MY WEEK @ NEWDAY 2017

Click for slideshow on YouTube

At the start of August I spent the week serving on the Newday Creative team at Norfolk Showground. Newday is “a major Christian youth event that takes place every summer with 7000 thousand young people.”  Many of you may not have been to or even heard of it before so I've created a little video blog showing my arrival during set up and the main venues once things got under way, to give you a bit of a feel for the event.

NEWDAY CREATIVE TEAM

My role at the event was Studio Manager and section team leader for ND Creative – an incredibly talented bunch of about 50 individuals all working towards delivering the event creatively. Through film (directors, producers, cinematographers, sound technicians & editors), social media, recording audio, photography, graphic design, written comms and PR. These guys work very long hours, with really tight schedules, delivering top quality work whether communicating deep truth in a fresh way or providing light entertainment. The team is made up of professionals working alongside those just getting started, an impressive family apprenticeship atmosphere of looking out for each other, a safe place to suggest ideas and give things a try, whilst working to deadlines and aiming for excellence.
Across 6 days our team created 27 films, 100 Instagram stories and social media posts, 6 editions of the Server News sheet, taken around 8 1/2 thousand photographs and uploaded 57 talks to the internet!

From mouth to movie

I have to admit one of the highlights of being part of this team is seeing the journey of an idea, that I hear from someone's mouth, then becoming a film shoot, editted and then onto a massive screen in the big top being viewed by 7000 – usually all within less than 48 hours! AND that's just the start, as it then gets posted on social media and is viewed by thousands more, for years to come.

This year my daughter Rosie got roped in to staring in one of these films (along with 2 of her youth group). I took some footage so I could show you guys a bit of what goes on behind the scenes.
The idea was based around our belief that when facing many things that give us good reason to be fearful, we have a God who is CONSTANT and near, TRUSTWORTHY and good, and don't need to be afraid.
The director wanted to project images onto faces but we soon discovered this would only work in the pitch black of after hours when everyone was supposed to be in their tents – hence us needing to work with people we knew! Here's a little movie of the process from notes on a page to Rosie (and her friends) seeing herself on the big screen!

And here is the finished video on Youtube

Snippets of this were also used in the week's round up movie or SUPERCUT as we call it (currently with 1,371 views in 1 week on YT alone), which actually gives you a much better overview of the event than my attempt above because it's done by my team, rather than by me!! :)