Majoring on Film
A Guest Post by Matthew Holmes
At the end of each semester, I try to post a short semester recap post on my Instagram page. However, as I was reflecting on my past semester I was led to sharing something I learned during the semester in place of my usual recap. This is adapted and slightly expanded from what I shared on Instagram.
As a film major, I have to participate in production classes (where the focus is on producing videos rather than lectures and tests) each semester. This semester, I took the biggest and most important video production class I’d ever enrolled in. It was called Documentary Production Seminar, and I had to produce two major video projects for it. The first was required to focus on the work of the Greenville Homeless Alliance (a collective of Greenville homeless shelters) and I was able to pick a subject from a series of stories I was presented with. Once I made my choice, I reached out to my subject to discuss producing the video. Because of this, I had to demonstrate my personal integrity to people I had never met with or knew about before. This was especially challenging when I interviewed my subject, a lady who I had only met the day before and who was incredibly nervous about being interviewed on camera.
After I finished that project, I had to produce a significantly longer video where I was required to find and approach a subject. I approached John Lehman, a pastor at Hampton Park Baptist Church in Greenville who my Dad has edited and published a number of books for. Mr. Lehman quickly and enthusiastically agreed to be my subject, meaning I was now in a scenario that was both the opposite and the same as my previous video. While Mr. Lehman has known me for many years and has a strong relationship with my Dad, there was just as much pressure on me to establish my personal integrity as a truthful and ethical documentarian while ensuring that I didn’t do anything that would hurt my Dad’s reputation with Mr. Lehman.
From these two projects, I learned one major lesson. The way I maintained a positive spirit and gained joy from working on intense, high-pressure projects was to keep in focus the importance of service to my interviewees and collaborators. Once I discovered that focusing on how I could tell their stories and give them a voice they otherwise wouldn’t have had gave me joy, I was freed up as an artist to focus on refining my craft and ensuring my films were not just good stories, but were emotionally meaningful and true. Rita (the lady I interviewed from the local homeless organization) wouldn’t have been able to alert people to the facilities that assist the homeless in getting their lives back on track if I didn’t have the equipment and the technological know-how to tell her story in a short video. John Lehman now has an additional tool that he will be able to use to promote his global ministry because of my initiative to make a short film detailing his life’s work.
I think that’s what great art is all about: it serves and glorifies God while giving a voice to the voiceless and inspiring an audience to achieve great things.
I’ll end by wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
