The story behind the story: Deseret Book is helping distribute Truman Madsen's new DVD series. Here is their interview on how the project came about.
Interviewer: What was your intention in making this series?
TGM: The idea was to trace the Prophet's life as if I were there with my own family.
Interviewer: So these are not formal lectures?
TGM: They are more an attempt to relive the origin-events through the eyes of the Prophet and those closest to him. We wanted it to be candid, personable, intimate.
Interviewer: So who is your intended audience?
TGM: We recognize that many people will never be able to make a church history tour. This can be a beginning of a vicarious experience. Or it may help prepare them for actual visits.
Interviewer: Could we say this is a video version of your Joseph Smith CD's?
TGM: It's more. Recent years have increased specialized research on every aspect of the Prophet's life and teaching. I have benefited from this. The Church will soon have available 30 volumes of Joseph Smith papers ranging from everything Joseph wrote and said to reliability-rankings of the sources.
In this series we touch the highlights.
Interviewer: So how will the series differ from films now being shown at the various Visitors Centers?
TGM: This is not a feature film. Not an attempt to dramatize events. It is an on-site documentary with only one narrator. That leaves room for commentary. We are calling it "Reflections on Joseph Smith"-- more than re-telling the story.
Interviewer: But can you really get back to the situations as they were? So much is gone.
TGM: We tried to film pristine settings. Meticulous archeology and historical work has enabled some authentic reconstructions. For example, the Smith cabin in Palmyra, the Whitmer farmhouse, the Grandin press. In Nauvoo the Community of Christ has restored the Brick Store.
Interviewer: Do you try to portray Joseph's teachings as well as his life?
TGM: Yes, all we can in context. When we were upstairs in the Johnson home and started an account of the Vision-- D&C; 76--we became so enthralled we spent much more time on that than on related events. At Kirtland we touched only lightly on the history in order to give more scope to Joseph's Temple teachings, inside and out.
Interviewer: In your probing the sources, did you come up with any modifications in the story? Any surprises?
TGM: Yes. Some. But beyond that we tried to capture the significance of the story in 200 year retrospect . Small things, commonplace events have become vast in influence. True to Joseph's vision this restoration story is not of an isolated sect but a world movement. "The whole plan of the kingdom."
Interviewer: Do you think the early participants realized that they were making history in such a way?
TGM: Some did. But it's like reading McCullough's 1776. Time after time ordinary and flawed men and women face insurmountable odds. The cause seems hopeless and then something happens to tip the balance forward. I have read Washington, Jefferson Adams, Lincoln. I can't escape a feeling of wonderment that this tiny set of colonies became the United States.
Like the emerging free nation, the sheer survival of the Church is remarkable; let alone its burgeoning growth. Some call it fate. Some call it blind chance. But it is hard not to see the hand of providence.
Interviewer: Who produced and directed the series?
TGM: The two kingpins are Peter Johnson and Nicholas Gasdik. Peter recently directed "Between Heaven and Earth" utilizing several renowned Biblical scholars. Also "Journey of Faith." Nicholas Gasdik wrote "The Mountain of the Lord," the story of the Salt Lake Temple. They make a remarkable team.
Interviewer: Who was behind the camera?
TGM: Peter's Director of Photography was Brian Wilcox with his hand-picked associates. Brian's most recent work traces the Lehi Journey in the treacherous Arabian peninsula as seen in "Journey of Faith." Brian is a patient perfectionist. The landscapes are breathtaking. Peter wanted the viewer to experience the ambience of Joseph's life. So he shows not only landscapes but dwells on the interiors of homes. One of my favorites shows sunlight and shadow play across a Smith family chair.
Interviewer: So you do both indoor and outdoor shots?
TGM: Yes. One of our guidelines as we began was B.H. Roberts' quote from Emerson: "Ever does natural beauty steal in like air and envelop great actions." The events of modern Church history are enhanced by natural beauty: The Vermont birthplace, the Sacred Grove, Harmony by the Susquehannah, Seneca Lake, the lush green valleys of Adam-ondi-Ahman. Karl Anderson in Kirtland rightly calls the Morley farm "the sacred grove of the west." All this not to mention Nauvoo.
Of course, we cannot say this of the jails, Liberty, Carthage. Yet even there�..
Interviewer: Is your video series in high tech meaning high definition?
TGM: Yes. We know that most TV's will soon have HD reception. I have seen clips of our series in this mode. They are almost three-dimensional.
Interviewer: Are you using everything you filmed or did you edit it down?
TGM: We reduced 100 hours of footage to eight episodes of about an hour each.
Interviewer: So a lot ended on the editing room floor?
TGM: Yes. Quite a lot.
Interviewer: Was this series sponsored by the Church or the university?
TGM: We sought counsel. But we were encouraged to do it on our own. It was funded independently by contributors to the Gazelam Foundation our non-profit unit. Whatever costs we recover, if any, will be plowed back into the foundation.
Interviewer. Gazelam Foundation? Where did you get that name?
TGM: With a jeweler's eye you can find it in the Book of Mormon. It means "seer." In the earliest sections of the D&C; when there were security reasons to use code for the leaders, "Gazelam" was one of the names of Joseph Smith. And of course, as I keep saying, Joseph Smith as seer saw what, through him, we can see. He is in a way transparent to the ultimate seer, the Christ.
Over the years Gazelam foundation has been involved in many--mostly academic-- projects. This is one of the most ambitious.
Interviewer: Who wrote the script?
TGM: There was no script.
Interviewer: But you must have had notes and a teleprompter.
TGM: We tried to prepare so well the biographical string of pearls that it would be "on tap." We agreed it would have more appeal if there was spontaneity. So once the camera was set up and rolling I had free rein.
Interviewer: You have a reputation for memorizing but you surely didn't just wing it.
TGM: For many years I have given hours a week to the original sources and tried to "store "them. The "script" emerged from my encounter with trusted documents and then impressions on the spot. How to be faithful to the sources, conversational and informative all at the same time�. that's a lot to ask. But we tried.
Interviewer: Listening to your CD's on Joseph Smith and on the Presidents one can detect a mix of objectivity and subjectivity. In any case you are "in to it." Your feelings come through. Did you try to avoid that in these videos?
TGM: Like so many who are immersed in Church history, I have come to the feeling "I was there." I am not a detached spectator. So on film I slip from "they" into "we" or "our". At each place I was touched. I didn't try to hide that. Sometimes--you can't predict�I was so moved I had to turn away from the camera. Over my protest, Peter left some of those moments in.
Interviewer: Is there a story behind your title, "On Sacred Ground."
TGM: I once was visited by a man who drove from Vermont to Cambridge to ask me (he didn't know where else to go) "I just came from your "park" up there in Vermont. I felt something. What is it?" I tried to tell him that it was dedicated�hallowed�by modern men and women of God. I didn't tell him that Junius Wells who established the monument at South Rolyalton said coming to the birthplace was like coming into the Temple. .
When I returned home I researched how many of these "sites" and "sights" have been dedicated by our leaders. Conclusion: Almost all. As we went place to place, even some crew members not of our faith almost felt like we should take off our shoes. That's how we hit on the title "On Sacred Ground."
Interviewer: Did you interview others along the way. Locals? Guides or students? Old timers?
TGM: Not on camera. We were there in high season a flow of people--some curious, some trying to regain their legacy, others involved in pageants or concerts. Many had stories to tell of their forbears.
Interviewer: People know your writings but many more respond to the audio? Is that a rationale for this project?
TGM: When Chaim Potok visited BYU I said to him that some of his writing is so evocative that one word is worth a thousand pictures. Too many visual aids can distract.
We think it is crucial to leave room for imagination. We show the locations. But the personal meaning of the story travels on the words and on the silent moments and on the music.
Interviewer: You have music?
TGM: Yes. It accompanies the narratives as well as the pauses and cutaways�giving a little time for solitude and reflection.
Interviewer: Is it an original score?
TGM: Yes. Composed and orchestrated by the combined talents of Arlen Card and Nick Gasdik.
Who can estimate the power of music? One evening in Nauvoo, we sat in a van on the west side of the Nauvoo temple. Light was flooding from within as from without. It shone like alabaster. We were all bone-tired that night. I popped in a CD of Mack Wilberg's soaring arrangement of "Redeemer of Israel. " As it built we could feel . visualize .. sense�the saints at terrible cost coming up the river stripped of almost everything except their faith, braver than they knew. We could feel them both arriving and leaving�singing "The hour of redemption is near ."
..."our only delight."
...our shadow by day
...our pillar by night
...Our king our Deliverer our all."
I have said over and over you don't need to Hollywood-ize the story of Joseph Smith or of those who surrounded him. Even in stark skeletal outline it is high drama.
Interviewer: Do you expect this series will reach as many places as your tapes and CD's?
TGM: We just hope it has a place. There is so much out there, in every literary and media mode, and all kinds of angles and approaches.
We thought of putting Joseph's prediction on the cover of the DVD's. "Generations yet unborn will dwell with peculiar delight on the scenes we have passed through."1 He said that in 1841. It's happening all over the world. We wanted to be a part of it
Interviewer: Have you shown a preview to anyone?
TGM A four-minute slice was presented this year at BYU Homecoming Evening concerts. Jayne Clayson was the hostess. Her introduction gave it a touch of awe. It was shown on a double screen. Both nights the response was very encouraging.
Interviewer: Will there be a written transcript of the DVD's? So viewers can read as well as watch?
TGM: Down the road, yes. We are documenting and footnoting the transcript. It will provide suggestions on where the viewer can go to amplify his grasp of the latest materials. All due respect to the best of the many attempts at biographies and definitive articles, including mine, there is always more.
Interviewer: How will the DVD's be distributed?
TGM: Two at a time over the next six months. The first two--Vermont and New York--are available on our website: TrumanMadsen.com. Also in LDS bookstores everywhere. On the web one click will buy it and have it sent.
1 generations yet unborn will dwell with peculiar delight upon the scenes that we have passed through, the privations that we have endured; the untiring zeal that we have manifested; the insurmountable difficulties that we have overcome in laying the foundation of a work that brought about the glory and blessings which they will realize; a work that God and angels have contemplated with delight, for generations past; that fired the souls of the ancient patriarchs and prophets�a work that is destined to bring about the destruction of the powers of darkness, the renovation of the earth, the glory of God, and the salvation of the human family. Times and Seasons, Vol 3, October 1841, 776.