We’re just back from seeing The Other Side of Heaven 2: Fire of Faith. It’s not without flaws, but it’s beautiful. I liked it and I recommend it. Latter-day Saint filmmaking is progressing very healthily, I think.
I was interested to see this new movie both for itself and for the fact that Mitch Davis, who directed both it and the original 2001 Other Side of Heaven to which it is a sequel, wrote the initial script for our Witnesses film project, which is currently underway.
Where does that project stand at the moment? We’ve already done about ten interviews for its documentary component. We’ve revised and tightened up the script. (These things always evolve.) It’s been sent out to several historians for what I hope will be a ruthless critique. Some of our crew have been scouting potential locations for shooting in the eastern United States and Canada, as well as in Utah. We’re looking toward casting for the dramatic portions of the effort. And, I’m pleased to say, we’ve raised about seventy-five percent of our overall production budget of somewhat more than one million dollars, not counting certain substantial outstanding pledges that I hope to see arrive soon.
We will probably need to do a bit more fundraising thereafter in order to cover some ancillary efforts that were not part of the original budget plan — e.g., the creation of an as yet unspecified number of “snippets,” averaging (we project) about 3.5 minutes in length. Let me explain what those “snippets” are: They will draw on the dramatic footage and the interviews that we do for the basic film project. In some cases, they will be scenes, outtakes, from the movie. In others, perhaps the majority, they will focus on interview material that, in the end, didn’t fit the narrative arc of the film, which cannot be infinitely long or overly complex, but that we deem important and worthwhile.
In the old days of moviemaking, material that didn’t survive in the final theatrical cut simply ended up on the cutting room floor. Our interviews have typically gone one or two hours or more, but we’ll be able to include only a few minutes from them in our documentary. We anticipate, however, using a reasonably high percentage of what we film when the “snippets” are created.
Our intention, among other things, is to address head-on every serious criticism that has been leveled against the credibility of the Book of Mormon Witnesses. I don’t want to omit or ignore any such criticism, if I can avoid it.
So how can you help? Monetary donations are very welcome, of course.
But I would also genuinely appreciate it if people were to send in whatever substantive criticisms they’ve heard directed against the reliability of the Witnesses. I’ve already made a list on my own, but it’s very possible, even likely, that I’ve left something out. And I don’t want to leave anything out.
Please write to me about such criticisms either in the comments section of this blog, or via Facebook, or at daniel_peterson@byu.edu.
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