Church: Solana Beach Presbyterian Church
Submitted by: Doug Peterson
Church Size: 501-1,000
Location: Solana Beach, CA
Category: Narrative/Concept, Best Video (under 1,000 in attendance)

Every year we produce a video with a re-telling of the Christmas Story. Over the years we’ve shot a few versions of kids telling the story in their own words, but this past year we wanted to introduce a new way for kids to share. We asked them to draw the Christmas story. To start each shoot, I told them they could use any of the crayons and markers and then we just let them draw whatever they wanted about the Christmas story.

The original plan was to have the kids who made the drawings also read the story, but they had significant challenges with the passage, so we brought in older students to read on the last day of shooting and used them as narrators. During one shoot, we had one of the boys knock all of the markers and crayons off the table by accident. It looked pretty funny on film until you looked at his eyes. He was so scared that we ended up cutting out that footage.

Overall, it’s really challenging to work with kids, but when you have enough patience, the result is highly rewarding!