I got a note in the talkback mailbox of Time Out:
Hi Dan.
I gave LTO a plug once on Christian Forums. Your programs keep getting better and better.
Have you ever considered doing LTO as a video blog, similar (in substance, not necessarily in style) to Jonathan Fisk’s YouTube offerings?
Nathan and I cringed. The work, the time involved, the equipment, the software, the editing…none of which are free but have costs of different sorts.
Still, being an engineer I suppose, I kept mulling it over. How could we make this work, and how do we do it in the spirit of Time Out, letting the hymn do the telling?
And probably just as important, why? Which, I have to hand it to my well-grounded better half, is a very good question.
Hymns are very efficient at person-to-person group confession of the faith. When someone sings Psalm 51 out of the hymnal, “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” anyone else who knows that can’t help but jump in. The focus is on the words and the music, and when music helps us remember the Word and faith comes from hearing the Word, music is a force multiplier for the Word and thus faith.
Videos are great at communicating ideas that normally need a lot of words, but they are awful at person-to-person communication. At best, we in the break room might ask a co-worker if they saw the monster home run from the game last night, or the 14-car NASCAR crash, or the Terry Fator comedy sketch, but we would be powerless to communicate the trajectory of the ball, or how much smoke and car damage, or the humor conveyed in the outfits, the facial expressions, and the jokes of Fator’s dolls.
How many times have we said, “You had to see it,” or “You had to have been there,” because you couldn’t adequately communicate the awesomeness of what you saw?
MTV doesn’t even show music videos any more. Nobody shouts, “digital waterfall in ‘The Reflex’!” or “catamaran in ‘Rio’!” or “chase through Sri Lanka jungle in ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’!” at Duran Duran’s concerts. Concertgoers sing the songs. They have fun singing the songs together.
But what did those music videos convey? They showed the band. They showed fun and thrill. The showed exotic locations. They stir the girls up a bit. Why? To sell albums, and in this age, to sell iTunes downloads and premium DVDs. Video thus becomes a good marketing tool, an impetus for action, and persuasion.
So what would be conveyed in a hymn video?
- Beauty and symbolism in the worship location
- Referential representation of the hymn text: still footage of Zion’s stained glass window of Mary at the tomb
- Tangential symbolism of the hymn text: action footage of a baptismal font during the lyrics, “our new life obtaining”
- The “band” — but what footage we use is less about us and more about the music
- Subtitles of the hymn lyrics themselves
- The gospel! Bible references from I Corinthians and Hebrews to bracket the video
Thus the video introduces people to the Time Out podcast, to the church, and to the faith to be conveyed through the hymns. There will not be a lot of these, and depending on how this one turns out and if I get the licensing all in order, you may not even see this one. 
They do not serve the same function as the podcast, and therefore they may even have a different audience.
It is my aim to have this video accompany the podcast for Easter Thursday. Your prayers are appreciated! The process itself fascinates me. Thanks to Mark Fergus for singing for the hymn, the majority of the camera work, and the location knowledge.
Good luck on this ambitious project!