I did. And now I’m off to put them back in, and make sure that their voices are heard, just as much as their advocates.

Disturbing video from Amnesty

If this video, Waiting for the Guards, isn’t Socially Aware Media, I don’t know what is. Amnesty International is putting out several films like this to show what interrogation (torture) really is like.

Just a warning- this is an actor actually experiencing “interrogation” techniques. It’s not pretty.

“Sicko” touches bigger issues

Last Wednesday night, I attended a showing of Michael Moore’s “Sicko”, newly released on DVD. It was part of a nationwide showing time, including a conference call with Moore himself.

As most of the reviews have noted, “Sicko” is on a different level than Moore’s other documentaries, coming across a lot more intelligent and less divisive. Moore takes more of a back seat role in this production, and lets the subjects speak for themselves. It doesn’t come across as twisting like Fahrenheit 9/11.

While I definitely saw his case for socialized medicine (and some flaws in his argument), Moore also touched on a much bigger issue- the general apathy of the country. Moore says that in many countries, the governments are afraid of the people, whereas in the U.S., the people are afraid of the government. We can not expect to sit back and expect the government to give us what we need- we need to be willing to fight for it. And when the government makes fighting for what we want hard by undermining the democratic system, we need to be willing to speak the truth ever louder.

MAMA, Gabriel, and more videos up

I just revamped the video section of the site to include about twice as many videos. I’ve dug up old goodies like Gabriel, and others are some of the more recent projects I hadn’t put on the site yet, like the El Proyecto MAMA promotional video from last summer, and the CAC videos from late August.

I also linked to a bunch of the work I’ve done for Goshen’s TV production unit, including some more games. Check out the new video portfolio page to see them all!