Our team was asked to produce a film to end our sermon series “Mystery & Meaning,” on the parables in Matthew 13. Thinking specifically through Matthew 13:11-17, we focused on the verse that says “Blessed are your eyes because they do see, and your ears because they do hear.”
We knew we wanted our film subject to be digging around, searching for something–only to find it revealing itself to them. Our concept took several different shapes before landing in it’s final stage of an art gallery.
An art gallery felt like an easy setting to be injected into as we watch our actors observe the paintings on the walls, digging for deeper meaning on their own–only to watch this beautiful piece of art reveal itself to our main actor, resembling the truth of the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven & the gospel being revealed through the Holy Spirit.
Once we were locked in on the concept of the gallery we began searching around Austin for the perfect setup, but just couldn’t find one that would work with exactly what I wanted. So we decided to reach out for some bids on building out a set at one of our congregation’s location.
I’d never done anything like this before, so honestly I had no idea how much it would be. I was just hoping it’d be comparable to renting an art studio. We ended up getting bids that were out of our budget, so I decided I’d take matters into my own hands and take a swing at building the set panels myself.
Lucky for me, this landed right in the middle of the hottest July on record in Austin–so it was a nice balmy 108 degrees outside while Jesse and I worked on constructing these panels.
Somehow, we managed to make 15 4x8 foot panels in less than a week, assemble them and mud the gaps–and still create a convincing, professional looking 24x12 foot art gallery set.
We also knew we wanted art that reflected the parables Jesus taught in Matthew 13. So we reached out to our Worship Collective and got referred to some incredibly talented local artists. Three pieces of art were created just for this film, and one artist loaned us his painting he had previously created.
It was such a cool project watching so many artists come together and collaborate on what felt like such a simple final product, that actually had so many moving parts & complexities behind the curtain. Actually, come to think of it, that’s a little like the parables themselves–simple, yet so very rich in complexities and deep truth.