12 Feb Love – Behind the Scenes – February 2017; Our Plan & Process

Life App: Love – Choosing to treat others the way you want to be treated. 
Theme: Behind The Scenes
Date: February 2017

Inspiration from Lucille Ball

Growing up, I Love Lucy was one of my favorite TV shows. Now, before you go thinking I am THAT old (although I am getting up there in my years), I watched this beloved show in re-runs. I did NOT see it in real time. 

At any rate, I just loved the silly antics that Lucy would get herself into and how she was always thinking about how to get things done or make things happen. Lucy Ricardo is actually quite creative if you think about it. Nevertheless, my husband often tells me he thinks I watched a bit too much I Love Lucy because my life often resembles an I Love Lucy episode. I tend to get myself into jams often and there is no shortage of antics (usually unplanned) that find their way into my days. 

So, when I heard we were focusing on the Life App of Love this February, I knew I wanted to somehow channel my “inner Lucy Ricardo” and create a set that could connect to my favorite childhood show.

Going Vintage

Since the scripts for this month offered an option to take place on a working movie set, our team decided to go with a vintage style. Like the set of I Love Lucy or any vintage film, we’d have prop boxes, costume racks, a vanity table, an old-fashioned camera (thank you 252 Basics Partners Page for the idea!) and more.

We knew we wanted to somehow incorporate the I Love Lucy heart from the opener of the show onto our backdrop. The only problem we faced was that kids in the elementary phase may not exactly be familiar with I Love Lucy. Quite honestly, a lot of adults in our environment might not be either, so we knew we needed to make some connections.

Bridging the Gap

We decided that we would take the I Love Lucy heart from the opener and project it onto our backdrop, but we’d change the lettering to say “I Love C3 Kids” (that’s the name of our Children’s Ministry environment). We also decided that we would write something into the Opener each week where the host would reference the old I Love Lucy show, display some funny pictures from various episodes, possibly share the opener of the show, and then connect it to our “I Love C3 Kids” idea. 

We wanted the connection to be bigger than just our backdrop, so we decided to go with the 252 Basics script that had the host filming a movie all month long. Our movie would be called “I Love C3 Kids.” My daughter created an opener for our movie that mimicked the opener of I Love Lucy, but represented C3 Kids instead.

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/203655473[/vimeo]

In order to connect all of this to the Life App itself, we decided the host would talk with the kids each week about how he loves C3 Kids because they do such an awesome job displaying the Life App of Love and he wanted to incorporate that into his movie! So, he’d be on the lookout as they showed love for God in worship and for each other as they worked together in their small groups; listening, caring and praying for one another. Our host was going to capture that on film all month long and on Week 4 of the month, he’d have his finished blockbuster hit – “I Love C3 Kids!”

Our Process

In addition to editing the Opener of each week’s scripts to include this I Love Lucy/I Love C3 Kids info, we needed to create our set! Here is what we did:

• We projected the I Love Lucy heart on our backdrop and changed the wording to say I Love C3 Kids 
• We painted the backdrop gray, the heart white, and the outline of the heart and lettering black
• We gathered props, costumes, stage lights, extension cords, film canisters, a director’s chair, clapper, megaphone, and anything that you would see on a movie set
• We used a 2’x4′ folding table as the base of the vanity and created a surrounding base and backing from insulation foam
• We attached mirrors to the back of the vanity
• We created faux drawers for the front of the vanity
• We drilled holes around the mirrors and used string lights with white marquee light bulbs to light the vanity
• One of our volunteers built a vintage movie camera from plywood and attached it to an old video camera tripod
• We decorated the stage to look like a working set and had the heart backdrop revealed on Week 1 from behind curtains

The Next Generation

We definitely took a chance using such an old show with such a young audience. And, we realized it was a bit of a stretch. Outside of the big heart in the opener and the word love in the title, I Love Lucy doesn’t have much to do with the Life App of Love. It could have been a big flop as it is hardly relevant to their current lives, other than the fact that TV Land shows re-runs all the time. But, after Week 1, my daughter overheard one of our elementary kids walking out of our environment at dismissal and he was asking his mom if they could watch I Love Lucy on TV. 🙂 

While my greatest hope is that this month will lead kids to choose to treat others the way they want to be treated (and I would love it if they learned the bottom line each week), I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited to bring I Love Lucy to the next generation of viewers! I teased with my set design team saying – “We’re going to help these parents raise their kids right and introduce them to this classic!” Wink, wink. But hey, maybe this will create an opportunity for a family to sit down together and have a good laugh as they watch Lucy stuff chocolates in her chef’s hat or get into a bit of a jam while stomping grapes in Italy! 

I do Love Lucy… but I Love Children’s Ministry more! 

Look for a post about our finished set soon! What do your February sets look like?