“Why read the Bible when you can watch it?” cheekily asks Jason Blaiklock, from Sydney’s northern beaches, who spent a year full time teaching himself video editing skills and putting the app together.

More seriously, his motive was to put a Bible on his kids iPads. Blaiklock, 46, is married with four daughters aged 2 weeks to fourteen. “They love it,” he says. “My eight year old watches four chapters a night.”

“I found reading even a chapter of the Bible with them before, tough going. They would nod off.

“You can have your quiet time on the bus,” he adds.

Blaiklock is concerned to present the Bible text as he believes most movies distort it.

There are over 80 hours of screen time in the app which draws on movie titles, public domain works, orphan works, archive clips and over 1,000 stock footage clips. The app has access to Bible audio recordings in many languages by arrangement with Faith Comes By Hearing, a large US-based mission agency that specialises (as their name suggests) in recordings of the scriptures.

The www.biblemovie.com.au website presents the legal case for “mash-ups”. It argues that this product will fall into the “fair use” category under U.S. Law, and the app is set up as an educational tool with translations into many languages.

“The vision of the Bible Movie App is to see those in the majority world (where there are as many mobile phones as people) empowered and equipped by this text coming to life,” says Blaiklock.

Blaiklock, who began his project without any media background, is not backed by a charity or organisation – he is an Aussie Dad who has pursued his own dream. He is relying on word of mouth and Christian news websites like this one to spread the word about his app which first went up in September. The app is available on iTunes and Android.

Full details and samples of the app are available at http://biblemovie.com.au.