Shooting bookends

In the middle of shooting the modern-day bookends for three Liken the Scriptures movies. On Friday, we shot two major scenes at Dixon Middle School in Provo. These were two rehearsals for two school school concerts.

The first is for an alternate, ecumenical version of our "David & Goliath" movie. It concerns a young girl, Amelia, who is asked by her choir teacher if she would be willing to fill in for another girl who has fallen ill in the concert's teacher-student duet. To help build Amelia's courage, the wise teacher, played nicely by Angela Winston, tells Amelia that sometimes we have something inside us that we may not see ourselves, but "Somebody up there does." To illustrate, she tells her the story of a young shepherd, named David. We have already shot and released another version of the movie, which features a young boy overcoming the challenge of giving a talk in Stake Conference, but we also want to release a version that might be more readily understood by a broader audience.

The second rehearsal involves the same young girl, Amelia, some months later, when she finds out that her teacher has been suspended for refusing to remove the song "Silent Night" from the upcoming Winter Festival concert. The district administrator, played wonderfully by George Dyer, steps in to take over as the choir teacher.

I was delighted with the way both scenes played out. It was a long day, but we got about 10 pages shot.

The next day, Saturday, was an even bigger challenge. We shot the two school concerts that went with each of the rehearsals we shot on Saturday. We had about 370 people volunteer (bless their hearts) to be members of the audience. In addition, we had about another 40 cast members, and a crew of probably 50 or so. If I'm right on my math, that's about 460 people on location -- a new record for us (and one that I hope stands for a long time).

Given the numbers, I thought the day went as smoothly as possible. I'm truly grateful for my wife, Suzanne, for heading up craft services so graciously. I thought yesterday how that project that she handles on a volunteer-basis has grown from feeding a tiny cast and crew on the early movies with trips to KFC to this fairly full blown operation. She's got some wonderful helpers, too. I noticed my daughter, Danielle, getting up at 4 a.m. to and pitching in throughout the long day without a complaint. (My other two daughters, Katie and Alexandra, help out too at the check-in table and wherever else they're needed.)

When it comes time to shoot the concert scenes, people are very patient and give it their best to get into the spirit of the scenes. In both concerts, I was moved to tears many times (granted, not an especially hard thing to get me to do -- but still!), and as I looked around, I could see I was not alone. Frank Gerrish, who plays George, the housekeeper, told me that he brought some stuff that actors put in their eyes to produce tears, but found that he didn't need them. Very touching scenes. I feel deeply appreciative of everyone who worked so hard to make those scenes possible. I truly hope we have been able to capture the feeling we were hoping to get.

When the day ends, there's still a few hours of wrap up work to do, and by the time we get home, we are zombies. But we are happy zombies, and we are looking forward with great anticipation to the rest of the Sabbath. Tomorrow, Monday, we are back at it at a different location in Orem. I'll write more about that (hopefully) soon.