New episode of Critics!!

Critics

Critics Season 3! If you are seeing this please upgrade your Flash Player at http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

8 comments

  2. Hi Philip, first of all you’ve helped me a great deal, I actually met you in adelaide but that’s off topic haha

    The video of the “prosperity gospel” left me a bit confused as well but luckily I knew what it was before.

    The prosperity gospel in a nut shell says that if you have “faith” or lots of belief in God, as a christian you will get material blessing.

    I’m puzzle by this message as the message Christian message or (message of Christ) centre’s completely on selflessness and love for others and for God.

    So I don’t think these two view line up well, I believe this was the message the narrator was looking to provide.

    However I agree the message wasn’t extremely clear.

    Thanks so much for all your done to provide information and tips to the filming community 🙂

    Ps. also can’t wait to see more red epic footage from you!! 🙂

  3. The first one was great.

    The second one you guys should have avoided, because you stepped into the middle of a rather fierce debate about modern Christianity. Even the term “prosperity gospel” is debated and a point of contention. What opponents call “prosperity” the proponents call “positive thinking” and “faith in God’s Grace.” Essentially, you guys were handed a very loaded piece, and it’s clear you had no idea what you were handed. So, the message was perfectly clear to people familiar with the complexities of the debate, but if you’re not familiar with the debate, it makes no sense.

    The third one was a great wedding video. Perfect example of a well produced modern wedding video. It probably utilized the Philip Bloom Signature Slider.

  6. Hey guys, great job!

    Regarding the Prosperity Gospel, it’s not really a doc so much as it is a video Editorial for the Christianity Today publication: the trend of Huge American Church’s focusing on “Give more and you will Get more.” At least to me, and the only reason I know this is because of my own on-again, off-again history within American churches.

    If you subscribe to Christianity Today then you are already “in the know” of what the “prosperity gospel” is: a sort of give more to the church, think happy thoughts and God will give you more wealth mentality that big name American preachers with big followings (all the photos at the front of the piece) are said to be preaching, though they would deny it.

    I assume that the take-away is that we as Americans are truly materially rich whether we subscribe to this “gospel” or not – however, this mentality when shifted to the third world rapes the truly poor of their only material wealth and sets up “faith” in God as a false hope which devastates them materially AND spiritually. They are left gutted with nothing to turn to since their last hope (Jesus/God/Religion) has failed them.

    Again, you have to have pre-knowledge to get to this conclusion. I guess the target audience is supposed to see how bad that is…and do something about it? What though? I have no idea.

    It’s an awareness piece for a very targeted group of people with a pre-knowledge of many cultural goings-on in the professional Christian world.

    To me, to make this a true, powerful, and much more accessible doc to a bigger audience they should flesh out “the prosperity gospel”, what it actually is, interview those in the pictures (not just flash a picture), show its impact on America, and THEN throw us to Africa where the effects of it are apparently truly devastating. But I still have no idea what I, as the viewer, am supposed to do about it.

    For the piece itself I kind of lost it in the middle. (I did love the cut from the white high-dollar shoes of the preacher to the sandals.) The interviews lost me a bit. Were they pro or con against this gospel? “Hope” is good, right? So was that in support of the inferred ending argument, or not? That kind of lost me and I really wanted that to be clear. Part of me thinks that it was all half-thought through so we could get to the hopelessness shots of the end and set up what I think was supposed to be a final line filled with irony. The need for a wealth of pre-knowledge, and the mushy structure just kind of brought it to a quick clipped ending that made you kind of scratch your head.

    A piece with potential … but needs to be more fully fleshed out. I’d like to see what material was still on the hard drives.

    Anyway – loved Dot. Brilliant.

    Thanks guys!

    Hans

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