I sat in the dark in a semi-circle of Congelese pastors and they asked us, “Why haven’t the missionaries returned?”

“Because it’s hard,” we told them. “They hear the news of this place and they’re afraid.”

Then one of the pastors said something I can’t forget.

“In the past there were missionaries who loved us and accepted to suffer with us.”

And I wondered if the past was just that, past.

The latest film from the OFM team, and my labor of love the past 4 months while doing many other things simutaneously. I didn’t go on this trip, or do any of the camera work, or write the script. You’d think everything else would be the easy part, so why does such a project take 4 months?

• script revision
• scratch (temporary) voice over recording
• rough cut (wading through 10 hours of footage for the right clip)
• recording the voice over again with my voice
• recording the voice over again with another missionary’s voice
• recording the voice over again with the voice of the missionary (OFM team member, Mike Delorenzo), who wrote the script and I became convinced was the only voice who would make it authentic since these are his experiences and his words
• recording the voice over again with Mike with more feeling (or, mole feering as we like to say in the OFM office, [bill murray: lost in translation])
• titling (the text sequences throughout the film)
• color grading (making each shot look as best it can)
• re-recording the voice over with Mike after more script corrections came in from the central region
• and finally, I spent about a week on the soundtrack, which I made with a little 42 key keyboard and Logic Studio
• Oh yeah, I took 2 other trips (North Kenya and Lesotho) during this time.

So, you can see how finally finishing a film is kind of like giving birth. Ok, maybe I don’t really know what that’s like, but there’s a nice release and sense of accomplishment when finally finishing something that took so long to produce.

Tomorrow I’m taking the OFM team to North Africa. I’m really really excited…