Fake Fire
Stories
Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit
Series IV Cycle C
I live in Colorado, a beautiful place to live. But summers lately have been hot and dry, and the national forests are vulnerable to wildfires.
The summer of 2002 was particularly difficult. Fires began burning as early as April. In June, the Hayman fire destroyed over 100,000 acres of forest and consumed hundreds of buildings, including homes. When the wind was right, the smoke hung like an apocalyptic cloud over the city of Denver, dropping ash and smoke particles, and posing a serious health hazard, especially to those with asthma or lung disease. The cost to fight this fire alone exceeded $25 million.
Then, incredibly, we learned that a forest service employee had set the fire! After the Show Low fire had consumed over 300,000 acres in Arizona, another forest service employee was arrested for starting this inferno as well.
We're fascinated with fire. We've even developed myths to explain how fire came to mortals. It was Prometheus, we learn, who carried fire from the gods of Olympus to the mortals on earth, and paid dearly for his trouble.
Fire can heat us or hurt us, warm us or waste us. We enjoy its glow in a fireplace, its comforting presence at a campfire, and its flame on a candle. We're intrigued by its mystery when we strike a match and watch the phosphorus tip explode into flame.
Hollywood even needs fire for its action scenes. What Die Hard, or Lethal Weapon, or Terminator movie could hit the screen without flashy pyrotechnics, exploding buildings that turn into a ball of flame, cars that fly into the air and hit the ground in a maelstrom of roiling fire, or houses that become raging infernos?
Creating such effects is not only difficult but very dangerous. That's why PDI/DreamWorks visual effects supervisor, Ken Bielenberg, is trying to create the first photo-realistic, completely computer-generated flames. To do this, he's already spent hours in the studio parking lot lighting fires; he studies flame footage in the studio. When the animated movie Shrek hit the theatres in 2001, his work was prominently featured. The breath of the dragon and the burning bridge all emerged from his pixilated work. There was so much detail in these frames of fire that just one of the 1,400 processors used to create the fire took thirty hours to render just one frame.
Fake fire. Hollywood can do it. The church can't. Pentecost is about fire, flames of fire. It's about power. It's about the Holy Spirit energizing what would otherwise be a powerless church.
Some churches have gone so high tech, they think they're the religious counterpart to PDI/DreamWorks. Fiddle with your pixels if you want, but you can't computer-generate the Holy Spirit. The fire's got to be real.
The summer of 2002 was particularly difficult. Fires began burning as early as April. In June, the Hayman fire destroyed over 100,000 acres of forest and consumed hundreds of buildings, including homes. When the wind was right, the smoke hung like an apocalyptic cloud over the city of Denver, dropping ash and smoke particles, and posing a serious health hazard, especially to those with asthma or lung disease. The cost to fight this fire alone exceeded $25 million.
Then, incredibly, we learned that a forest service employee had set the fire! After the Show Low fire had consumed over 300,000 acres in Arizona, another forest service employee was arrested for starting this inferno as well.
We're fascinated with fire. We've even developed myths to explain how fire came to mortals. It was Prometheus, we learn, who carried fire from the gods of Olympus to the mortals on earth, and paid dearly for his trouble.
Fire can heat us or hurt us, warm us or waste us. We enjoy its glow in a fireplace, its comforting presence at a campfire, and its flame on a candle. We're intrigued by its mystery when we strike a match and watch the phosphorus tip explode into flame.
Hollywood even needs fire for its action scenes. What Die Hard, or Lethal Weapon, or Terminator movie could hit the screen without flashy pyrotechnics, exploding buildings that turn into a ball of flame, cars that fly into the air and hit the ground in a maelstrom of roiling fire, or houses that become raging infernos?
Creating such effects is not only difficult but very dangerous. That's why PDI/DreamWorks visual effects supervisor, Ken Bielenberg, is trying to create the first photo-realistic, completely computer-generated flames. To do this, he's already spent hours in the studio parking lot lighting fires; he studies flame footage in the studio. When the animated movie Shrek hit the theatres in 2001, his work was prominently featured. The breath of the dragon and the burning bridge all emerged from his pixilated work. There was so much detail in these frames of fire that just one of the 1,400 processors used to create the fire took thirty hours to render just one frame.
Fake fire. Hollywood can do it. The church can't. Pentecost is about fire, flames of fire. It's about power. It's about the Holy Spirit energizing what would otherwise be a powerless church.
Some churches have gone so high tech, they think they're the religious counterpart to PDI/DreamWorks. Fiddle with your pixels if you want, but you can't computer-generate the Holy Spirit. The fire's got to be real.
