Christmas Chronicles

1. PLOT.  What happens?  Are there any plot twists (surprises)?

There's a sister and a brother.  The brother is quite mean and rude.  One day they see Santa because their mum's gone out and they're being a bit cheeky.  They are staying up all night seeing if Santa would come.  When Santa comes the little girls climb up into the sleigh and her brother follows her.  They crash Santa's sleigh but in the end they end up fixing it with the help of some elves.

 

2. CHARACTERS.  Who are the main characters?  Who was your favourite character and why?

The main characters were Santa, the elves, the sister and brother and their dad and their mum.  One of the characters (an elf) reminds me of my sister.  The elves are my favourite because they're really cheeky and they're really funny.  One of the elves eats candy canes all the time and he got one stuck on a page of a book and when Santa notices it he says, "Oh, why are they candy canes?" and the elf says, "Whoops!  I can't help it!  Sorry!"

3. Your OPINION.  Did you like the film?  What was your favourite part and why?

The CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES is a good film because it's quite funny and it's got lots of funny bits.  It has songs too.  The brother learned to be kind because Santa taught him that he needed to set a good example for his little sister because their dad died (by saving a random person in a fire).

4. RECOMMEND.  Would you recommend this film to a friend?  Why or why not?

I would recommend it because it's a really good film and it's a really fun and funny film.   

 

Folding tables made to order

In my spare time I've been making these clever little folding tables, various sizes, shapes and colours.  They're getting more beautiful each time as I get the hang of them. :) 

The chessboard top is a popular one.  Ideal for home, picnics, camping, crafting, etc and packs away small to carry or store.

I'm happy to make them to order and charging £60 for plain ones and £75 for the chessboard one.

Feel free to contact me if you're interested (dwpegg@gmail.com).  I'm happy to make custom sizes, shapes, colours.

Some people have asked for sizes and dimensions.  Here's the details of the table pictured above (with the square chessboard top)...

Leg length (x4): 75cm

Cross bar length (x4): 50cm

Dowel used for hinge points in legs: 1cm diameter

Dowel used for carrying handle/hinge: 2.5cm diameter

Table top: 52cm by 52cm (cut in half obviously, and slightly longer than the cross bar length) 

You can obviously make the table top wider if you want a rectangle rather than a square.  And play around with sizes like I have.

 

Here's a video of how I make them and some pictures...

Psalm 90: Numbered days

How's your perspective?  How do you see God?  How do you see yourself?  How do you see the world?

This psalm, which we're told is "a prayer of Moses - the man of God", invites us to see things as they really are, so that we can have wisdom and live well with God.  We're told (in Exodus 33:11) that... 


"The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend." 

Moses' perspective on God is one we should take seriously.

It's the oldest psalm, written in about 1440BC and it's one of my favourites for its wisdom.  Let's have a look...

Lord, you have been our dwelling-place
    throughout all generations.
² Before the mountains were born
    or you brought forth the whole world,
    from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

Moses, as he prays, starts with God and it's a BIG view of God.  He knows God is the One who's always existed before anything or anyone else did.  And he knows nothing will end God or stop him.  

God is God.

And Moses knows this God as his "dwelling-place".  The 'place' he and his people live.  

Where do you want to live?  In God?  Or away from him?  Without his love and presence each day?  

For Moses, there's no other way to live.  He has to trust the Maker of all things.  The God who is above and beyond all things.  The One who is from everlasting to everlasting.  

Moses continues in his prayer, to reflect what he knows about God...
 

³ You turn people back to dust,
    saying, ‘Return to dust, you mortals.’

God is 'from everlasting to everlasting' but we're not!  

No-one outlasts God.  No-one can live forever without him.  Life is an undeserved gift and we can't hang on to it.  It is God who decides what ultimately happens to us.  No-one can argue with him and be right.  

He knows all our days... 

Psalm 139:16

Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.

He gives and takes away...

 

Job 1:21

‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
    and naked I shall depart.
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;
    may the name of the Lord be praised.’

We are 'dust... to dust'...

Ecclesiastes 3:20

All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.

Moses continues to pray to this everlasting God who has the biggest perspective on everything...

  

⁴ A thousand years in your sight
    are like a day that has just gone by,
    or like a watch in the night.
⁵ Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death –
    they are like the new grass of the morning:
⁶ In the morning it springs up new,
    but by evening it is dry and withered.

God sees it all.  Everything.  From beginning to end.  The Bible says he IS the beginning and the end...

Revelation 1:8
‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.’

And Jesus is this same God.  He claims the same title...

Revelation 22:13

 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

Jesus is God.  From everlasting to everlasting.  Compared to him, we are like blades of grass that blow away in the wind.

Steven Fry once said in an interview that if God turned out to exist, his opening words to God would be, "How dare you!"  And he went off on a total rant about what he'd say to God if he ever met him. 

In reality, I don't think he'd be able to say a thing.  Not if we're talking about this God.   

Moses says...

⁷ We are consumed by your anger
    and terrified by your indignation.
⁸ You have set our iniquities before you,
    our secret sins in the light of your presence.
⁹ All our days pass away under your wrath;
    we finish our years with a moan.

Moses knows God as a friend but also has a healthy fear of God and his anger towards sin.   Moses knows that unless we have God's mercy and forgiveness, we're stuffed.  Unless God wants to be kind to us and show us grace and generosity, we're finished.  

The good news is that God IS merciful forgiving, kind, gracious and generous.  Moses knew it and we know this today because of Jesus, through whom we can have this kind of relationship with God as a friend, like Moses did.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.  Moses is reflecting on how none of us deserve to live forever or be with God.  He says we 'finish our years with a moan', and we're done.  None of us could tell God he owes us more.  We've had more than we deserve already.  

Life is a gift.

 
¹⁰ Our days may come to seventy years,
    or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
    for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
¹¹ If only we knew the power of your anger!
    Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due.

Moses says life is short.  Compared to God, our lives are a blink of an eye.  

Moses says life is a struggle.  Compared to God, our lives are a mess and complicated.  We need help.

Moses longs to know the power of God's anger more and he longs for everyone to know it too.  It seems like a strange and negative thing to long for but we need to understand something: 

It's only when people realise how BIG and PERFECT and POWERFUL God is, and how TINY and IMPERFECT and POWERLESS we are, that we rightly fear and respect God as God, turn to him for mercy and only then do we discover how much he loves us and can forgive us and bring us close to him.  He wants to give us everything we don't deserve, but we won't get it unless we first know how undeserving we are and have that sinking feeling like we're in big trouble.

What do you think you deserve from a perfect God?

Think carefully about your answer.  Ask God to give you wisdom.

That's what Moses does as he prays...

 
¹² Teach us to number our days,
    that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

80 years is 29,220 days.

If you're 20ish, 

you've already been given around 7,305 days, 

and you might have around 21,915 days left.

If you're 30ish, 

you've already been given around 10,958 days, 

and you might have around 18,262 days left.

If you're 40ish (like me!), we're about half way!  

We've already been given around 14,610 days, 

and we might have around 14,610 days left.

If you're 50ish, 

you've already been given around 18,262 days, 

and you have around 10,958 days left.

If you're 60ish, 

you've already been given around 21,915 days, 

and you might have around 7,305 days left.

And if you're 70ish, 

you've already been given around 25,567 days, 

and you might have around 3,652 left.

 

Moses asks God to help him number his days.  Another translation of this verse says, "Teach us to number our days aright..."  We need to rightly number our days.  This doesn't simply mean getting our maths right, but getting a right perspective on the brevity and fragility of our lives in the sight of God.

 

¹³ Relent, Lord! How long will it be?
    Have compassion on your servants.
¹⁴ Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,
    that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.

Beautiful words!  Moses asks God to hold back even more, to be even more patient than he's been already and to show compassion and love.  Today through Jesus we can know even better than Moses did, that God LOVES US.  He's the only One who can give us reason to sing for joy and be glad all our days, however many of them we have left in this life.  And he's the only One who can give us ETERNAL life with God forever.

Moses has asked for God to be his first and best thought every morning and now he asks for 3 more brilliant things at the end of his prayer...

First, he asks for a joy-filled future that's worth the sadness of the past... 

  

¹⁵ Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
    for as many years as we have seen trouble.

Second, he asks for God to show up in their lives and in the lives of their children...

 
¹⁶ May your deeds be shown to your servants,
    your splendour to their children.

Third, he asks for God's blessing and help for what they're working on today... 

¹⁷ May the favour of the Lord our God rest on us;
    establish the work of our hands for us –
    yes, establish the work of our hands.

If we know God as a friend through Jesus, we would do well to ask him for the same things:

1. For a joy-filled future that's worth the sadness of the past.

2. For him to show up in our lives and in the lives of those who follow us.

3. For his blessing and help for what we're working on today.

May he teach us to KNOW HIM and to number our days rightly, so that we might gain hearts of wisdom!  

BACK

How I make my videos

A few people have asked me about how I make my videos like these for PACE.

There are loads of people way better and more knowledgable than me on this but as a youth worker who likes creating stuff on a low budget, I thought it might be good to show how I do it.

Filming

I use a Sony Handycam.  Not brilliant by today's standards but it's 1080p (high definition) and really easy to use.  We've had it for yonks so they're probably pretty cheap second hand now.

The biggest weakness for me is that it's autofocus and you can't switch to manual focus (so no soft focus backgrounds).  Although the newer ones may well have manual focus, I don't know.

Stick it on a tripod and you're off.

Mics

Well worth using any time you're filming people talking.  I use a Tascam one with lapel mics that plug into it so people can wear the mic, thread the lead through their clothes and then pocket the Tascam.

I got 2 for £40 each so I can have 2 people onscreen at once.  There's lots of tutorial vids online about how to muck about with the settings for those (like me) who don't really know.  After some practice, you'll be fine and get strong signal but without any distortion etc.

Always leave the fluffy bits on the mics.  Outside it stops light winds being a problem and inside it stops pop happening when people say their 'P's.  Think about acoustics inside too.  If you clap your hands and it bounces around like you're in a swimming pool, you probably want a different room.  Carpet and curtains if you can. :)

The results are always much better with mics than without.

Lighting

This always matters.  If you're outside, the sun can be helpful but also difficult.  Don't film a person with the sun behind them.  They'll come out all dark.  But you don't want the sun in their face either - too dazzling.  Play around with positioning till you're happy.

If you're inside, try to block out all natural light and use artificial lighting only.  This is because the sun moves around and so do clouds and it creates variations in what you end up filming.  Very rarely I'll use the sun coming in when it's from behind camera and it's a cloudless sunny day and what I'm filming is short (so it won't be affected as the sun moves).  But 9 times out of 10 I'll block it out and use lamps.

I got all my proper photography lights, umbrellas and stands from my amazing neighbour next door who just gave them all to me for free!  But if you don't have a neighbour like that, you can do what I used to do all the time - play around with desk lamps (the halogen ones are good) and room lights till you're happy!  I've used all sorts - even my front bike light bouncing off a bit of white card - and that worked really well!

For filming people talking, I try and use a clean white wall in the background and sometimes with the room lights on (if they're bright), this will be enough but usually I'll use a lamp 45 degrees on each side of them at head height to light their face.  Look for shadows.  Positioning the lights wrongly, or only using one side, can create annoying nose shadows on the face or big shadows on the wall behind.  Even with 2 lights well placed, you may still have shadow on the wall behind and you can use another little lamp to uplight the wall to reduce this if you like.

Again, like using mics, good lighting (or at least thinking about where the light sources are and using them to your advantage) makes a big difference to the end result.

DIY autocue

If you're filming people talking or teaching (like I do most of the time) and you want to say a lot but limit the waffle, it's definitely worth reading to camera.  It's a skill that takes a little practice but for good speakers who are good readers, it works really well and being able to do this is a lot more common than the amazing skill (I wish I had it) of brilliant efficient speaking!  It depends on the person though and sometimes it's more natural to ditch autocue so they can be more natural.  But if there's a LOT to say, it's worth persevering with the cue!

So I thought autocue would be expensive and it definitely is if you buy them!  But you can make them at home for free too!  I watched a video like this one and then knocked something up in an afternoon and have used it ever since.

Angles

It's always good to have a couple of good takes of everything so you have options when you're editing.  And when you're filming a person talking it's good to have a 'wide' and a 'close' shot.  If you're taking your time and producing something that needs to look proper, then I'd get 2 good takes of both angles (so 4 total).

But if you're doing things quick like I often am, I'll sometimes just get 1 good take on the wide angle and then 'punch in' (crop the shot) in the edit to get a close angle and this will mean I can skip mistakes the person made in the take.  This also saves time when it comes to editing.  No trawling through lots of takes.  But the downside of punching in is that you lose resolution so it depends if this matters much for your project.  Adding quality/saving time is always a question. 

Editing

There's TONS to get into here but I'll keep it simple and just say what I do.  I use a Macbook, iMovie (for editing the video), Garageband (for editing sound) and Powerpoint (for creating cutaway screens and graphics) and love it because it's all quite simple.  And usually the stuff I'm shooting has decent powerpoints to go with it already, so the cutaways are pretty much ready to go.

1. Sound editing and syncing

First thing I do is drag the sound files from the mics into Garageband and use presets in there (like 'narrator') to master the track.  I'll make sure there's no reverb or echo (annoying when it automatically adds those) and I'll make sure there's compression on it.  Compression evens out the volume a bit and everything sounds louder. Export the sound files to sync up with your video takes in iMovie.

Once your sound files are in your iMovie project you can hit the little magic wand and it'll improve the sound file again (adding more compression and lifting the volume).  I usually do this.

Sync up the sound files with your video takes (by looking at the wave images underneath - not just by ear) and then mute the video footage so it all sounds great.  You might want to export the sync files so you can bring them back into iMovie to edit the project without constantly needing to sync little bits all the time (definitely worth it if you're using lots of takes).

Garageband is also useful for making bits of music for your project but if you need an easier (and usually better) solution you could find a royalty free music site such as www.bensound.com.  He's great. :)

2. Editing the video

iMovie makes this pretty simple.  Once you've got synced files with great audio you can crack on and edit your project.

I use the little magic wand on every video clip in my project so it 'grades' the colours automatically for me.  This makes the white wall a bit whiter and does good things with the colours, which is very helpful, especially for me as I'm colourblind!

For title screens and cutaways I find Powerpoint easy peasy to use compared to Photoshop etc (they're much better but I never learned how to use them).  Powerpoint can export slides at 1080 so they're great resolution and you have more flexibility in powerpoint than in iMovie to design a great looking title screen or cutaway screen.  Export the slides as 1080 jpegs and then drag into your project in iMovie.  Done!  You can even save individual or grouped elements of your Powerpoint as image files and then add these as 'inscreen images' in your iMovie project so you don't have to rely on iMovie's limited title options.

There's tons more to say about how to edit well but most of it comes with practice and learning to pay attention to details... 
- Hit iMovie's 'magic wand' on everything (it usually helps sound and picture)
- Get your sound levels level throughout the project (listen in headphones too)
- Make the cutaways look good (well-designed and high resolution)
- Make the transitions between takes look natural (don't use all the gimmicky iMovie ones)

With some practice, you should do well! :)

Have fun!