Romans from Remar

This past week was why I am in Spain. We shot a parable of Jesus in the Remar TV facilities. A handful of missionaries, all of our video/audio equipment, and the strong-hearted outcasts at Remar conspired to create a weapon of mass instruction that will be broadcast in many languages in many lands, including all of North Africa, The Gulf States, Turkey, and Mongolia of all places.



Remar is like a Teen Challenge facility but bigger and messier. Their huge facility out near the town of Daganzo serves as a halfway house for the addicted, dispossesed, ignored and outcast people who happen to find themselves in Spain. Think Good Will dropped onto a dusty rock quarry. It is a dystopian, post-modern Christian sanctuary - a refuge for old criminals and reformed gamblers, young girls involved in destructive life-styles etc... Not all are Spaniards.



There are many Croats, Portuguese, Morrocans and just about every color and stripe among them. They put there hearts into playing soldiers, servants and senators because it would help spread the Gospel. We now have an excellent working relationship with the reclusive Pentecostals of Remar.



Hardly anyone spoke the same language on the shoot. We used hand-signals, adjusted each other's costumes, took turns yelling "Silencio" when we needed quiet on the set, and even laughed at each other's funny faces between scenes. It was a long, hard day. Film crews earn their money. Remar took no pay, just the rights to broadcast the Parables series over their Christian TV channel that reaches all across Spain.



The IMM crew ran into problems with head-room during camera shots because my chicken farm-made palace sets where just a bit short due to transportation requirements (We used an old white VW diesel van) but most of us were short so we did not have to use "force perspective" like LOTR.



The Remar studio is big and well-used. Residents there who have chosen to turn their lives in another direction run a 24-hour a day broadcast operation, by contrast, the TBN studio we considered renting two hours away is clean and pristine. Not much work goes on at the TBN studio. They require a $1,000 a day "offering" to use it.



Roamer applied make-up and even played an extra in the shoot. She is the Parables director's favorite Producer's Assistant, kind of like the Managing Editor of a newspaper. I had a chance to put on all the sandals of the Roman soldier extras when not otherwise occupied. Roman sandals are leathery spaghetti like things that are difficult to lace-up, especially on big Portuguese guys wearing little red tunics. But after the week was over, everyone was worn-out but we had all crossed many language barriers for the Kingdom!



This week its back to the Chicken Farm for me. I have to repaint the entire Herodian set to look like a Roman political Forum for the next shoot scheduled for the middle of May. I'm tired - but this time it's a "good" tired. It's what I'm here for.