Thanksgiving break

All is well on the Kentucky front. I've been working on my story here and there over the past week. Overall, the church seems really excited to help me out. Both of the Pastors have agreed to give me interviews and help me in any way that they can. I also got the go-ahead to film the services as needed.

Monday, I met with Co-pastor Mark Payton just to do a 'pre-interview' of sorts, letting him know my intentions, how long I'll be working with the congregation, etc.

A few interesting things I found out with that meeting:

-they are the first of the integrated churches to have voted voluntarily to merge

-the predominately black congregation has lost about 8 members to the merger, the white church lost about 20 people due to the merger (1 of which was under 50 years old, the other 19 all 70 years or older)

-the white church had a larger population of older worshipers, a younger generation made up the majority of members of the black congregation

-they average about 325 people at their Sunday morning service

-the pastors do not tell the congregation who will be preaching in order to eliminate bias

Yesterday, I went to the library to do a little research. I was able to collect articles from the merger, but I could only find online archives, which isn't what I wanted... But, I'm going to try out the main library tomorrow and hope for some better archival material.

Today, I went to Sunday morning service to shoot a little and get a feel for all the elements that I'm going to have to deal with for this story. The main problems I faced were issues with audio and lighting. But, I also ended up being in the back part of the church, so most of my shots were of the back of peoples' heads, which obviously means I will need to find a new spot to be in for next time. The audio problems could probably be eliminated with an edirol, but James wouldn't give me one for this break. Basically, there was just an echo and the microphone picked up all the noises going on in the back of the church over the pastor's actual preaching. It was also extremely hard to keep the audio from hitting the top of the sound scale, but again I'm hoping an edirol connected to the sound system will fix all of that.

Tonight I'm going in for a sit-down interview with co-pastor Payton. I should have a good amount of footage/archival material/etc for class on Wednesday!

Shooting starts Monday!

Sorry for the lack of updates. My computer crashed and I haven't been able to do much research/archival footage hunting this week. But, I did get back in touch with Co-Pastor Mark Payton. I have a meeting with him on Monday in Louisville. I plan to shoot while I'm home, so when I get back I can upload some footage! I'll update you as the week unfolds. Wish me luck!

Archival footage update

I'm still waiting for permission for the video footage from WLKY. But, in the meantime, I got permission from Louisville's Courier-Journal to use some of their photos from the first service in August in my piece. No idea if I'll end up using them for the final documentary. But, either way, the pictures will at least give you guys some visuals until I can shoot for myself!

The people over at Courier-Journal.com said the photo gallery had been taken down and that I would have to pay $45 for them because they were no longer on the web. But, I still found a link to them as of now. They might be taking them down soon though so look at them now while you still can!

Here's the link:

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Site=B2&Date=20090823&Category=ZONE08&ArtNo=908230804&Ref=PH&Params=Itemnr=1

Research...

I've basically been doing research over the past week for my documentary, since I won't be able to start shooting until Thanksgiving. This weekend, I contacted a producer at the WLKY station in Louisville to get a hold of some archival footage of the first service following the merger between the two churches. Supposedly some 600 people showed up for the mass, which means there should be some good footage available from which to draw.

Also, I found a speech Barack Obama gave on race and religion in the United States, addressing specifically the role of churches in the black community. In this speech from March 18, 2008, President Obama makes reference to 'the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning." I want to explore the implications of this statement in more detail as my story progresses.

Here's the link to the speech in its entirety:

http://obamaspeeches.com/E05-Barack-Obama-A-More-Perfect-Union-the-Race-Speech-Philadelphia-PA-March-18-2008.htm

And here's the speech on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrp-v2tHaDo

Hello, all!

Here's a brief description of my project:

This is a story about a racially-integrated church in Shively, KY, using religion as a means to unify different cultures within its community. In late August of this year, St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church, a predominately black congregation, and Shively Heights Baptist Church, a predominately white congregation, underwent a merger, becoming St. Paul Baptist Church at Shively Heights. Now, with two co-pastors preaching together, the newly unified church is praying to break modern racial boundaries in a historically tense southern town.