Logos on the TV

Late last week, the Logos offices were invaded by acamera crew shooting footage for the Bellingham/Whatcom 2006Large Business of the Year awards ceremony.

Logos Bible Softwarehas been selected asa finalist for the award, which is sponsored every year by the Bellingham/Whatcom Chamber of Commerce & Industry.

It may be some indicator of Bellingham’ssmall-town sizethat we made the Large Business category with a little over 100 employees. And it may be an indicator of how boring our work appears on camera that the crew asked us to set up staged shots instead of filming the normal yawn-fest that is abuilding fullof people sitting at computers.

Here we see a staged interaction between a “walk-in customer” (Naomi, a member of the text development department) and receptionist Andrea. We do get a few walk-in customers every year…so I guess it’s not completely unrealistic.

Bob, hard at work in his office. The camera guy says, “Just keep opening and closing stuff on the screen to make it look like there’s constant activity.” For the record, it’s rare to see Bob in a state other than constant activity.

The producer wanted something that would give the “contemplative,” “studious” look he associates with Bible study…so we recruited another text developer to play the part. Here’s Kirk doing something studious that involves a bunch of old books and a laptop.

Will viewers be left with the impression that we sit at mahogany bookcases and type in the books one by one? It’s hard to say…

This experiencecertainly does little to dispel the notion that television values style over substance. Granted, the final product of this footage is intended to be a one-minute profile of the company, not a documentaryof the book-developing process. But I’m afraid that what most visitors would see on a normal day at Logos is, at least on the surface,less interesting than the TV portrayal.

Of course Logos has a veryinteresting story to tell, and we enjoy relating highlights here on the blog. But telling the real storyrequires an investment of time, a desire to grasp the details, andmore than a minute!