Wesley Film Productions
My life has fallen into a few stages.
As a child, I lived in Box Hill when it was a Village. I then became Pastor to the Slums of Inner Melbourne for eight years. I was then a Country Parson and a Teacher at a One Teacher Bush School out at Jackson Creek in Western Victoria and then for thirteen years, I was a Suburban Minister in one of Australia’s largest suburban ministries.
And now, for more than 20 years I’ve been Superintendent in Sydney of Wesley Mission, Australia’s largest church ministry.
I’ve told you stories of people in each of these places.
Tonight I want you to come with me into the heart of the city.
Of all the stories that I’ve told you about coming to Wesley Mission as a Superintendent, the following story of what happened commencing in 1983 is one of the most important.
When I had first arrived as Superintendent in the late 1970’s I announced that I would develop a national Christian television programme, which would be telecast weekly. This would be the first Christian television programme conducted by any one church with one presenter in Australia’s television history. Because I would be there every week it would be the first time that we would have one presenter on a regular basis 52 weeks a year. I believed continuity was absolutely essential if we were to get the message across. Not only that, for the first time in television history we would develop a television programme that would be so good for the station that they would be prepared to pay for it. This was totally new thinking. “Turn ‘Round Australia” began a weekly half hour programme, which is seen on more television stations in the nation than any other and has now been running consistently for the last 23 years. By 1983 I felt what we had been doing was ready for development in a totally new way.
On the 5th April 1983 I wrote to Martin Johnson our new Director of Media and Stan Manning our general manager of the Mission a confidential note in which I said; “I want to share with you what I think will be the most significant development we have undertaken in our media work. I think the time has come for us to develop “Turn ‘Round Australia” into a new direction by producing a special series of programmes, which will be used in a wider purpose and then being remade for our existing TRA format. My plan would be to conduct a special series, each running for 12 weeks for each of the next 3 years. During this period of twelve weeks we would have these special programmes around a unified theme with music inserts and an increased number of visuals. These would be suitable for personal and group studies in churches and I would produce a study book to go with the texts plus Bible passages and key questions that could be used by individuals as well as groups. We would then market the series of twelve videotapes together with the booklet on the texts. The theme for the special series of twelve would be ‘The Life and Significance of Jesus’ followed by in 1984 a series on ‘The Early Church’ covering the rest of the New Testament.”
I then outlined how I would see the first 12 programmes developing, asked the people to meet with me and discuss this development and then in a single sentence say “We could use films from Israel or else go to the Holy Land and film them on site.”
Martin Johnson replied, “The idea for the proposed new TRA series sounds exciting and challenging. I appreciate there are still many decisions to be made regarding the series however if we are planning to put them to air in the first half of 1984 we need right now to do some work on the contents of each of the 12 episodes.” Martin then went on to show how he had developed the skills to produce such an historical series while he was on a year long Rotary scholarship at the San Diego State University in California, USA.
The idea of going to Israel and producing a series of 12 films on the life of Christ began to catch on. The big problem was money. We didn’t have enough money to pay for the cost particularly if we were going to go on and make a total of 36 half hour programmes to be filmed on more than 150 locations in Israel throughout the Mediterranean Islands, Greece, Italy, Lebanon and Syria. I recognised that such a programme would cost more than a million dollars and there was no way Wesley Mission could afford this. We had only just reached the situation where we had been covering the past debts that had accumulated for years.
The catalyst was to come quickly in the form of John Gormley, the Managing Director of Perpetual Equity Limited who said quite simply, “Why don’t you establish a film production company and raise capital from investors?” The idea was an appealing one but how could we go about developing a film company and raising such money? This was beyond the experience and expertise of us all. However we went ahead and established Wesley Film Productions Limited a company that achieved its approval from the Australian Government as a film production company able to raise investment capital and provide taxation and profit benefits. The board of the new company was made up of senior staff from Wesley Central Mission and Jim Mein of the Uniting Church of NSW who took the role of an independent investor’s representative.
We eventually gained approval from the Australian Taxation Office, the Australian Film Commission, the Australian Home Office, Corporate Affairs and a whole bunch of other authorities. I then called together a group of people who might share the vision. Some of them were personal friends, some were members of my Sydney Rotary Club and some were donors to Wesley Mission. One a night in Wesley Centre I showed a sample videotape Martin and I had prepared showing how I had the vision of taking the gospel message to Australians through film, the sale of videos, the making of CD’s and cassettes and the production of 36 half hour television programmes. And to do this we would need to cover the first series, $265,000.
In order to give people an idea of what it would be like we used a television technique called Chroma-Key. I stood in the studio while behind me photographs from books on the Holy Land were ‘keyed’ into the background. I walked around waving my hands around and described the situation and told the story of Jesus meeting the woman at the well at Sycar.
It was very amateurish but after I had finished every one understood exactly what was intended. I asked people if they would fill in an investment sheet and on that first night $186 000 had been promised by people as investors. I was staggered! Shortly thereafter we had reached a total of $265 000 which was enough to cover the budget for the first series which I was now calling ‘Discovering Jesus’. To prove our own commitment to it, my wife and I had invested all of our savings as well so if this thing were going to fail, Beverley and I would go down with it. One of the things that our investors really appreciated was the Australian Government, in order to encourage and Australian Film Industry, was providing 133% taxation deductibility for the total investment in the film. That certainly encouraged our investors. I have now before me a list of 25 investors who put up the $265 000. I only found out later on that many of the investors said to each other “Well I don’t expect to get anything back out of this, but it’s a good thing to get behind a person who has got a vision as big as this.”
It was one thing to raise the money by investment but now came the difficult task, I had to write the book and then write 12 scripts. Martin Johnson was an invaluable aid as he had studied script writing during his time at San Diego State University.
He took my text and turned it into 12 documentary screenplays. We needed to get our proper 124ZAB certificate to make such a film internationally and Richard Baker came to our aid to help it through the minefields of government bureaucracy.
Martin Johnson brought together an interesting team of people. I was the executive producer and Stan Manning and Richard Baker were the associate producers. Martin Johnson would be the producer and director and I would be the writer, the presenter and the host. From New York Martin had called out cinematographer Robert Draper. Rob was a brilliant cinematographer and was going to go on to make his mark as director of photography on a number of very large big budget films in the United States. Our assistant cameraman was Theo Cremona who was then working in Europe. Our sound recordist was Bronwyn Murphy who had worked on some major Australian productions as had the production coordintor Alison Chambers. Production assistant was Sue Draper and editor was Greg Punch.
Telecine was the responsibility of Chris Hewat and Brian Himsley and Vicki Haynes were the on-line editors at Channel Nine. Cathy Gribble, a member of staff at Wesley Mission, did the graphics. Our production accountant was Dick Menteith who had an enormous job over then next 15 years although he didn’t realise it at that time. My old colleague John Graham would come with us as our stills photographer and our foreign liaison officer based in Israel was Shmuel Moyal. Our solicitor Bryce Bridges headed up several legal people who were responsible for all the investment documents and all of the relationships with countries overseas.
As soon as I had finished writing the manuscript for the book and the outline of each of the first twelve films, we sent off a crew of four people. The cinematographer, the production manager, photographer and team coordinator to do a location survey in Israel. They went to all of the major sites that I had mentioned and looked for about 150 location sites where we would actually do the filming. They tested the levels of light, the areas where we would stand and the areas from which we would shoot the films. The survey team finished their work and returned to Australian with hundreds of still photographs. These photographs were then assembled into order according to my scripts, which would enable us to visualise what we would later film.
We brought the team together and flew out of Australia while other team members came form across Europe, America and Great Britain to join us in Israel. The team worked from January to April 1984 and produced not only all the footage for the films but material for the 12 television programmes as well.
The result was 25 hours of Kodak 16 mm Film that had to be made into 12 television programmes and 12 films. Greg Punch spent countless hours editing the 25 hours of film.
We produced both Betamax and VHS copies in order to provide the various markets. By this time I had the idea that these would sell internationally. The brilliant music of Robert Coleman sung in Israel and orchestrated in Nashville Tennessee was made into an LP record and cassette.
The television series was stunning and was shown at peak viewing times all over Australia. The videos went on sale and immediately were snapped up. We were selling videos at the rate of $10 000 worth per month and within a few months the 1000th video set was purchased by a Mr Hardman of North Sydney.
In between filming I had finished off the book manuscript for ‘Discovering Jesus’. However I had set myself a very difficult task because I was writing four books at the one time: ‘Confidence in Time of Trouble’, which was to be published by Vital Publications, ‘Discovering Jesus’ which was to be published by Albatross, ‘Twelve Steps to Serenity’ which was being published in Australia and England by Hodder and Stoughton and ‘Mission On’ which was to be published by Vision Press. All books were going to have good sales. In fact ‘Discovering Jesus’ which Albatross were publishing was a highlight in the publishing career of the Australian publisher John Waterhouse. He made arrangements to publish 10,000 copies on the first edition and 5,000 copies on an American edition. Later this book was to go through several other editions. In the April 1984 issue of ‘Australian Bookseller and Publisher’, The book ‘Discovering Jesus’ was written up as Australia’s best selling religious book. It was beautifully photographed and illustrated by John Graham. We had hired a helicopter to get unusual angles in a country of a million photographs but few had been taken from a low flying helicopter. John Waterhouse said; “We set out to produce a book that commends the Christian Gospel to people outside of the Church. While it is still early days it is our hope that many of these encouraging sales have gone to this intended audience.” John also encouraged me with the writing of two other books, ‘Discovering Paul’ and ‘Discovering the Young Church’. ‘Discovering Jesus’ was used in colleges and secondary schools throughout the United States but our biggest delight was to come 15 years later when it was published in main land China in Chinese when each of the three books of the series was to be printed in numbers exceeding 500, 000 copies each.
Richard Baker and Martin Johnson had attended the National Religious Broadcasters Media Expo in Washington DC. He wrote back excitedly; ‘The response for ‘Discovering Jesus’ was nothing short of amazing. The series certainly far outshone anything I have experienced in several years of marketing secular documentary films overseas. Literally hundreds of inquiries were received for the video pack and book and many more for television broadcast rights on stations all the way from Florida to Alaska. Several major distributors of Christian films and television programmes want the US distribution rights to the series. I am also able to confirm that the technical standard of ‘Discovering Jesus’ is equal to the very best ever produced in the United States of America. It soon became clear that the series has a tremendous potential both for broadcast nationally and for home, church, and school use in the USA.”
The time had come for me now to write the next two books in the series ‘Discovering Paul’, and ‘Discovering the Young Church’. I also had to write 24 scripts. Martin Johnson was an invaluable help in these scripts. We also needed to get a new round of approvals from the Australian Government and Film Corporation for this next series. We also had to raise another $700 000.
I wrote to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra pointing out that this next series of films would be made in some of the most difficult countries of the world. Rome, Greece, Turkey, Malta, Cypress and Israel were OK but we also wanted to go to some of the warring Middle Eastern Countries. I thought we had better acquaint the Department of Foreign Affairs in case they had to pull a jailed film crew out of some difficult country. I gave them the schedule of the countries to which we were going and the list of crew members. I insured every person for a million dollars each. On this crew I took my 21-year-old son Peter with me. Our previous visit had involved an immense amount of heavy carrying and I was utterly exhausted. He took care of all of that work.
I had never been so tired in all of my life. In order to get what we called the ‘National Geographic Colour’ in our film shots, we got up at 4:30 of a morning, travelled to the film site and with the first light, placing beautiful blues and violets in the sky we would film free from any tourists troubling us. In fact people later would constantly say they couldn’t understand how we would be in some of the best known tourist spots in the world without a tourist in sight. The reason was quite simple. We set up dolly tracks for the cameras, concealed lighting and we filmed just around dawn for a couple of hours. At the end of that time we would all go off and have breakfast together, reassemble on board a big bus capable of taking forty people and head for the next site. We slept on the bus and then got ready for all of our sunset filming. Again, against the beautiful sunsets we filmed other sequences. On more than 180 different locations we filmed every sequence, which involved many changes of clothes for me, and we would repeat each sequence several times so that those who would edit the films would have many options from which to choose.
For ‘Discovering Paul’ and ‘Discovering the Young Church’ we had hired Simon Walker who had composed the musical scores for 40 films. His budget was high but it involved the use of some of Australia’s best musicians, studio time, and tape stock for magnificent music backgrounds. Like everything else this was done at a first rate level. Our team was out in the field for more than three months filming and I joined them during September 1985 through to November 1985.
Looking back I am thankful to God that we now had a good product that I was able to show a new group of investors and more than $750,000 was invested. In the middle of October I wrote a letter to all of our investors from Ephesus in Turkey. At that occasion we had been shooting for thirty days without a break. I wrote to them; each day we are up and on the go by 4am and we start shooting about 5am. Our shooting finishes at sunset at about 6pm. The bus then takes the whole team back to where we are staying, where we shower and have a team meeting to discuss the next days schedule, have an evening meal, wash clothes and fall into bed. Many people wonder how we have such wonderful light in ‘Discovering Jesus’ and no tourists ever in shot. The secret is we do all of our important shots before crowds are out and about.”
In the same letter I reported that we had shot in Malta, Italy, Greece, Macedonia and Turkey and had filmed more than 450 sequences so far. Every place mentioned in the New Testament has had something filmed on that location. I added a simple postscript; “P.S. While I have been away I have also made 12 radio programmes for 2GB each an hour long and I have planned a series of four new books. The whole crew appreciate your interest and prayers and your support for our loved ones back at home. We have 14 days of filming to go in Turkey and Israel. God’s blessing be with you.”
By the time the series was cut and edited and produced we had two other amazingly successful series. Worldwide, Richard Baker had signed agreements with the production of the series into German for distribution throughout Germany, Austria and German speaking Switzerland, in French not only for use in France but also through out Africa where French was spoken, in Italian by Sam Paolo Film with lip synchronisation for use throughout Italy, in English for distribution on the major television networks in the United Kingdom, had made a significant sale to public television in Botswana and in the USA our man on the scene Al Nader in Chicago had arranged for our entire series to be repeated on the public broadcasting system right across the United States. But even more amazing was the Spanish-speaking edition, which was screened over and over again throughout South America, in Santa Clara, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and other Spanish speaking countries. Further editions were sold to Canada and many other places.
The story of these three films didn’t end there. We had lots of off cuts, which were not used in the three series so a couple of years later we put all the off cuts together in a fourth called ‘Discovering Israel’.
Our investors were happy. Many of them received back more than three times the amount of money that they had invested, with the earlier investors doing best. After 12 years we closed down Wesley Film Productions Limited as having completed its task. The Sydney Morning Herald finance pages wrote an article saying “If you are asked for the names of the most commercially successful film makers in Australia, top of the list might not be the Rev. Dr. Gordon Moyes who is heard regularly on 2GB and the channel 9 network but he also runs Wesley Film Productions which not long ago completed and got wide sales for a 12 programme documentary on the life of Jesus. The 12 half hour episodes of ‘Discovering Jesus have already been seen by about 4 million people on 37 stations around Australia and the next two series are expected to get bigger audiences. All of the extras you normally connect with commercial promotion such as video release, translation rights and worldwide distributions are already tied up including translations in French, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. The remarkable fact is the first series has already returned 23% of its sponsor’s money, quite apart from having earned them a full 133% tax deduction. Moyes said most of the investors were Christian businessmen who liked the project and appreciated the tax break but who had no serious hopes of getting their money back,”
I will always be appreciative of those people who trusted us and who received a benefit.
We have now reinvented the series adding to my original commentary on site dramatic representation of the events as I describe them and this has seen new releases ‘The Man Who Changed the World’, ‘The Apostle Who Changed the World’ and ‘The Church that Changed the World’. But wait there’s more! There is a new series coming off the production line this year on ‘The Birth of Jesus’, ‘The Parables of Jesus’, ‘Teachings of Jesus’, ‘The Disciples of Jesus’.
Who would ever have dreamed that multiple millions of people in many languages, in scores of countries have heard the Christian gospel because we had faith to put it together in an Australian Company that became the most successful of its kind called simply Wesley Film Productions.
The city of Sydney would grow to be one of the world’s great cities and Wesley Mission would grow to be one of the world’s great churches and I was privileged to spend each day in the heart of both.