I am Octolingual & The Mesa Easter Pageant

Two part post, one blog entry.
Bare with me since i haven't written in awhile.

PART 1
In my last post I told you the adventures of completing the Easter Mormon Message for the LDS Church.

(please watch it again before Easter comes HERE)

My latest initiative as post-production supervisor is to begin implementing the 10 internet languages (this is new and will be a slow roll-out, so don't pressure me!) Right now we already produce them in English and Spanish, now we want try adding:
-Portuguese, Russian, Korean, Mandarin, Japanese, German, French, Italian & Pig-latin.
(okay, I made the last one up).

I think this is great, but I only see one problem. I speak one language and I don't even speak that language very well, that is English. Working with Spanish is just beginning to be smooth. But with these new 8 languages, I thought it would be simple because the Easter message is mostly text that I could just copy and paste. For the most part I did pretty good except when it came to the Asian languages. Man, those characters are HARDCORE. I'll hyper-link the above messages as they become live on YouTube in the coming days.

Luckily, at the Church we employ a plethora of people that speak a ton of languages. Sitting next to me is a French speaker. Across from me Portuguese and French speakers. The floors above me have Mandarin & Japanese speakers. Just a few clicks away and a file gets send to a friend that can check the German and another that can check Korean. And let's be honest, I'm pretty good at ebonics, yo! Quite remarkable that we have the 'internet 10' covered in our building and by the end of this process I'll be Octolingual.

PART 2
Last week I had the opportunity to go to Mesa, AZ and film a Church News & Events story about the Mesa Easter Pageant.

I've never seen a Church Pageant and I had been told that this was the one to see. It was a pretty cool shoot with some talented producers in Media Services (Jim and Erika, I'm talkin' about you!) and a very enthusiastic cast and crew. We got to interview many of the cast members, families who had been in the pagaent for years, non-member cast, even a lamb!

Additionally we interviewed some missionaries that were there last year, the director and even the actor who portrayed Christ. I was impressed with how humble he was and what a great responsibility it was to him. The pageant is a HUGE deal to the community of Mesa and brings in 8,000-12,000 people each night, totally amazing. They even have live animals (sheep, a donkey which didn't kick me off the stage) and a real baby playing the part of baby Jesus.
(side note: during the 2nd performance one night one, Baby Jesus was not a happy camper...just saying, it was his nap time!)

Here is the final product that the news team put together:
VIDEO STORY
ACCOMPANYING WRITTEN NEWS STORY ALONG WITH STILL PHOTOS THAT WE ALSO SHOT

I encourage anyone that has the opportunity to see the pageant once in their lifetime, it is pretty cool and just tells the Easter story, the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Very powerful stuff.

LABOR PAINS

Even though I was only gone for 3 days, I missed being away from my family, particularly because I had a 4 week old new baby girl. I'm amazed at how much they change practically overnight. I skyped home one afternoon (since we primarily shot in the evenings) and couldn't believe how chubby her cheeks had gotten. My others kids were so excited to "see me" over the electronic airwaves. I'm one proud poppa. It made me reflect on this amazing technology that seemed to be second nature to them, but was amazing to me still (does this make me old?). I was talking to them from thousands of miles away and seeing them, as well. They were performing for me, my son was showing me his latest Lego creations and my 3-year-old daughter was showing me her dance outfit and my oldest daughter was telling me all about school and activity days. It was just like being there. It made me happy to be a father in this era of technology.

It used to be that I had to send an e-mail (or worse yet, send a postcard), which couldn't express my true emotions or love, or call and only talk to one person at a time. But this way I could talk to all of them at once, smile and express love to them all with the expression on my face.
Thank you technology.
Thank you internet ( and Al Gore :) ).
Thank you Skype.