Mobile Media Ministry Training 3- Mobile Media in Ministry Strategy-Culturally Appropriate Media

Mobile Media in Ministry Strategy

Your ministry goals and mobile media’s role in achieving them

As table groups, discuss:

1) Your ministries’ main objective/goal

2) A way you could see mobile media assisting in the achievement of that objective/goal

A Biblical Basis for Media in Ministry (!?!)

Verses

Examples

Principles

A Biblical Basis for Media in Ministry (!?!)

Verses

Examples

Principles

The Christian religion itself is a religion of communication with a communicator God who has utilized a wide variety of media

Soggard Media in Church and Mission

Mobile Media and Evangelism (including “pre-Evangelism”)

1. Prayer2. Abundant Gospel sowing3. Intentional church planting4. Scriptural authority5. Local leadership6. Lay leadership7. Cell or house churches8. Churches planting churches9. Rapid reproduction10. Healthy churches

In Church Planting Movements,hundreds and even thousands of individuals are hearing theclaims that Jesus Christ has on their lives. This sowing oftenrelies heavily upon mass media evangelism, but it always includes personal evangelism with vivid testimonies to the lifechangingpower of the gospel.

Fruitful Practices

Fruitful Practice

Fruitful workers share the gospel in ways that fit thelearning preferences of their audience.

OralityIlliterate

Functionally Illiterate

Post-Literate Non-Readers

Readers

Bible Readers

Enabling Storying

Mobile Media and Discipleship

Fruitful Practice

Fruitful workers disciple in locally appropriate andreproducible ways.

“Phonesite” Outreach

CGNet Swara (India)

Picture something like this being done for discipleship

and church growth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZJS7btg0R4

Fruitful Practice

Fruitful workers disciple others in settings that fit thesituation.

The Bible at Your Fingertip

The only library some will ever have

Mobile Media and Leadership Development

Fruitful Practice

Fruitful workers prefer to develop leaders locally

90% Leave

Media and the Gathering/Fellowshipping of Believers

Your turn…

Media and the Gathering/Fellowshipping of Believers

Your turn…

New media in a new media landscape

From Consumers

To “Prosumers”

A two-way street?

Who do you believe?

Shirky Video

http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html

A Couple Radical Thoughts

•What if media is less about persuading and more about identifying? (Push vs. Pull)

•What if the community-building and response systems aspects are more important than the actual content?

Courtesy Tom Khazoyan, 10X Productions, Adding Fizz to Your Vids

and Frank Preston, Push vs. Pull Media in Movements

(http://www.mobileministryforum.org/pullvspushmedia)

A Couple Radical Thoughts

•What if media is less about persuading and more about identifying? (Push vs. Pull)

•What if the community-building and response systems aspects are more important than the actual content?

Courtesy Adding Fizz to Your Vids (conference presentations) and

Frank Preston, Push vs. Pull Media in Movements

(http://www.mobileministryforum.org/pullvspushmedia)

Appropriate MediaSubject Matter:• Does it address their needs/concerns or ours? Heaven as hell for a Buddhist

Presentation:• Are there elements that call out the media as foreign/”other”

Is Jesus a white man? Are closing credits in English helpful?

Appropriate MediaPresentation (continued):• Are there elements of the presentation that send a message other than the one we want them to “hear”?

While watching the "JESUS" film in theforest region of Guinea, West Africa,audiences are reported to have understood

Jesus as a successful traditional priest or

marabout. From their cultural context it is

obvious to them that Jesus keeps hisfetishes, from which he draws his powers, in

the bag he carries with him. (Wiher 1997:70)

Merz, Johannes Translation and the Visual Predicament of the ''JESUS'' Film in West Africa

http://mis.sagepub.com/content/38/2/111.full.pdf

Particularly during the time of his ministry, Jesus is depicted as exemplary and immaculate, merging the conventions of Hollywood with the evangelical pietistic tradition. The makers seem to have tried to remain as neutral, and for that reason inexpressive, as they can, creating an image of human distance

Appropriate MediaPresentation (continued):

• Is it orally/visually appropriate for them?

each culture has its own form of art, and hence its own visual language: "the transposer [of Scripture to film] must therefore know all about the art of the culture of the people he is trying to communicate to"

Film reproduces visual cultural symbols that become part of the visual language of film that can be easily read and directly understood by an audience who shares the same cultural and ideological background as the filmmaker. The shared context between filmmaker and audience allows the latter to infer the intended meaning of a film to a high degree

Merz, Johannes Translation and the Visual Predicament of the ''JESUS'' Film in West Africa http://mis.sagepub.com/content/38/2/111.full.pdf

An in-depth and systematic explanation of how the skills bound up with alphabetic literacy shape visual narrative- and how an unavailability or dismissal of these skills fundamentally shapes visual narrative, too.

http://www.film-philosophy.com/index.php/f-p/article/view/896/841

Perhaps nothing could be more foreign to audiences accustomed to the ambiguity and restraint of Western (European and American) art cinema than the exaggerated emotionality and tortuous narratives of Hindi film. Spontaneous musical interludes, bombastic declarations of love and revenge and camerawork amplified to reinforce the extremities of emotional intensity and physical violence featured in the narrative would only be employed in an ironic sense in most films produced in the West, where subtlety and ambiguity are often the hallmarks of artistic worth. A lack of mutual appreciation, and even of basic comprehension, often exists between these two widely disparate forms of cinema and their respective audiences

http://www.film-philosophy.com/index.php/f-p/article/view/896/841

• Oral films are non-utilitarian in structure, with many digressions that do little to further the plot.

• Their tone is exaggerated and melodramatic, and they are often employed in the espousal of conservative ideology.

• Oral modes of communication impart knowledge that cannot be preserved in print, and are thus geared towards making information as easy to absorb as possible; hence the hyperbolic cinematographic style and simplistic ideology of orally-inflected films

Sheila J. Nayar (2010) Cinematically Speaking: The Orality-Literacy Paradigm for Visual Narrative

• Exaggeration and repetition of character traits and actions within masala films render their stories easier to remember and more enjoyable for illiterate viewers, who are accustomed to acquiring and maintaining information through processes of verbal reiteration rather than relying on written records as the basis of knowledge.

• Stereotyped characters (such as flawless heroes, irredeemably evil villains and chaste and beautiful princesses) reflect the Manichean structure of oral narratives, in which a clearly defined moral universe aids in understanding and retention

• Exaggeration and repetition of character traits and actions within masala films render their stories easier to remember and more enjoyable for illiterate viewers, who are accustomed to acquiring and maintaining information through processes of verbal reiteration rather than relying on written records as the basis of knowledge.

• Stereotyped characters (such as flawless heroes, irredeemably evil villains and chaste and beautiful princesses) reflect the Manichean structure of oral narratives, in which a clearly defined moral universe aids in understanding and retention

Two questions that must be answered before starting a

media project

1) Who is the intended audience?

The more specific you can get the better:- Ethnicity - Age group - Location- Occupation - Media preferences- Spiritual status (disinterested, curious,

seeker, engaged, involved) - Socio-economic status

media project

2) What do you want them to feel, think, value or do after

experiencing your media project?

The more specific you can get the better

Mobile Media Project Worksheets

•Purpose of this exercise

•Worksheet walk-through and questions

In your table groups share the project you have begun outlining and, as a group, brainstorm ideas that could help each project have maximum effectiveness

Visual Narrative Structure and Form

Oral• Flashbacks and

digressions that may or may not advance a normative plot

• Repetition, recycling, formula privileging

• Spectacle (flat surface- a “cinema of attractions”)

• Narrative closure (no ambivalent or open endings)

Literate• The use of a

normative plot involving the three act structure and Freytag pyramid of action

• Originality

• Anti-spectacle

• Lack of narrative closure (ambivalent endings, open endings)

Nayar Cinematically Speaking p121

• Originality

• Anti-spectacle

• Lack of narrative closure (ambivalent endings, open endings)Nayar Cinematically Speaking p121

• Originality

• Anti-spectacle

• Originality

• Anti-spectacle

Visual NarrativeVisual, Verbal and Aural Tone

Oral• Inflated melodrama violence• Amplified characters and settings

• Frontality (obviousness)

Literate• Restraint/quietude

• Understated “nuanced” characters and settings• Nuance and subtlety

Oral• Redundancy/

repetition

• Use of cliches, proverbs

• Plain meanings

Literate• Restraint and non-

redundancy

• Lack of “formulaic” language

• Ambiguous meanings that must be deduced

Oral• Redundancy/

repetition

• Plain meanings

redundancy

Oral• Redundancy/

repetition

• Plain meanings

redundancy

Visual Narrative Worldview and Orientation

Oral• Polarized/Black and

• Non-psychological orientation

• Concerned solely with present events

Literate• Non-polarized/

Grayness

• Psychological orientation

• Concerned with historical factors effecting present

Grayness

Mobile Media Ministry Training 3- Mobile Media in Ministry Strategy-Culturally Appropriate Media

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Transcript of Mobile Media Ministry Training 3- Mobile Media in Ministry Strategy-Culturally Appropriate Media