August 2004: Greenbelt - Silent Worship
Greenbelt got one of those big outdoor screen thingys to show the bands on in the evening, but during the day it was going to be filled with other stuff... eg 20 minute worship videos created by alt worship groups...
We decided on producing several short 'episodes' of worship (a bit like video stations I suppose)
Each episode will have a row of countdown/up dots across the screen to give people an idea of how long to the next thing, in case they missed the start of this episode (or maybe they just dont like this one and are wondering when the next thing is on!)
The overall theme to the episodes is 'Attentiveness to God'. The themes of paying attention, being distracted, involvement, attention span etc. ran through the discussions as they were not only appropriate as material for the 'service' but also to the general issues around trying to lead worship from a video screen to the greenbelt audience.
We came up with 6 episodes. (at about 3 mins each and a bit of fluff around them to introduce the thing, link the episodes etc. we should cover the 20 mins) These are the episodes in the order that we thought they fit together as an overall journey (for anyone who watched the whole thing)
1 Noise
idea: noise as a distraction or how does God distract you from the noise - could go either way or both!
visuals: lots of images of loud things, obviously with no sound though, eg: drills, screaming, planes, traffic, fingers in ears, nails down blackboard, acoustic guitar worship, preacher in pulpit, hammers, explosions, music (eg needle in record groove - or a 'musical interlude' ie a space defined as having music but also silent). alos thought about visual noise, ie no signal on a TV, scratches on film etc.
2 Calm
idea: a quiet meditation type thing, about focusing, concentrating
images: starting with a rhythmic image slowing down, eg heartbeat trace, dripping tap, breathing in/out. also words slowly coming into focus.
3 Touchy Feely
idea: awareness of the environment around, feel the grass/stone your sitting on... a 'lick your stone' type moment ;)
images: probably more just words and colours than images. although possibly somehting like fingerprints may be appropriate depends on the words.
4 Boredom
idea/images: are you bored yet? re-version Steve's Psalm of boredom to fit
5 Movement
idea: phillip roderick inspired celtic body prayer
images: animation of figures doing movements for people to follow along with. suggestion of joel doing the animation in the faceless sketchy figure style he used in his psalm piece(?)
6 Emotions
idea: reaction to other people/situations, use emotional images to elicit responses
images: bill viola style faces of emotion, anger, despair, smiling, crying and/or use of body language eg agressive, welcoming, ignoring and/or situations that are emotional to face eg snarling dog, smoking gun.