As part of my ankle-deep immersion for his VBS I have been learning Chinese. I am using a number of apps, but mostly I am listening to podcasts from ChineseClass101.com. The podcasts are great for picking up the language and they have lots of notes about the culture, but they will email you incessantly, and you …
Tag: Vacation Bible School
Jan 27
VBS 2013 Development Diary: #8: Logo
This is a pretty graphic-heavy post. When I first start working on a logo, I trial several fonts in Linotype FontExplorer, then I try them out in Illustrator to see which ones I like best, looking for things like readability, tone, and flavor. This lets me see which fonts I might want: …
Jan 15
VBS 2013 Development Diary: #7: Title
It can be tough picking a good title. You want something that communicates the overall theme of your production, and it needs to be able to reach kids who have only been reading for a year. Plus, while you, as the writer and director, have been steeping yourself in Chinese food, language, culture, and movies, …
Jan 11
VBS 2013 Development Diary: #5: Music
For the past two years Rahne has composed the theme music. For Law of the West, our wild west VBS, I was looking for music that would fit in with a John Ford / John Wayne / Roy Rogers good guy kind of western—not a spaghetti western. When she was working on it, we listened to a lot …
Jun 26
Quotable: Ernest Hemingway
“Write drunk, edit sober.” I had to learn this one from my daughter. Not that she drinks–that I know of–but the other night while I was up late working on the script for Vacation Bible School, I was typing so fast because my brain was firing ideas faster than I could record them, and I …
Aug 26
VBS Hangover
A friend of mine coined this term to describe the fatigue experienced by those church members that worked Vacation Bible School and which contributed to their tardiness the following Sunday morning.
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Jan 04
VBS 2013 Development Diary: #1
Every year since 2004* I either write or co-write the script for the skits that we use in our church’s vacation Bible school, as well as acting, directing / co-directing, designing the logo, and creating and/or supervising the production of the sets, props, and costumes. It can be massively rewarding, and a ton of fun. …
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