The Television Producer
My life has fallen into a few stages.
As a child, I lived in Box Hill when it was 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 13 years, I was a suburban minister in one of Australia’s largest suburban ministries.
And then, for more than 27 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.
In December 1982, I appointed Martin Johnson to work with me in directing our television and radio programs. Before long, we were to add film production to our list.
Many people had said to Martin, “A Christian in the media? You won’t last long in that environment!”
But Martin replied, “It seems to me that Christians can go into just about any profession from accountancy to zoology without getting the negative reaction that greets any intention to work in the media or in theatre.
“What I really wanted was to be in Christian media. But in the late 1960’s there was no Christian media, so I went into secular television to get training and experience.
“In my first television job I was just ‘the boy’. My exciting tasks included making gallons of coffee and tea and coiling up miles of microphone and camera cable.
“Very soon, though, I was entrusted with more responsible and interesting work. I discovered that even in the supposed “sinful” world of television, management knows the value of Christian integrity and commitment.
“Once I had some experience to my credit, I ‘went bush’ and worked in country television and radio, where one of the joys is to be everything from washroom cleaner to evening newsreader.
“Then it was back full-time into television and growing involvement in writing, voicing and producing commercials.
“I became convinced that there was no conflict between my Christian principles and the task of producing commercials.
“My employers accepted that I would not write copy advertising alcohol and they knew that I would object if asked to present any product in a misleading or dishonest light.
“After 11 years experience in the media I spent a year studying in California on Rotary scholarship. I did things backwards—I had the experience but no formal training; now I was getting formal training for things I had been doing!
“What I learnt in the US opened my eyes to the creative potential of the media. American Christians have a broader attitude to the arts then we have here. Don’t believe the impression television gives of American Christians—they are committed wholeheartedly to God and to using the arts and the media to express their faith.”
Martin came to Wesley Mission to work as a Producer/Director of a Christian television program. Without the training he received in more than a decade in the secular media, he would not have been in a position to serve God in this way.
We were soon to send Martin Johnson to Israel.
Together with Director of Photography Rob Draper, Production Manager Allison Chambers, Sound Recordist Bronwyn Murphy, Photographer John Graham, hosts Gordon Moyes and singer Robert Colman, I was on what was known as a “location survey” of Israel in preparation for a twelve part special on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ in the actual locations that Jesus knew.
Those weeks were intense and unbelievable fascinating. Israel is a country of incredible contrasts – in its people, architecture and geography. We spent the first six days in and around Jerusalem. We visited all the major holy sites, from the Garden of Gethsemane and the Wailing Wall to Bethlehem and Qumran, the site of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1948.
“From our hotel room we looked over the old city of Jerusalem. The old city with its narrow streets is like another world. During the day it’s a hive of activity with street traders, residents and tourist. As evening falls, the shops close and the tourists go back to their hotels, leaving the streets quiet and serene.
The old city is built on Mount Moriah and Mount Zion and is some 3,000 feet above sea level.
From Jerusalem to visit the site where Jesus was baptised, we travelled the road to Jericho and the Dead Sea, dropping to 1,200 feet below sea level. Because there is very little natural water here, the area is dry and barren.
Travelling north along the Jordan to the Sea of Galilee, the vegetation changes until the western shores of the Lake, the area is lush and rich with agriculture. It was here on the shores of the Sea of Galilee that Jesus centred His ministry. We visited the Church of the Beatitudes, built on the mountain where it said Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount. Just below the church is the city of Tabgha where Jesus fed the five thousand with two loaves and five fish.
“North of Tabgha is the ancient city of Capernaum. Here are the remains of a temple built on the remains of the original temple where Christ would have preached.
From the Sea of Galilee, we travelled west towards the Mediterranean coast and passed through Nazareth and the church of the Annunciation. The church is an amazing structure that took nine years to build. Around its walls are mosaics donated by over twenty countries. The mosaics, one of which is Australian, depict the New Testament story of the birth of Christ.
During this location survey, we selected forty sites that were to be major highlights for the following Discovering series, which gave a feel for what it may have been like almost 2,000 years ago when Christ lived in Israel.
Acclaimed as the best religious documentary series in Australia, Wesley Film Productions’ television and video series “Discovering Jesus”, “Discovering Paul” and “Discovering the Young Church” and their companion books have been hugely popular over the years. The production of these programs was based around my books on the related topics, and were filmed in Greece, Italy, Turkey, Cyprus and Malta.
“Discovering Jesus” cover the four Gospels, “Discovering Paul” and “Discovering the Young Church” cover the remaining books of the New Testament, Peter, Timothy and John, including the book of Revelation. No other Australian organisation had at the time the resources and the skill for such a project development, being made available on video as a resource for churches, schools, individuals and Bible study groups. This unique video series set a new standard in Australian Christian television. A year after we produced “Discovering Jesus” in 1985, we were to return to film “Discovering Paul and Discovering the Young Church”.
How do you translate the life of the greatest missionary that ever lived into 12 half hour television programs?
The Apostle Paul was the first missionary of the young Christian Church. From being violently opposed to the people of the “Way” as the early Christians were called, he experienced a dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus. From that moment on, he used his Jewish background, his Roman citizenship and his knowledge of Greek culture to spread the Gospel throughout the Roman Empire.
The first task we had to trace the footsteps of Paul. Where was Tarsus, Paul’s hometown? What about Antioch and Derbe, Lystra and Iconium? Was there anything worth filming at these places?
We already knew some of the places in which Paul’s life unfolded. Jerusalem we knew well from our first video series, “Discovering Jesus”. Our fist step was to do some research, and for three months we poured over books on archaeology, the early church and biblical history. Once we had found where all these towns and cities were, we needed to decide if there was anything worth filming there. We often came across the words, “…unfortunately, nothing remains of the ruins of …” While we were researching locations in cities and towns, I was writing the manuscript that would end up as the book “Discovering Paul”. Now the work really started.
The television series is based on the book, so that meant analysing each chapter and then working out how and where to visualise the main points that I had written.
Sometimes, this process was simple. For example, in chapter three, I had written a piece on Paul as a preacher and the main themes of his preaching. One of them had to do with Christians keeping themselves morally pure. We had already decided to set this episode in the ruins of the Roman city of Ephesus in Turkey. Ephesus was one of the most important cities in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. It was a centre of worship of the Roman god Diana or Artemis, as well as a centre for immorality. It therefore seemed logical to use the remains of one of the brothels at Ephesus, and for me to talk about Paul’s preaching on immorality as I walked through the ruins.
Ephesus was also the place where Paul’s preaching caused a riot. The local silversmiths stirred up the crowd because they thought Paul was taking their business away. People had stopped buying the silver idols of “Diana” and the craftsmen were in danger of going broke. The crowd dragged Paul to the amphitheatre, which is still there today. We needed to re-create this scene, and while we weren’t able to hire twenty-five thousand screaming extras, we did use a combination of creative camera work, editing and sound to create the feeling of the riot.
Some of the translations from the written word to the screen were straightforward, and some weren’t easy. How do you visualise abstract thoughts? For example, I had written on Paul’s teaching about women, slaves and racism. There was no clear visualised setting for these sequences to take place that came to mind.
In early 1985 Martin Johnson spent two months doing a location survey. This really meant just being tourist and looking at all the locations they could think of as possible filming sites. The idea was to look, take lots of photographs and then spend 6 months working out the best places to film. They spoke with authorities, local film people and equipment hire companies. The information they gathered during this time proved to be well worth the time spent.
One of the places they investigated in Kavalla, in northern Greece, was an old Turkish style house, built by a “Pasha” or a Turkish nobleman. It was divided into usual quarters for animals, slaves and concubines. Upstairs was the living area for the man of the house and his favourite wife of the week. The house was perfect—it was unknown at the time what it would be useful for, but we knew it had to be used. Back home, Martin Johnson was sitting at the word processor, thinking about how to visualise the difficult sequence about slaves, women and racism. As he looked through the collection of photographs, his eyes rested on the images of the Turkish house in Kavalla, and he knew we had found our location. I would walk through the various parts of the house, explaining who lived there, and then relating that to Paul’s teaching on slaves, women and racism. The result of this can be seen in the ninth episode of “Discovering Paul”.
That was processes undertaken for all 12 episodes of “Discovering Paul”. We planned to do the filming from September to December in 1985, timed to avoid the northern summer and the main tourist season.
We then had to obtain permission from all the relevant authorities, both government and local, such as museums. Sometimes this was straightforward and done by a central government body, as in Israel, where one permission covered the whole country.
In Rome, it was a different story. Every time you put the camera down, you needed a separate permission. Each permission needed umpteen dozen stamps from the same number of officials in umpteen dozen buildings. We needed two Location Managers, spending 8 hours every day just to get the correct documents so we could keep shooting.
But such is the life of a film maker.
Eventually we had our documents and hotel arrangements in order. We arrived in Rome and picked up our 50-seater luxury coach from Germany, which was to be home for the next 3 months as it took us through Italy by ferry into Greece and across the border in Turkey. The bus was a dark room, equipment truck, crew and cast transport, dining room and rest room. It made travelling and filming over a large area much easier than using a number of separate cars and trucks, and it meant we didn’t have to go through so many airports and the problems of shipping film equipment. There are about a dozen specialists in our crew who lived around the “auto bus”.
We spent the next three months on the road, tracing the journeys of Paul. Because we wanted to do a lot of filming at “magic” hour, just before sunrise and after sunset, each day usually started at around 3:30 in the morning. Often we took an hour or more to drive to the location, then we’d set up and film what we’d planned for the day. At about 10 am, we’d be finished for the morning, then it would be back to the hotel for a second breakfast. We had the middle of the day off, then back in the bus at 3pm to set up for the afternoon filming, which finished when there was no more light, usually around 6 pm.
This schedule was the rule for the whole 3 months, every day! Whilst this wasn’t the ideal way to make films from a workload point of view, it does produce some spectacular footage, and that is what lasts. The feelings of exhaustion we all had soon went when we saw the results of our early morning shoots.
Films are not usually made in sequence. That is, you don’t shoot scene 1, then scene 2, then scene 3. To do that for “Discovering Paul”, Episode One, for example, would have meant travelling from Rome, to Delphi in Greece, back to Rome and then to Jerusalem. Obviously, there was a better way. We went through the script and made sure while we were in Rome that we shot all the scenes we had written for Rome; and all Athens scenes whilst we were in Athens and so on. That meant I had to change from talking about Paul, to talking about Peter, or John. The latter two are the subject of the third series, “Discovering the Young Church”.
At the end of three months, it was good to be finished knowing that we had exactly had what we wanted “in the can”. Following filming, all that was left to do was four months worth of editing and sound mixing, before the completed video series was ready for screening. Special music had to be composed and orchestrated back to Sydney.
I know that those who have seen the series appreciate the work that went into making the series. Our hope is that people came, and will continue to come, to a greater understanding of the greatest missionary and preacher of the Gospel that ever lived, and will come to know Christ as their Saviour.
So what’s happened since?
The Director of Photography for all three series, Rob Draper, had worked with Martin for ten years in commercial television before Martin hired Rob to shoot our three Discovering series during 1984 and 1985.
Since then, Rob was moved to the US where he has made a career for himself as Director of Photography on more than 25 television features.
Martin as you know, still helps me with this program and when I am away, he makes sure the seat is kept “warm” for when I get back.
Martin is now Group Manager—Corporate Communications for Wesley Mission, responsible for all our radio, television, video and film production. This includes our Easter Sunrise Service telecast live on Seven Network from Opera House on Easter Sunday and my weekly Turn ‘Round Australia program on the Nine Network.
His team look after our website, our direct mail appeals and our deferred giving.
Although he now spends much more time behind the desk, he still gets out behind the lens to film segments for TRA.
One of my joys has been to see Andrew, Martin’s eldest son, developed as the cameraman for the Nine Network. I know of no producer father other than Martin that is directing one program, Turn ‘Round Australia in Studio One at Channel Nine while at the same time his son, Andrew is doing camera.
We have come a long way together—and our media ministry continues to grow and develop. Together with Richard Attieh, our Media Manager, we this week launched an Internet MP3 site, where radio stations around the world can download segments like this one from our radio programs and then rebroadcast them on their stations.
Over thirty years ago now, Martin had a vision to work in Christian media. Together with his team, he has been responsible for producing more Christian television and video productions than any other person in Australia.
He is my friend.
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.
