Scripting the JESUS film

screen shot from Jesus film http://jesusfilmmedia.org/

So the Jita team is working on the JESUS film. The first step was to translate the script into Jita. We used a normal spreadsheet with the English and Swahili already included. After we inserted the Jita it looked like this....

It may not look like much but there were 1,206 lines to translate!!

Then my friend Mitchell took all 1,206 lines of Jita and copied them into a computer program. (Mitchell is our media specialist.)

We used this program to check the timing of each scene because we wanted to make sure that the Jita "actors" would be able to fit all their lines into a given scene. We also wanted to make sure that the lips matched the voice as much as possible. (We've all seen badly dubbed movies, right?)

screenshot of the computer program we used

photo by M. Wimbush

Then Neema and Magesa and I reviewed every line of script to make sure it was accurate and that it would fit with the timing of the scene.

Finally, we were ready to take the script out to the community and test it with other Jita speakers.

We gathered a small group of Jita Christians in the village and read the entire script with them. They gave us some helpful feedback about the Jita words and phrases in the script. And they also had some interesting questions for us. "In this movie, will Jesus be an African or a white person?" Sorry, we can't change the video, we can only change the audio. But at least we'll have a white Jesus speaking Jita! That will be cool!!!!


Stay tuned for recording the JESUS film...