This Advent, as we do every year, our church put on an event called "Illuminate," which is an evening for families of all ages (aka "The Church"); food, games, activities, and of course, music and art in two parts. Part 1 took the form of a program, the evolution of what used to be a "Cantata," a story told through singing and monologues. The choir features prominently in this, and we also include a children's choir and small modern band. Part 2, of course, was pure chaos, but was fun - all the activities, games, food, and a live walk-through nativity were held in this part of the event, following the program.
My iPad is probably one of the best tools I've ever owned for what I love to do. If you don't own one, it's your loss, though I do know they're expensive. If you do own one and have never used the app Paper by FiftyThree, then shame on you - you're missing out on probably the best visual art app in the entire Apple library.
The reason I bring this up is that this year, for our program, we decided to tell the story of Christmas a bit less traditionally; what would it look like if it happened in contemporary Kansas City? Who would Mary and Joseph and the Shepherds be? Where would they live? What were they doing when this all went down? And to tell the story this way, I used Paper to draw our scenes, and iMovie to turn it into three vignette videos with voiceover. The first bit of the first two vignettes was actually live-action on a couch in the sanctuary, but for the purposes of post-event sharing, we recorded the whole thing as a voice-over.
Enjoy.
