In a day when many scholars have reduced Christ to a historical or purely figurative being, a new seven-part documentary series called Messiah: Behold the Lamb of God, stands to affirm his identity by reconciling the historical Christ with the Christ of religious tradition.
Filmed in part on location in the Holy Land and in conjunction with the Neal A. Maxwell Institute of Religious Scholarship, this is the first documentary that covers all phases of the Savior’s life—spanning his premortal life to the resurrection and the restoration of the gospel, all told from a Latter-day Saint perspective.
DON’T MISS THE SEASON PREMIERE ON DECEMBER 6, 2009 ON BYU TV.
This second article by S. Kent Brown about the making of Messiah: Beholdthe Lamb of God explores the path by which the film climbed from a simple concept to a promising project potentially poised to become Jesus the Christ to a visual age. Read the first article here.
See a sneak preview of the documentary here.
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At the summit of eight years of work stood the prototype film, the 13-minute preview that would go to BYU’s administration for a thumbs up or a thumbs down. All was riding on this brief presentation. For me, it was as though all of time had compressed itself into those thirteen minutes. The quality of the exhibition on three select topics—modern scholarly approaches to the study of Jesus, His Sermon on the Mount and His resurrection—had to convey to a group of knowing viewers both the tone of the planned film and the range of visual and audio technologies that can be summoned to tell the story of the Christ.
For months before the prototype went into production in March 2006, Joseph Draschil had been carefully mining the script written by Stacy Snider Birk, hunting for just the right tidbits and nuances that, with proper adjustments, he could fit into a short but compelling script for the preview. Both Draschil and Birk were film students at BYU. Birk finished her work on a script in 2004, Draschil came to his tasks in 2005. But before they became involved with the film project, many legs had helped to carry the pack.
As a complete stranger to the world of film making, I set foot on the steep ascent to the prototype summit without even knowing the particulars of the climb. Clueless would be a fitting term. But I did sense the enormity of the project. While discussing the idea of the film with Noel Reynolds, a BYU vice president, I confided to him that I felt “as if something had swallowed me.” He laughed a knowing laugh.
Because of my research and publishing background, I figured out that, before all else, the film needed a conceptual, written framework. It needed a basic document to guide the treatment of Jesus’ entire story. And, I was convinced, proper perspective comes from many minds.
So after I divided the whole of Jesus’ ministry into manageable chapters, beginning from His known activities as premortal deity and ending with His prophesied roles as Judge and King of all, I recruited eight outstanding faculty members to join in writing segments of the broad story, including essential background pieces on Roman and Jewish history and events that impacted the early Christian church, leaving their deep, scarring imprint on theologians and believers alike. Thereafter I begged department chairs to allow time for these faculty members to research and write on their assigned topics. I joined them and we began to write in the summer of 1999.
As each written segment came to me from my esteemed colleagues, it was as though a droplet from an exquisite ointment had fallen onto my skin. Each portion added to the enveloping fragrance. By early 2000, all was in my hands.
I should have known, of course, that stitching together pieces written by authors with very different styles would be a daunting, meticulous effort. One of the chief challenges was not to homogenize my colleagues’ distinctive voices. Another was to create seamless bridges between parts so that those who would rely on this basic document farther up the ascent would not stumble or slip because I had failed to post clear trail markers, especially after my colleagues had skillfully shown the contours of the rising path.
So with the expert help of Patricia Ward, the administrative assistant in BYU’s Ancient Studies office, I plunged into the painstaking effort to create the project’s guide, its basic document. Ninety pages later, with piles of references packed into endnotes, after the generous help of colleagues, the project possessed its historical, cultural and doctrinal frame.
Again, the principle bore into my brain that, in such an undertaking, proper perspective comes from many minds. I was the only person who had wrestled with the basic document as an editor. And though I had shared the result with my eight colleagues, the need for a tier of reviewers pressed itself upon me.
So, with hat in hand, so to speak, I went to Robert Millet, dean of BYU’s Religious Education, and asked for monies to pay stipends to a blue-ribbon group of faculty reviewers to examine and critique the basic document. I did not want to heap the whole load of responsibility for accuracy and tone onto our group of nine authors, particularly because each of us had written only parts of the whole. After receiving a promise of funds from Religious Education, I approached a half-dozen distinguished faculty members from different academic disciplines, asking for critique and promising payment for their time and energies.
This blue-ribbon panel did not disappoint. Their insightful feedback helped me to adjust the framing of the document in important ways. For example, the document’s treatment of the encroaching apostasy during the early Christian period was weighted toward the damage done by the tantalizing tentacles of Gnosticism, a religious movement that challenged the faith of Christians across the Roman Empire, beginning in the second century AD.
The critiques required that the document emphasize more strongly the loss of priesthood authority, the diminution of spiritual gifts, and the changes in ordinances that came to characterize the early Christian church. Then the harder, steeper terrain kicked up.
Two necessities had gradually come into focus for me: the audience and a script. What groups of people are we trying to reach? The most obvious answer was college-age students and young adults. After all, the project’s home resided in a university. Besides, this age group would often be the first to run into varying views about Jesus, whether written or portrayed in other media.
But beyond young adults, who else? Was it possible, even advisable, to produce a BYU-sponsored film that would appeal, say, to a broad audience through the Public Broadcasting System? If so, the key ingredient would be to allow a diverse set of views about Jesus inside the tent, diverse enough to satisfy both PBS and a general viewing audience in North America. But the chief reward from such an effort, as became clear, would be a bouquet of flowers tossed to BYU for producing a film that speaks to people of differing religious backgrounds. “Nice job, BYU,” people would say. “We are impressed that you Mormons can present a fair and balanced treatment of Jesus of Nazareth.”
But was that what we wanted to do, to “present a fair and balanced treatment?” In such a production, we could not let the LDS perspective become dominant or PBS would not accept it. To complicate matters, after a committee began to discuss this possibility, I could only think of a dozen distinguished people of other faiths who might—might—be willing to appear on camera in a BYU-produced treatment of the Christ.
To back up a little, with the help of Thomas Lefler, the associate chair of BYU’s department of theater and media arts, I had gathered a committee to explore the questions that would face a PBS-quality film, including those of audience and technical support. The committee consisted of some widely-experienced people, including Lee Groberg and Heidi Swinton who had joined together to produce such acclaimed films as Trail of Hope and American Prophet. Our discussions were probing but seemed to stick on the question of audience. Gratefully, in our half-dozen meetings there arose the idea of a companion Website that viewers could visit for more in-depth treatments of doctrinal and historical topics. However, the indecision about the film’s audience shackled our feet so that we could not climb farther.
Because I am a compromiser at heart, in my mind I kept rolling over a seemingly endless array of approaches that would be worthy of the past and future efforts of friends and colleagues. Above all, the question crept back again and again, “What can we produce that will be a positive portrayal of the Savior?” Finally, I hit on a compromise—we should make two films. One film would tell the story of the Messiah through the lens of Latter-day Saint scripture and inspired teachings, and would be aimed principally at an LDS audience. This one, done at BYU, would capture the passion and commitment of participants, whether in front of the camera or behind it.
The second, done under the umbrella of a willing PBS-affiliated station, would consist mainly of recorded discussions between religious savants about the relevance of Jesus Christ in the modern world, with one chair occupied by a Latter-day Saint. Of course, the list of possible participants in this latter film would be rather short, for not many distinguished religious leaders are willing to go on camera with a Latter-day Saint to talk about Christ. But in my mind, this film would be doable, and it remains to be done by someone with a passion for this kind of compellingly relevant interchange.
At last, after the unstinting assistance of committee members, I had come to a decision about the Christ story—a film by Latter-day Saints for Latter-day Saints that features the honed skills of Latter-day Saint scholars. We would skip PBS and other like-minded television outlets. We would tell our own story without involving people of other faiths who would justly worry that their words would be edited to show support for an LDS view of Jesus.
During this committee-driven process, Tom Lefler began to press for a script. He made it clear to me that a script controls all else—the pacing and shape of the film, its content and tone, its visual and, to a large extent, its audio character. Fortunately for me and the project, he knew Matt Whitaker, a distinguished film maker and script writer in his own right. Between the three of us, we hatched the idea of a class on the media’s treatment of Jesus Christ. Fall semester of 2001 had already begun, but Daniel Judd, the chair of BYU’s department of Ancient Scripture, was willing to entertain my proposal for a class to begin in October, during the second block. Twelve students signed up.
Whitaker was the main teacher for the course, leading the students inside the world of film production. He introduced them to the triumphs and vagaries of media portrayals of Jesus of Nazareth. Some had succeeded in bringing together information, scenery and music in compelling ways, such as the PBS documentary, From Jesus to Christ, the production that has become, in a way, the parent of the Messiah film.
Others seemed visually flat though informatively rich, such as Origin of Christianity, a French production. All of the recent dramatic films, such as Jesus of Nazareth and the later The Passion of the Christ, had enjoyed a measure of success both in terms of visual portrayal and in terms of earnings. But they all showed gaps. They all fell short of a full grasp of who Jesus is. Class members came to perceive clearly that a fresh, more complete approach to the story of the Christ was desperately needed.
For my part, I introduced the students to the historical and cultural backdrop of the New Testament gospels and, of course, to the basic document. The class setting, while leading students to grasp how Jesus had been portrayed in a variety of media, also allowed them to discuss and refine the idea of a wide-ranging film that would go beyond what any film media had produced before.
By the time that Winter Semester 2002 rolled around, the twelve students were ready to try their hands at creating scripts for twelve distinct episodes. With careful coaching from Whitaker about the proper format of film scripts, the students plunged into their topics. Some student scripts showed a significant depth of research, others showed a refined skill in setting out the topics. All their creative efforts helped to clarify the issues that a script writer would face in shaping and filling out all the pieces in the broad story of the Messiah.
Now the table was set for an attempt by a skilled writer to produce a script. Tom Lefler and I concluded that twelve episodes were too many. So we reduced the number to seven. In consultation with John Reim, the director of BYU Broadcasting, and Beth Hedengren of the Honors Program, we chose Emily Inouye and Stacey Snider Birk to create the script. Inouye’s task was to boil down the major issues for each of the seven episodes. So she crafted and compacted the general information into a manageable package. Behind her came Birk who was a film major and, by good fortune, had been a student in the BYU Jerusalem Center program and could envision the geographical backdrop for Jesus’ mortal life. She took the research of Inouye and wrote an engaging script highlighting the key elements in LDS theology that center on the Messiah.
Though we were very pleased with the work of the two women, Lefler and I knew that the script might have omitted key elements and contain mistakes. Once again, with the generosity of Religious Education in offering compensation to reviewers, we invited a panel of experts to examine and critique the script. It was the resulting revised script, paired with the prototype of the film, that eventually won approval from university officials.
At this point, Sterling Van Wagenen entered the picture in an important way. I had talked with Van Wagenen in 1998 about directing the film. With his guidance about places around Utah County that would carry the feel of the Holy Land, Draschil began to assemble the master plan for producing the prototype. One of the challenges was to work with a budget of less than $20,000, monies that had been donated for this purpose by BYU’s Religious Education and Maxwell Institute. The filming took place “on site” at locations in Utah County and in the LDS Motion Picture Studio in Provo.
I served as the “on-camera host” and recruited four colleagues whom I knew to be well acquainted with New Testament scholarship and to be strong advocates of Jesus as Messiah. In February 2006, Van Wagenen and a filming crew shot my host’s pieces around and near Utah Lake. With the creative help of John Uibel of BYU’s Center for Instructional Design, a crew prepared a set at the Motion Picture Studio. I invited the four scholars to answer questions about selected New Testament topics: Jesus in modern scholarship, the Sermon on the Mount, and the literalness of the resurrection. Van Wagenen skillfully led the scholars through these key issues and then oversaw the editing process. A number of people at the Motion Picture Studio generously lent their skills to the final product. It was April 2006.
Uibel designed the first visual template for the project, a rolling stone illumined from the back. With a honed description and the prototype film in hand, Draschil and I prepared the final package in June 2006 to go to University officials through Andrew Skinner, then the executive director of the Maxwell Institute. I knew that the sensitive nature of the topic would require a lengthy review. Exactly eleven months later, in May 2007, I learned that the project had been approved. To that point, the project had been nine years in its upward course.
