n 2013 the Frontier Filmmaking Seminar was offered at Create Thailand for the very first time. Since then we have run the seminar two or three times a year in seven different countries for a total of twelve seminars. In every seminar we have produced a unique gospel movie for an unreached people group. To ensure the best possible learning experience for our students we typically limit our student enrollment to seven students. To date we have had 74 graduates from all over the world, some of whom have come back to help us on subsequent projects.
The Frontier Filmmaking Seminar (FFS: https://createmobile.org/ffs/) is a six-week YWAM seminar designed to provide students with the experience of assisting on a cross-cultural film set. We cover basic training in a variety of filmmaking disciplines and share our unique cross-cultural methods to communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ through media. To quote one of our esteemed trainers, Bill Snyder, “We basically eat, sleep and breathe production and crew development.”
The pandemic has shifted our focus to bringing this seminar online. Until now, we’ve resisted this move for a few reasons. Filmmaking is best learned from experiencing it firsthand. Consequently, a live training program was the best way to provide a solid educational experience for students. As trainers and filmmakers we look forward to partnering face-to-face with people to both provide training and film production together.
Nevertheless, if we want to see our seminar multiplying masses of people to go out and make their very own gospel movies for their local people groups we need to use all available technologies. To that end, we have worked hard to turn the high-quality teaching of the FFS into succinct video tutorials and interactive mentoring sessions. Coming soon to a browser near you is the new Frontier Filmmaking Seminar Online! createmobile.org/ffso
We spent considerable time adapting our curriculum. In October we quarantined together to film the content. Our online seminar will be taught by our regular trainers, and some special guests who don’t come with us overseas regularly. We shot most of our course content on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, thanks to the donation of space from the Falmouth Baptist Church and John and Nancy Tobey.
You can see a short behind-the-scenes video here:
We are now madly editing. Our plan is to go live with the online program on the 1st of March. You can get more information about the program at www.createmobile.org/training. Please pray that this endeavor successfully empowers a new generation of media missionaries to make their own gospel movies for the unreached.
