5x5 Louer l’éternel

The title, Louer l’éternel, in French means “Praise the Eternal One” or “Praise the Lord.”

The prompt was to create a 25 second video, containing 5 scenes that were each 5 seconds long. There had to be some unifying theme. I thought immediately of my hands. I have always had an interest in including hands in my art pieces. I came up with the concept, perhaps not ingenuous, of filming from the perspective of my own eyes, what my hands would do throughout the day. Most daily tasks, habitual actions, seem banal and pointless in the grand scheme of things. However, these little actions are what build and support life. Even the seemingly silly everyday actions can be praise to God. Praising God is not necessarily joining in musical verse, or the few other things we associate it with. It can be through any and every little act of our lives, I would claim even brushing your teeth, eating breakfast, doing schoolwork, loving your neighbor, and crawling into bed. These little things are what keep us alive, that we may live well for God. St. Iraneus said, “The glory of God is a man fully alive.” To be fully alive, we must first live.

    I filmed myself brushing my teeth, eating my morning toast (which is life-changing...I have the instructions if you want them), doing homework, holding hands with a friend, and getting into bed at night. These are all silly little things, but they are still ways to praise God.

    The audio is me reciting the end of Psalm 150 in French. It reads:

“Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,
praise him with timbrel and dancing,
praise him with the strings and pipe,
praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.”

   

While these are all wonderful ways to praise God, I wanted to draw attention to the wide scape of worship by coupling this to the videos. I recorded it in French because I memorized this Psalm in my French class first semester of college. I am also studying abroad in France next semester, so I thought this would be fun.

    The background music is the ending of a piano piece my brother was kind enough to let me use. You can find his beautiful music on YouTube by searching Luke VanNortwick. :)

    It was a fun project, that made me realize how much work goes into videos. I have a much greater respect to all videographers and filmmakers. It also makes me very excited for our next project.