Faith and the Documentary Filmmaker: Production on Jesus Camp

During production on the 2005 film The Boys of Baraka, a documentary about a group of boys from the poorest district of Baltimore who are sent to study for two years at a private school in Kenya, filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady met a boy named Devon. At the age of 11, Devon was already a child preacher at his Baptist church in Baltimore. "Neither Rachel nor I had met a child preacher with that kind of charisma and devotion, and we were intrigued by him," says Ewing. "Both of us are interested in religion, and it's an extremely topical subject right now. We thought it would be interesting to approach the subject by looking at it through the eyes of 9 and 10 year olds."

After some research on the Internet, Ewing and Grady cold-called Pastor Becky Fischer, who runs Kids on Fire, a summer camp in the improbably named town of Devil's Lake, N.D. "Yeah, it's a little ironic," says Ewing. "The name bothers them, too."

The camp and the ministry, both targeted to children, attempt to reinforce Christian values, strengthen the children's faith and help them hone their prophetic skills so they can, as Fischer says in the film, "take back America for Christ." Instead of documenting child preachers, Ewing and Grady's idea evolved into Jesus Camp, an 86-minute documentary about Fischer's faith-based summer camp.

It was through Fischer that Ewing and Grady met Levi, Rachael and Tory, the three children they focus on in the documentary. "We were looking for kids who seemed very sincere," says Grady. "When I'm looking for a good character, the thing that makes me feel comfortable about choosing someone to be in a movie is if they act the same all the time, whether or not I'm filming them. [The kids we chose] all had personalities that were well formed, and they were all very articulate and likeable. They just popped out at us."

On the flip side, Grady has learned that if she meets with any resistance, "I don't film someone. And I especially don't cast them as a main character. With all of the kids we ended up casting, the parents were excited about the film and thought it would be a good opportunity to convey their message."

To allay any concerns about how the children, their families and the larger community would be portrayed, Ewing and Grady explained to the parents that they didn't favor voiceover narration and other overtly subjective documentary filmmaking techniques. "It's always surprising to a lot of secular audiences that they allowed us access to their community," says Ewing. "But they feel empowered and proud of what they do. There was not that much resistance. Across the board, they were surprised that a secular crew would be interested in what they had to say."

Over a period of nine to ten months beginning in May 2005, Ewing and Grady shot Jesus Camp with an all-female crew, including cinematographers Mira Cheng and Jenna Rosher. One or both of the DPs would shoot using Panasonic DVX100A camcorders, with Ewing occasionally operating an additional camera. "We don't usually shoot with two DPs," says Ewing, "but because of the group scenes at camp, we didn't want to miss anything."

The decision to use an all-female production crew was a conscious one. As Grady explains, "We thought that with two of our characters being young girls who have very protective parents, it would be easier to shoot with all women. And I think we were right about that."

The biggest single portion of the film takes place at Kids on Fire, but Ewing and Grady also documented the children at home, shot interviews with their families and followed them to special events, including trips to Washington, D.C. All the while the filmmakers remained conscious of the provocative subject matter they had chosen.

"We wanted to be really straightforward. We really tried to avoid clichés and not put too many shots of churches in the movies. We did some shorthand shooting to show the heartland and the suburbs. We tried to explain a lot about where they live and where they're from with just a few shots," says Ewing.

Part of the film's appeal is its unvarnished intimacy, which the filmmakers achieved with their typical approach: allowing their subjects do the talking and spending enough time with them to capture genuinely emotional moments. Ewing and Grady were also fortunate that their subjects weren't prone to performing or showing off for the camera. "Quite honestly, they weren't that impressed with being in the film," says Ewing. "They never asked to see footage of themselves played back. There was not a lot of goofing off."

"What really stands out to me is their virtual lack of interest in the seeing the movie," echoes Grady. "They were curious, but they have a much higher calling than being in a movie. And they will come right out and tell you that. While the boys in Baraka wanted to see footage of themselves immediately, these kids were very nonchalant."

During production, Ewing and Grady recorded their own sound, often setting up an additional camera that was wired directly to the sound board at church events. "The sound is good in the film, but getting it was very challenging because there was a lot of screaming and crying," says Ewing.

Ewing and Grady were fortunate to have the luxury of cutting while shooting. Editor Enat Sidi started working on Jesus Camp in August, three months after shooting began. Cutting on an Avid Xpress Pro system at the Tribeca office of Loki Films, she continued editing up until the film's premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in May 2006. "I'm not proud to say that we have almost 300 hours of footage, but a lot of that is [from] two cameras," says Ewing.

Culling this material and shaping it into a narrative proved to be a more difficult task than Ewing and Grady had anticipated. "It was much harder than Boys of Baraka, which had a strong natural arc with three clear acts," says Grady. "With this film, we had the problem that most documentary filmmakers face, and we had to create the arc from scratch." Ewing and Grady decided that in the first act they would introduce the characters and subject matter, in the second act they would focus on the experience of attending camp, and in the third act they would explore how attending the camp had affected the children.

Even then they found themselves facing a conundrum. Seven months into editing, Ewing and Grady realized that, despite having compelling characters and themes, Jesus Camp had absolutely no conflict. "There was a flatness to it, and we thought it was necessary to bring in another voice," says Ewing. "We wanted to find a Christian voice, but someone who does not believe that Christians should be so involved in political life. We really went looking for this person."

They eventually found Mike Papantonio, a prominent Florida attorney who, along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., co-hosts the weekly Air America radio program Ring of Fire. The filmmakers shot an episode of the call-in show in which Fischer telephones and debates Papantonio on various issues, including the politicization of evangelical Christianity and the separation of church and state. Ewing and Grady used snippets of this discussion to punctuate Jesus Camp. "It's obviously a device we use in the movie, and we were a little uncomfortable doing it, but we felt it was necessary," says Ewing. "He's like a pressure valve. He lets out the steam by saying what viewers might be thinking."

Regardless of viewers' religious beliefs or how they feel about the separation of religion and government, Jesus Camp will be a litmus test for audiences, but one that is in a unique position to be exploitable by both evangelical Christians and secular humanists. "I think the most amazing thing that could happen is if both sides use this film for their own ends," says Ewing. "Then we know we've really made a balanced movie."