Martin Luther King Tribute from Jason Widney on Vimeo.
Martin Luther King Jr weekend at church... what does that really mean. In the past 15 years of being on staff at churches not much.
Park's new building is in the middle of a very diverse neighborhood in Chicago. The area is being reshaped and redefined and everyone in the area is struggling on what a diverse neighborhood looks like.
As Park focuses on racial reconciliation this Sunday I have struggled to put together a video that merges the two worlds of the past and the present and represents authentically the struggle. Your mind goes to the classic MLK tribute of inspiring music and hearing the I have a dream speech while seeing the classic MLK photos with I have a dream in glowing letters scrolling by. I knew that was not what I wanted to make I sat down with Curt, our music and band developer and showed him this and this. I felt this was fresh inside perspective on the whole situation, this was the lens that people who were in the midst of it used to express themselves.
He came back with using rage against the machine's wake up as a back drop to express the aggressiveness that was surrounding Martin luther King. This contrast MLK's peaceful approach, but echos what the country was feeling.
We recorded scratch tracks to edit to, I will blog about the creation of the click tracks in the near future, the band did an amazing job. We did a board recording Sunday afternoon and Michelle came in after our evening service and laid down her vocals. With the three screen setup still in place we were able to create a very impactive experience. The image is 47' X 9'. I shot the interviews in Chicago's downtown loop. the point of the interviews was to show how MLK influenced the average African American and how little it means to the average caucasian. We know this seams to stereotype people but for the most part I found this to be true with the people I interviewed.
The video ended with a modified version of our unhindered bump.
