Jonah treatment

I've been holed up the last couple of days focusing on writing the treatment for "Jonah and the Great Fish." It's a challenge to sequester myself, since there are many things going on that are of interest. But I know that until I get a treatment done, all the other departments are in limbo. For example, I got a call yesterday from Ken Eklof, who has spent the past month in Nauvoo performing the role of Brigham Young. While Ken is a talented performer, he is also our set designer, and he is keenly interested in knowing what he can start planning on. He was hoping to send his boys down to the studio to start tearing down the village market set from Daniel. But I told him that it is possible we could want to hold onto that set to adapt for Ninevah.

But that, based on the principle of dominos, creates the problem of where to build our boat and great fish sets. At this stage, I don't see how we can fit all the sets in our current space unless we spread the shoot out to allow time for a major rebuild. But, we're early in the process and new ideas could still occur that could help us figure out a workable solution.

Anyway, I finished a draft of the treatment about an hour ago. I'm pretty pleased with it, although it still needs some massaging. For one thing, right now it's only got 5 songs in it. Normally, we get about twice that. So we'll have to look closer at that. I would like to flesh it out a little more, but on the other hand, I don't want the story to drag out, like some old musical that feels like it's breaking into a song every fifth minute. That problem notwithstanding, once again I am in awe of how rich the scriptures can be as you dig into them and start to imagine what the participants were like and how they must've felt in the various situations in which they found themselves. Plus, as I dig into the stories, I'm always struck by how many "liken" angles we could use.

On another front, saw a two-page spread on "Daniel" that is going in a magazine next month. It was designed by our new marketing guru, Brandon Very nicely done. He's very talented on the creative end, as well as the implementation of the creative stuff. Nice combination.

Rod's been cranking away at the rough cut of Daniel. If all goes well, we should have something to watch this weekend.

Getting tired. Think I must call it a night. Hopefully, in the morning, I'll have fresh eyes that will help me tighten up this treatment before I send it out to the team for their input.