David Batty is a British film producer and direction who works with an outfit called Far Away Films (and Big Book Media).  He is the person, with help from his aide de camp, Rob Slater who convinced me to come help them do the shoot for the Easter special for the BBC which will also feature James Strange, Greg Carey, Simon Gathercole, Tom Wright,  Helen Bond, Stephan and Claire Pfann,  Ronnie Reich, and others.  There is about an equal number of U.K. and U.S. scholars involved along with various Israeli archaeologists who are interviewed on the sites. 

 

We were filming in two places—- Jerusalem (see the previous post on the Pool of Siloam), and in Galilee at Banyas (Caesarea Philippi).  Our filming in Jerusalem took us to the Wailing Wall on a Thursday, Bar Mitzvah day.  Above is a mural you see of the Cardo in old Jerusalem, located on the entrance ramp into the Western Wall complex.

 

 

I too prayed at the Wailing Wall and left two prayers on paper in the wall, as is the custom of the pilgrims.  Mine said Baruch ha Shem ha Mashiach Yeshua.  I will let you figure out the Hebrew.

This is a shot of David Batty talking to me and the sound man, Darrell, while we are sitting filming on the Mt. of Olives. Unfortunately Charlie the jackhammer dude was working away across the valley and we had many interruptions that afternoon, but finally got it done.

We were filming in the garden to the right and above the church of all Nations depicted above, and you can also see the dome of the Orthodox monastery as well.

 

Our hotel, the Meridian, was located outside the old city walls, behind the Cathedral of St. George (Anglican)  seen above.

Here we are in the back garden of Steve and Claire Pfann’s house on Mt. Scopus shooting away. They have a lovely flat, complete with pictures taken from the top of Egyptian sarcophagi, of Greco-Roman persons who lived in Egypt.

The shots above are from Banyas. Jesus chose to reveal himself as Messiah, Son of God and Son of Man outside the Holy Land in a pagan city where various Greco-Roman deities were worshipped including the Emperor (see the ruins of the Temple of Augustus).  As Tom Wright likes to say,  Jesus is the reality of which the Emperor, worshipped in the Emperor cult, is the parody.   Our shoot at Banyas was marred by a noisy park guard who wanted to go home at 3, even though we had paid to shoot until 4.  It was annoying, but we got the final dialogue shots done outside the park.

Here you see above from left to right our driver George, our cameraman Ben, me, David Batty, Nava our fixer, Darrell the sound man,  James Strange, and Rob Slater kindly took the picture in front of the hotel we stayed at in Tiberias.   A good time was had by all.