The Way
A Super 8 film about telling people Jesus is the way, made by carrying a beat-up 1970s Bible around campus until every page has somebody else’s handwriting in it.
Nothing has been shot. Not one frame. What we've got is a painted board, a poster, three cameras, a Bible, and an idea I've thought about way more than anything else I've wanted to make. It's on here instead of my notes app because stuff in my notes app never gets finished.
I'm not going to dress it up. I want people to hear the gospel, and I want the film to just say it: Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. The Bible filling up is only proof that we actually went and told people. So here's the whole thing written out. If you read it and you're psyched on it, that's what the page is for.
I ordered it online. It showed up already wrecked.
The Way: The Living Bible Illustrated. Tyndale House, early ’70s. Plain English, laid out like a magazine, grainy black and white photos of longhaired kids printed right next to the verses. Made for the Jesus Movement, for people on beaches and campuses who were over church but still curious about Christ. A Bible for somebody who didn't want to be handed a Bible.
Mine showed up soft-cornered and sun-faded, which is exactly right. Handing somebody this on a lawn gets a totally different reaction than handing them a leather study Bible. It reads like something you found, not homework, and people will actually sit and hear the Word instead of putting a wall up.
It's already worn. The point is that it ends the film destroyed.
The Bible is the main character. Not us.
We're not the subject. The camera follows a book, and the book points at Jesus. Garrison and I are just the two guys carrying it around GCU, stopping people, reading the Word out loud, saying what Christ did for us, then handing over a pen. That last part is the whole thing.
Highlight a line. Write in the margin. Sticky note, receipt, name, drawing, phone number, an argument, whatever. Every conversation costs the book something, and the film is really just the book getting louder.
The desk
Open on one of us alone at a desk, reading. Locked off. Quiet. Slow on purpose. It's the version of faith that never leaves the room.
Then the book slams shut. Hands grab it. Chair scrapes, door. Everything after that is outside.
Campus
The long middle, and the part that could go sideways in the best way. We walk, we stop people, we read a verse and ask what they actually think. Not to win, just to hear it. Then the pen.
Some people say no. Some roast us. Some write a whole paragraph. All of it stays in, because that's what telling people about Jesus actually looks like. We're not just showing the ones that went well.
In between: the rest of the semester. Surfing the board we painted, talking about Jesus with whoever paddles up next to us. Skating. Driving. Whatever the day turned into. Following Christ isn't a thing you go do on Sunday and come back from. Same day, same friends, same water. The film should feel like that.
Back at the desk
Same chair, same frame as the first shot. Only thing that changed is the book. Twice as thick, ink bled through, sticky notes coming out the sides like a plant.
We page through it slow. Every page is somebody we met, somebody who heard the gospel that semester. That's the ending and the whole reason to make it: He is the way, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
Stuff I've already decided
Nobody gets interviewed in a chair. If it didn't happen on the walk, it doesn't go in.
People are trusting us with an opinion on camera. The cut has to be fair to the ones who disagree.
Every conversation ends with us asking them to leave something in the book. That's the engine.
No backup. If we lose it the film is over. That's part of it.
The verse is the only thing prepped. Everything after we read it is whatever happens.
No hinting, no vague spiritual talk. Every conversation says out loud who Jesus is and what He did.
The one day this thing actually happened
A blank white board, a stack of flattened boxes, dead winter grass, and every paint pen we owned. Everybody who showed up got a marker and took a swing at the lettering. Serif, bubble, blackletter, tiny, huge. The cardboard turned into a whole type sheet before anyone was allowed near the foam.
Same idea as the Bible, it gets better the more hands are on it. Best afternoon of a film that doesn't exist yet.
Super 8 for motion. 35mm for the people.
Anything that moves is on the Bolex H16 and the Canon 514. Grain, gate weave, no sync sound, and short cartridges that make you decide what's actually worth rolling on. You can't cover a scene six ways on Super 8, and I don't want to.
Everybody we talk to also gets one frame of 35mm on the AE-1. Those cut in as full frame holds, the person and then the page they wrote on. One frame each. You can't check it and you don't get a second try, so you actually have to be in the conversation instead of running a camera.
My idea. Needs him to be any good.
Garrison's my friend from GCU. He's actually creative and he's good at this exact kind of thing, the loose unscripted walk up to a stranger part that I'm slower at. It was always going to be the two of us.
He moved to California, which is a real problem for a film set on a campus in Phoenix and a big reason nothing's been shot. Fixable though. Boards travel, so do people.
Zero frames shot. Still the one I want to make most.
Honest rundown: we've got the Bible, the board, the poster, the cameras, and a name people remember after hearing it once. What we don't have is a single exposed frame, because so far this has all been brainstorming, and brainstorming is free, which is the problem with it.
What it takes to start: a Saturday, a loaded cartridge, and one person willing to write in a book. That's it. After that you just do it again until the Bible is full.
If you go to GCU, if you shoot film, if you'd let two guys read you a verse on your way to class, or if you just want to hold the light meter, say something. If you follow Jesus and want to help get this in front of people, even better.
Get in the film“I am the way, the truth, and the life.”