We have finished our movie about the prodigal son, and titled it “All I Have”. The title came from what the father says to the daughter at the end of the parable, “All I have is yours…”. This is based on the parable in Luke 15:11-32. We wanted to approach this story from a modern angle, and also changed the characters to daughters, instead of sons.

We had fun filming the movie in our town, and also in another city nearby. The students did really well, and we are currently waiting for the final edit to come back from three students. There were a few things we did on this project, which I am going to post here, as I thought it might be interesting or helpful for those who might want to make their own movies.

• We are definately on a limited budget, using a family video camera, but still found it possible to make a movie to reflect the gospel. The quality of a couple of scenes is low, but overall, we were pleased with the result.
• We filmed this all in three days.
• We used Celtx for writing the script. It can be found online for free.
• We edited in Windows Movie Maker.
• We sent the movie to be edited home with three different students. This really left
• room for each student to choose the music, choose which angles in which scenes to use, and how to tell the story. There were very creative changes each student brought, for example:
  • one student used classical music, whereas another one chose music from a contemporary movie
  • one student had better access to sound effects, which added a different dimension than the others
  • one student inverted the film image, so the shots looked more varying and more realistic (meaning, the shots from our home, did not look like our home, but like somewhere else)

We have had a lot of fun, with a few challenges. As I mentioned before, we are making every effort to post this from You Tube, and will do it as soon as we can. Thanks again for stopping by!