TheThreefoldAdvocate
For over a year, senior digital cinema major Connor Reed worked to produce his senior cinema project.
After much thought, Reed decided to portray the concept “lost” in his project, entitled “A Story for the Lost.” The cinema project is broken up into three separate short films depicting the common theme.
“The first film deals with being emotionally lost, the second is spiritually lost and the third is physically lost,” Reed said.
Since funds were low for the production, Reed’s friends and classmates at JBU contributed to the effort. “It would have been impossible to do without the crew,” Reed said.
Junior digital cinema major Chris Ridings was the gaffer, or lighting specialist, of the short films. Ridings expressed the creativity of Reed’s films and his excitement to work on the project.
“I read his script before I volunteered,” Ridings said. “I thought it was interesting because, instead of just one story, he did three different stories that built on each other.”
Steve Snediker, Reed’s advisor and executive producer, said Reed’s film involved extensive thought and preparation. “He did three stories and wrote scripts for each,” Snediker said. “His idea was very ambitious.”
Even though the process of writing and filming only takes two semesters, Reed thought about his cinema project since freshman year.
Reed also made films in high school, and talked to his father about what he should do for his cinema project. “My dad told me, ‘I think you capture really well just the ability to portray emotion and you really focus on things being lost and trying to get them to be found,’” Reed said.
Once Reed was certain of his theme, “lost,” the next step was writing and filming.
“The process of making the film completely consumed my semester,” Reed said. “I was always working on it and every single class I was in I would be thinking about filming.”
Reed finished the short films and premiered his project for JBU students at a screening event. The next step in his journey is submitting his project to film festivals.
Snediker was satisfied with Reed’s final project, particularly how the film has strong connective tissue to society. He also said that the film did a good job of linking a Christian worldview and the movie industry. “Those two things don’t often meet,” Snediker said.
Although each film has the common theme of “lost,” the second film in Reed’s project especially portrays this Christian lens of spiritually being lost.
“In the second film, a Christian man meets a homeless man and tries to convert him to Christianity, but he realizes that the homeless man is actually closer to Christ than he is.”
Each of the three films has a different story, connected by the theme of being lost and weak and searching for an answer. “At the beginning, you start out lost, and hopefully you find the redemption by the end of it,” Reed said.