If you’re looking for answers, you won’t find them in Passenger Productions’ Trigger videos. Instead, you’ll find visual meditations on some of life’s tough issues, issues such as faith, doubt, loss, identity, and relationships. In addition, Trigger videos embody style and production value that vault them into the top tier of Christian short film. With compelling voiceovers, driving indie soundtracks, and ingenious visual storytelling, Trigger videos pack a lot of punch in just a few minutes. We asked Joe Hubers, the man behind Passenger and the Trigger series, about his contributions to the church media scene.
COLLIDE: How did you get started creating church media?
Joe Hubers: Passenger Productions is relatively young at four years old, and in our brief history we have been involved with various creative and commercial endeavors. Trigger is our only church media creation and was born out of circumstance rather than something more methodical. Passenger was asked to create a series of short promos for a college retreat here in Sioux Falls called Resolve. Besides a very positive response from these promos, we also had a lot of leftover footage. At the time a former creative colleague of ours was employed by a local college in student development and needed to give a talk on eating disorders. With the left over Resolve footage we cut together what was essentially the first Trigger prototype for his talk, and it went exceptionally well. Out of this experience we were able to hone in on the idea of what Trigger could potentially be. We felt it imperative to create videos that were short, able to garner the immediate attention of an audience that had a hundred different thoughts running through their heads, and be open-ended enough for a facilitator to pour his or her own story into. A year later, with a lot of prayer, sweat, and professional feedback, we independently released the first six Trigger videos. Through the original six we were able to catch the eye of Youth Specialties/Zondervan, who agreed to publish and distribute Trigger. Trigger Volume 1 and Volume 2 were released in May (with five Trigger videos on each disc), while Volume 3 and Volume 4 are to be released early and late 2009, respectively.
COLLIDE: How does the fact that you’re creating media for teenagers affect your creative process? In other words, what would you do differently when creating media for a Communication audience?
Hubers: Although we are published through YS and they are clearly about teens, we consciously try to not make films for teenagers. We actually try to aim just over their heads. Admittedly, we don’t accomplish this with every Trigger; at times we have resorted to tried and true gimmicks that kids will respond to while other times we have overshot and missed them entirely. Teens, being in that limbo area between childhood and adulthood, will gravitate towards that which they perceive to be older than they actually are. Thus, we find when we communicate well with the college/adult crowd, the same messages resonate with teens. This also allows us to communicate to a broader age spectrum than just teens, while not patronizing younger viewers by treating them as [younger] through a purely teen aesthetic. Besides, keeping your crosshairs on what’s cool with teenagers is pretty daunting, as it tends to change rather frequently. But as mentioned previously, this is something we are still learning how to do on a consistent basis. We are getting reports that Trigger is doing well in broader arenas such as church services, small groups, adult Sunday schools, and the like.
COLLIDE: What kind of response has the Trigger series elicited?
Hubers: Responses to Trigger have been either very positive or very negative. We believe eliciting strong responses is a good indicator that we are doing something right, that we might be hitting uncomfortably close to the mark in areas people don’t want to examine. I dare say the majority of negative responses could be better interpreted as feeling uncomfortable rather than simply disliking the piece or topic. From time to time we demo Trigger for different groups of youth workers, students, and others. These viewings are typically followed by immediate silence. At first we found this a little unnerving but have come to learn the silence is testament to the viewers’ emotional boat rocking and them needing a moment to process what they just saw. Fortunately after those few anxious moments, excited discussion commonly follows the brief silence.
COLLIDE: Your short films don’t offer a lot of answers or conclusions. Do you see that as a risky approach to church media?
Hubers: Trigger is designed specifically to not come to a conclusion or answer questions. The goal is to raise more questions than it answers and not to be a turnkey video product that wraps everything up nicely. We have constructed Trigger like this for a few different reasons. The first being that we believe if you are given the answer you will never wrestle with the question. We want nothing more than a viewer to be laying awake in their bed running over the Trigger video they saw earlier in the day, dissecting it, testing it, and trying to synthesize it with their worldview. We believe that it’s through this wrestling that growth and maturity are born. The second and perhaps more important reason Trigger is designed like this is to enter into partnership with those presenting Trigger to a group. We feel it’s a little presumptuous of us to come into your small group via video and start throwing out answers without being in community with the viewers. The presenter of Trigger usually has (or if not, should have) a relationship with the audience on some level, even if it’s just being familiar with the local community or the “flavor” of an area. Thus, Trigger is meant to create an itch that a facilitator can then come in and scratch with the gospel message. This allows the facilitator to pour his or her own story into the presentation in a very personal way that can address the specific dynamic of a particular group.
Admittedly, this is not as easy as a turnkey ministry solution, allowing you to throw a video in with no preparation that answers all the questions and leaves the facilitator out of an opportunity for discipleship. Trigger requires prayer and preparation and should not be thrown into the DVD player in the last minute because you ran out of time this week to prepare a lesson. We have met many passionate youth workers, pastors, teachers, and therapists that love the people they minister to intensely. Simply put, it’s our goal to co-labor with these people, equipping them with a tool that will hopefully open more doors with their audience by allowing deeper conversations, vulnerability, and growth.
No, I don’t see this as risky. As I get older I find myself getting more wary of people who claim to have either never had a crisis of belief or who aren’t consistently doing a spiritual gut-check on what they believe. If we can help facilitate these moments of authenticity in belief and/or doubt, then I think we have accomplished one of our roles as a member of the body of Christ. To come to a moment when you come to the edge and, with "fear and trembling," still jump, trusting God will catch you, is a beautiful thing.
For more information about the Trigger series from Passenger Productions, visit www.whatistrigger.com.