The Bible and Music

Last class period we got into groups and thought about what it would take to create a movie scene, specifically a scene from the bible. My group chose the resurrection of Jesus. Personally, I do not know much about the bible. I didn’t know how many people were present for the resurrection. I was thinking a huge crowd because in my mind it is a huge miraculous event. But I learned that there actually weren’t that many people there when my group decided that we would have around 20ish extras/actors. We didn’t get to discuss music selection in class, but I would have thought that something with strings, which could start out slow and soft and swell as the scene goes on. However, while I am aware of how religious followers feel about this scene, but I don’t know how the actual people said to have witnessed the resurrection were feeling. Certainly, some of them felt similarly, but I don’t know who the people there were. A more knowledgeable group member than me mentioned a few specific names of who was a witness, but I don’t know who those people are.

The Crucifixion 

The scene opens up on a wide establishing shot of Jesus, Dismas, and Gestas hanging from their crosses after passing away, with no one in the crowd left. A light rain falls over them. It is completely silent to emphasize the sound of the rain. After a few seconds, the shot begins to zoom in and some strings begin to play. I envision a track similar to this one from the movie Jackie. The dissonance of the strings leaves the audience unsettled. From this shot, a close-up on Jesus’ hands will appear with a transition into a flashback of the nails being hammered into his wrists. This would be the case for both wrists. Following this, a close-up on Jesus’ face will appear with the blood from the crown being washed away by the rain. A flashback to them places the crown on his head will appear here as well. To end, yet another establishing shot will be used with a slow zoom out into the start of the film.

Beginning the film in this way will hook the audience to want to watch more. The film itself will follow Jesus as he becomes enlightened and attempts to spread his ideas. The end of the film will be a circle-back to the beginning with additional details added.

As I was unable to attend class on Wednesday, I reflected on Monday’s class and re listened to a few of the pieces.  I also watched a movie last night, and while watching it I could not stop thinking about the connections between the music and the film, and why certain songs played when they did, and their relation to each scene.  It was interesting to watch a movie from this point of view rather than seeing the movie as just “background music”.

Today’s class was incredibly interesting for me. As a film nerd, I am constantly pondering on the different artistic elements that make up a movie. Discussing the intersection between this an the Bible made learning about the stories of the scripture more interesting for me personally. Even just discussing how we would play out a scene helped me to learn more stories and more about what happens in the Bible. It’s intriguing how a discussion about movies allowed me to understand the Bible and religion in a new way that I hadn’t before.

This makes me wonder, should churches/religions modernize to include creative conversations like this to increase morale? Doing this would help immensely. More and more people are losing their faith in religion because, with the way it’s set up, religion is losing followers. They need to find the intersection between the creative and the sacred.

In today’s class we started by getting into groups and choosing a scene from the Bible. We had to make a movie for that scene. My group chose the nailing to the cross scene of the crucifixion. It was a fun activity to talk about incorporating music into movies. It shows how music can add to the movie. We decided to have silence when the nails are being pounded into the Cross. We also decided to have angelic singing repeat everything Jesus says when he is up on the cross. Lastly we decided to have the sound of rain to play after Jesus dies to symbolize a new beginning. This activity really made me consider what could be called music. Can silence be music to some people? Can crickets be music? I think it all depends on the person. I personally believe anything can be considered music.

Today in class we got together in groups and talked about what we would do in making a scene of a movie about Jesus’ life. Our group decided to focus on the resurrection of Jesus, specifically the telling of it in the Gospel of John chapter 20. It was very thought provoking to be asked where the scene or even the movie would start and what the music would look like throughout the scene we chose to focus on. While we didn’t get the chance to focus on the music for long, we decided that it would be something mystical. I think there would definitely be more elements to the music and it is something that I think would be cool to write an essay about, looking at other resurrection scenes and comparing the scores of each one.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, as well as Valentine’s Day, and this got me thinking about the Traditions in the Bible. As a catholic, part of my practice is to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, in accordance with Jesus fasting for forty days and forty nights in the Bible. Yet, there is nothing in the Bible that says followers of Jesus are to fast and participate in this tradition.  Since it is also Valentine’s Day, there are many treats all around me, but I cannot partake because I am not supposed to snack today. It even goes so far as to that my mom didn’t send me a treat because of the significance of this day for our religion. Another thing about Lent and Easter is that the music in church changes for this time of year. The music is more somber in general and gets more joyful and celebration like as we get to Easter, the day of Jesus’ Resurrection, which is a big celebration.

Today in class we pondered the idea of setting a Bible story in film, what type of camera angles we would use, what kind of music, how many actors, etc. We had time in groups to briefly discuss what we would do to go about this task, and Professor McGrath mentioned we could do this project as a way to get points for the class. My group chose the story of Jesus’ Resurrection and we chose to adapt it only from the gospel according to John, because his scriptures have the most on divine supernatural happenings over the other gospels. We were just going to adapt the entire chapter 3 of John but Professor McGrath brought up that the original text didn’t have the number divisions in them and perhaps that the chapters before or after this part of the story could contain important information. This got me thinking about potentially doing this project and how I would have to spend more time thinking more about the exactly what parts of the text to include and what to leave out. It would definitely be a challenge to adapt anything Biblical into film.

Today’s class activity where we created our idea of a biblical movie scene was particularly interesting. It helped me realize how much of a movie score is open to personal interpretation. We chose our movie to focus on the reactions of Mary when Jesus falls carrying the cross because as a group we found those moments particularly humanizing. We wanted the scene to be silent save the sound of a slowly pulsing bass drum.

To start off class, we got into groups and picked a story from the Gospels. We then, talked as a group, to try and figure out a set and all the details to make a movie about this Gospel. My group picked David and Goaliath. We thought this would be good because there would be plenty climax and details to add to make a capturing movie. This was an interesting activity because it bought some things to my attention.

I never really thought about how much goes into a movie, let alone a movie about the Bible. There is so much room for error and everything needs to be perfect because it is such a reverent topic. It is really interesting to me how much goes into set, characters, and scene. The most important aspect to me, was which parts of the Gospel the director chooses and how accurate they are. This presented something to me that I never really considered before.