Dawn Treader Footage screened at NRB 2010, Another Positive Response

It appears that the footage that we saw at the Narnia Summit a few weeks ago has been screened again. This time, at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. I’ve asked Ken Bowles, from Midwest Christian Media, to comment on just what the convention is, and give his general impressions of the footage. I’ve also edited it a bit so it’s free of some particular important spoilers. While that information is likely to get out into the general public with so many thousands having now seen the footage, I’m going to keep it as spoiler free as possible.

Ken writes:

The National Religious Broadcasters Convention has been recently drawing around 5,000 Christian leaders mainly in radio and television broadcasting. If the distributors/producers of a movie want the Christian media to talk about their movie, NRB’s annual convention is a mandatory stop. The entire Passion of the Christ was shown to the attendees of the convention before it was released in the theaters. Advance Previews of LWW and PC were seen in previous years. Disney produced an entire evening session at the convention and displayed, what I would call, a water color preview of VDT . . . before FOX took over.

Last week, it was FOX’s turn and a three and a half minute collection of clips was show on Saturday and Sunday evenings. VDT shared the program with the Gaither Vocal Band and Chuck Colson. We were warned that a lot of work remained on the colors, lighting, sound track, etc.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Here are some of the brief scenes I remember seeing:

The opening scene was puzzling at the beginning but gradually revealed the setting in history and the relation to Aslan.

We were shown the entrance to Narnia [Edited out by Paul Martin ;-)] . . . pretty exciting stuff.

Reepicheep briefly made an appearance. I was encouraged that he wasn’t created as a comic figure.

Eustace was depicted as a pretty engaging fella. It will be interesting to learn more about him.

No dufflepuds were seen that I recognized . . . maybe they were invisible.

The ship was seen in [Edited out by Paul Martin ;-)] . . . just as I thought it would be like when I read the book.

[Edited out by Paul Martin ;-)] was touching and theologically powerful.

There was a scene that depicted the deck of the Dawn Treader and the camera moved back and a blob appeared on the right side of the screen. I assume this was one of the scenes that still needed work.

Another clip showed the purple sails of the ship filled with wind.

The closing slide only indicated that the movie would be released in December, no specific date was projected. The slide was very much like those used in the Disney films and the connection was also made through the music.

Though I saw the clips twice, I’m sure I’ve left things out.

The presentation was very segmented so one didn’t get a feeling of how the story will flow, but the clips left me with a feeling of great promise and with the wish that it were December instead of March!

Ken Bowles
Midwest Christian Media