How will the "Witness" be portrayed?

[_Doctor Scratch]

I wonder whether the documentary will include references to the witnesses seeing the plates with their “spiritual eyes” or “the eye of faith,” in other words, not with the naked eye.

It's a good question, and that's part of what I was thinking about with the origin of this thread. How will camera work and CGI imply that it's objective, or subjective for a given witness?

I think it's hard to portray as fully literal and objective without quite a bit of setup. For starters, to eliminate the possibility that it's subjective, they need to show Moroni traveling through space, and well outside ground observers on earth. They could show a stream of light shooting through space (wooosh!) and we follow the light into the stars, and then see it shoot into our solar system and earth's atmosphere. But, wow, only three people saw it, huh? Maybe it turns invisible at earth, and birds move out of the way or something, to imply it's really there? But then, what about relativity? I mean, how close is Kolob, and how long ago did Moroni start the journey, given he's a physical being bound by the speed of light?

If that doesn't work, how about a "wormhole" like in Stargate? If sci fi can cheat, just follow its lead. Fine, but the light shooting through the stars avoids the problem of needing to show Moroni entering the wormhole at the other end. Let's work through it: have a planet out yonder and the words "Kolob" appear on the screen and we see Moroni jump into a wormhole at that end. Or Moroni is among other heavenly beings and jumps into the wormhole.

"No, no, no, Gad doesn't get it -- he's just trying to make it look dumb!", that's what you're thinking. Oh, but I do get it. I get that you can show Moroni pop out of a wormhole or light pillar-like thing just below the treeline such that no one else sees. But it's almost impossible to do this and also make it clear that the experience is objective. Appearing from a void or within a light or any of those queues with no other context can be mistaken trivially for seeing beyond the veil with our spiritual eyes, where Moroni and the plates aren't actually here on earth, but we're seeing into another dimension, and even the touch of the plates becomes like a vivid dream.

One possibility, is to have the witnesses hitting each other on the shoulder and pointing, implying they're all seeing the same thing, and perhaps have birds scatter as Moroni pops out the pillar or even a tree scorched or knocked down or something -- but they'd never take it that far. But the more limited the scale is of showing Moroni's appearance, the harder it is to establish it's objective, if that's the goal.

That's exactly the problem, Dean Robbers. The Mopologists need a cinematic genius to pull this off--someone in the same vein as Denis Villenueve or Werner Herzog. Instead, they've got "filmmakers" that DCP is apparently too embarrassed about to actually name.

[_Kishkumen]

"No, no, no, Gad doesn't get it -- he's just trying to make it look dumb!", that's what you're thinking. Oh, but I do get it. I get that you can show Moroni pop out of a wormhole or light pillar-like thing just below the treeline such that no one else sees. But it's almost impossible to do this and also make it clear that the experience is objective. Appearing from a void or within a light or any of those queues with no other context can be mistaken trivially for seeing beyond the veil with our spiritual eyes, where Moroni and the plates aren't actually here on earth, but we're seeing into another dimension, and even the touch of the plates becomes like a vivid dream.

One possibility, is to have the witnesses hitting each other on the shoulder and pointing, implying they're all seeing the same thing, and perhaps have birds scatter as Moroni pops out the pillar or even a tree scorched or knocked down or something -- but they'd never take it that far. But the more limited the scale is of showing Moroni's appearance, the harder it is to establish it's objective, if that's the goal.

My view is that it has to fit the LDS Church's truth claims and the sensibilities of the average member regarding miracles. I would be extremely surprised if any attention was given to things beyond the immediate encounter with the angel and the plates. One will probably be treated to the edge of the angel's robes and a hand with a numinous glow around it. The focal point will be the expressions of awe and wonder on the faces of the witnesses.

One thing is certain: This material will be tamed.

The Three-Nephites Era passed by about 1990. By that I mean the time when LDS folk were likely to trade in miraculous stories of the kind that would have had purchase at the beginning of Mormonism. Now there are canonical events as represented in subdued, fashionable ways and private sacred experiences. Some apologists have called the old time miracle stories "folk Mormonism" and have implicitly dismissed this tradition almost entirely.

[_Gadianton]

My view is that it has to fit the LDS Church's truth claims and the sensibilities of the average member regarding miracles. I would be extremely surprised if any attention was given to things beyond the immediate encounter with the angel and the plates. One will probably be treated to the edge of the angel's robes and a hand with a numinous glow around it. The focal point will be the expressions of awe and wonder on the faces of the witnesses.

One thing is certain: This material will be tamed.

The Three-Nephites Era passed by about 1990. By that I mean the time when LDS folk were likely to trade in miraculous stories of the kind that would have had purchase at the beginning of Mormonism. Now there are canonical events as represented in subdued, fashionable ways and private sacred experiences. Some apologists have called the old time miracle stories "folk Mormonism" and have implicitly dismissed this tradition almost entirely.

I'd love to disagree but unfortunately, I think you have nailed it. It sounds like you're skeptical they'll even show Moroni's face. The cover of the classic film about three modern witnesses, Fire in the Sky, depicts the protagonist abductee struck by a beam of light from an objective vantage point. Without showing a person going to sleep or waking up before or after a scene like this, there is little to no doubt left in the mind of the viewer what the claim is. You are saying that they won't even need to use wording such as "spiritual eyes" because they'll be nothing in the depiction of the witness event itself that impresses upon the mind of the viewer that it really happened.

If it will be as you claimed, then the film will leave open the strong possibility of a fictional Book of Mormon. Not the faithful fiction kind that I argued for a few weeks ago, where Moroni is real but the plates are props and the story fiction, but in the traditional, critical "19th century" fiction where three men, who are but individual threads woven into the fabric of a magical time, encounter the sacred. If they go the route you suggest, they will undermine member confidence in a historical Book of Mormon.

[_Maksutov]

I'm surprised that this is being attempted while the Book of Mormon movie remains unfinished.

[_Everybody Wang Chung]

Dean,

There was a movie called "Joseph Smith and The Golden Plates" that was released in 2011. It obviously had a very limited budget and throughout much of the film different actors who portrayed the witnesses would sit in a chair and retell a very inaccurate, sanitized and Church approved history of the three witnesses/Moroni/Joseph/Golden Plates.

I believe Daniel "Ed Wood" Peterson will probably follow this model. I reviewed "Joseph Smith and The Golden Plates" many years ago:

If you are the type of person who feels that LDS films are beyond criticism then please read no further, and by all means go see this picture.

For me, this movie was a real disappointment. As my wife said upon leaving the theater, “if the second half of this movie was replaced by Citizen Kane, it still would have sucked”.

This is not a version of Joseph Smith that will challenge any faithful Mormons’ view of Joseph Smith. Despite Richard Bushman being given a credit as “Historical Advisor”, there’s no seer stone, or translation by hat on display here or any other historical elements that would fall outside of the standard picture presented of Joseph in LDS Sunday School classes. Indeed, Joseph is shown translating the golden plates by diligently examining them uncovered directly in front of him, and is also shown receiving direct revelation at a moment’s notice which he then recites word-for-word to others in his presence.

That said, there is one noteworthy nod to non-Sunday-School history when there is a dialogue exchange between Joseph and his father, which is vague, but does contain at least a partial admission of Joseph’s early reputation as a treasure hunter and gold digger.

The first half of the film is mainly a Hollywood love story between Joseph and Emma, as he attempts to court her and win her father’s favor. After they’ve eloped, Joseph attempts again to win at least his acceptance of him as part of the family. Josiah Hale is at first a doubter and has worries about his daughter being married to Joseph, but in Hollywood style Joseph wins over Josiah and is lovingly and compassionately accepted by Josiah into the family. One can almost imagine what Bushman thought of the blatant historical inaccuracies during this part.

Much of the rest of the movie is composed of various characters sitting in chairs discussing things that happened off screen. I wonder why those things were not shown on-screen? Limited budget? Laziness? For example:

1. Joseph sits on a chair and talks about how, after he retrieved the Golden Plates he was chased, attacked and fought off his dark assailants to make it home. It sounds like it would be a very exciting and dramatic part of the film, right? Why aren’t we seeing that instead of Joseph describing this while sitting on a chair?

2. Martin Harris sits on a chair and tells others about how he took the translated manuscript home, and all the intrigue and what transpired between his wife and what other people thought. Why aren’t we seeing this dramatized?

3. The Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon sit on some chairs and tell others about their experience praying together, then Martin Harris feeling unworthy and leaving the group, and then the remaining others seeing an angel, etc. Again, this sounds like it could be a powerful scene that’s integral to the plot — why aren’t we seeing it instead of just hearing about it?

Maybe showing an actual fight scene between Joseph and his assailants in the woods wasn’t within the director’s capability. Perhaps the low budget didn’t allow many scenes and settings other than characters sitting on chairs and talking. Having these characters sit on chairs, telling their stories doesn’t create a good movie. The whole point of seeing a dramatization of the Joseph Smith story on the screen instead of hearing about it from a Sunday School manual is to actually see it dramatized.

There is a movie called "The Tree of Life” by Terrence Malick that should be available on DVD soon. It is a masterpiece about deep human emotions, evoked with sympathy and love. Go see it and it will help you realize how much "Joseph Smith and the Golden Plates'' sucks.

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[_Doctor Scratch]

My view is that it has to fit the LDS Church's truth claims and the sensibilities of the average member regarding miracles. I would be extremely surprised if any attention was given to things beyond the immediate encounter with the angel and the plates. One will probably be treated to the edge of the angel's robes and a hand with a numinous glow around it. The focal point will be the expressions of awe and wonder on the faces of the witnesses.

One thing is certain: This material will be tamed.

The Three-Nephites Era passed by about 1990. By that I mean the time when LDS folk were likely to trade in miraculous stories of the kind that would have had purchase at the beginning of Mormonism. Now there are canonical events as represented in subdued, fashionable ways and private sacred experiences. Some apologists have called the old time miracle stories "folk Mormonism" and have implicitly dismissed this tradition almost entirely.

I'd love to disagree but unfortunately, I think you have nailed it. It sounds like you're skeptical they'll even show Moroni's face. The cover of the classic film about three modern witnesses, Fire in the Sky, depicts the protagonist abductee struck by a beam of light from an objective vantage point. Without showing a person going to sleep or waking up before or after a scene like this, there is little to no doubt left in the mind of the viewer what the claim is. You are saying that they won't even need to use wording such as "spiritual eyes" because they'll be nothing in the depiction of the witness event itself that impresses upon the mind of the viewer that it really happened.

If it will be as you claimed, then the film will leave open the strong possibility of a fictional Book of Mormon. Not the faithful fiction kind that I argued for a few weeks ago, where Moroni is real but the plates are props and the story fiction, but in the traditional, critical "19th century" fiction where three men, who are but individual threads woven into the fabric of a magical time, encounter the sacred. If they go the route you suggest, they will undermine member confidence in a historical Book of Mormon.

These are excellent and important observations. You are right indeed, Dr. Robbers, that the film, if handled badly, will actually set the Mopologists back, like, two decades if they foul up the way that the supernatural material is depicted. What if all they show is the actors? I mean: what if all we actually get are the actors and their "emoting," or if the emphasis is placed heavily on that approach, as the Rev describes? What if we never see any actual angels? What if we never see any real gold plates, and what if we don't see Moroni? It's easy enough to envision them (i.e., the filmmakers) doing this: e.g., we'll get a close-up of one of the witnesses, and off-screen, you'll hear the character playing Joseph Smith say (e.g.), "Behold, the Gold Plates!" and then you'll get the actor's reaction, but the camera never cuts away to the gold plates themselves. Or will we get to see the gold plates? (And what will they look like? Will we see Joseph Smith struggling to heft them?) I wonder how the filmmakers are reckoning with these difficult choices? It may be that they are thinking that subtlety and misdirection are the way to go: you saw Jaws, didn't you? Sure, you see the shark eventually, but as everyone knows, so much of the power of the movie lies in the fact you hardly *ever* see the shark. You just have to live with the knowledge that there is something big, and terrible, and vicious waiting out there in the sea. And what about The Blair Witch Project? You never see the witch; only hints that she exists--strange totems, unsettling noises in they night, and an unbearably creepy old house in the woods, whose walls are peppered with strange, black handprints.

My point being: the filmmakers will need to carefully consider how much to show. Will they go "all the way," like what Spielberg did in Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind? It truly is a tough choice: if they go with "subtlety," they will surely be accused of cowardice**, and, as I noted above, it will set them back two decades or so because it will mean that they "fictionalized" the witnesses story. If they don't show anything supernatural, then viewers can quite easily and rightly come away from the movie thinking that the spiritual content was all in the characters' heads. If this movie is to be legitimately Mopologetic--meaning that it's in keeping with Mopologetic doctrine and orthodoxy--then it *must* actually show us the supernatural material. We're going to need to see actual Moroni; we are going to need to see actual, physical gold plates, and we are going to need to see the witnesses faces, and how they react to this strange artifact. I think that we should also probably get to see Joseph Smith using his seer stone and top hat. (Will that make it in?)

Despite my better judgment, I am actually starting to get excited about seeing this movie.

**In fact, I will say it right now: if they fail to show the full range of supernatural content, it means that they are cowards and that they are either embarrassed of LDS doctrine and narratives, and/or that they are afraid of how the "average"/"sister in Parowan"-type of rank-and-file Mormon might react.

[_Kishkumen]

One practical reason not to show too much miraculous stuff is so that the film is watchable for years to come. Show hairstyles and CGI and you run the risk of things going noticeably out of date too soon. Try watching the old Church films with angels, etc., and man do they look goofy. If only they had not shown all the glowing ‘70s hairstyles and so forth! But, now you can hardly stand to watch these treacly goofs.

[_Gadianton]

Bishop,

Thank you for that great review. I think you noticed these same key problems with subjectivity all those years ago. And now it's more important than ever for the Interpreter to define themselves against the new MI that they accuse of going allegorical and bracketing the historical meat of the Book of Mormon. It sound like they may want to "bracket" whether this was a real happening or a spiritual manifestation.

Another possibility is a "hidden variable" argument: Instead of crossing thousands of light years or slipping through a wormhole, God being all knowing, could have set the world in motion such that the witnesses would each have a delusion of seeing Moroni as if he were real at the same time on a certain day. While such a thing is certainly possible, it undermines the point of the film, to provide evidence for an objective, real event.

[_Gadianton]

It may be that they are thinking that subtlety and misdirection are the way to go: you saw Jaws, didn't you? Sure, you see the shark eventually, but as everyone knows, so much of the power of the movie lies in the fact you hardly *ever* see the shark. You just have to live with the knowledge that there is something big, and terrible, and vicious waiting out there in the sea.

A challenging suggestion, professor. Yeah, that would be a great excuse wouldn't it? I also think the Reverend makes good points about not wanting to get dated with costumes and hair styles. Heck, even I brought up in the OP a problem with revealing Moroni. Say they could get Dolph Lundgren to play Moroni, Chapel Mormons would be elated as would the Brethren, but then racism charges would be flying. There are good reasons to go subtle.

So let's talk about Jaws. It's been a really long time since I saw this movie, but if I recall correctly, there is blood in the water, people getting bitten and boats getting bumped, but even if I'm remembering wrong, and everything up until the mechanical Jaws comes out of the water could have been exaggerations and fear, yeah: the suspense of not knowing if it's real or not, or not knowing what the entity is makes for some gut wrenching viewing. But in the case of Jaws, the point is the real horror was actually fully vindicated as real and not mass hysteria. As I've said, birds scattering from Moroni's trajectory, or a burned mark on the ground, or something like that could suffice to show it really happened.

Suspense is one thing, but the movie needs to stay true to its point. The film Bishop Chung reviewed makes the Joseph Smith story sound a lot like that Netflix series a couple years back, The OA. That was a perfect example of not revealing too much, of ratcheting the suspense through tale telling, and we're wondering what actually is going on, is it real, or what? That's suicide because yeah, it's a great point that the community and the bonding were very real independent of whether the girl was really an angel. But that's a postmodern "new MI" kind of message, and Interpreter needs to stay far away from that. If they go the Jaws route and drop cues that what's happening is objectively happening in the real world, then the audience will feel more assured that the Book of Mormon is intended as real history. Otherwise, they'll be taking the next step towards a fictional Book of Mormon.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Dr. Peterson has offered up a response. (As of this writing, there are zero comments on the entry. Interpret that fact however you wish.) He is insisting that the film is not a money-making venture for either himself or his wife:

Ah, but even after all these years of experience I still underestimated the malignant imagination of this wretched fellow and a few of his equally anonymous pals.

I had, they noticed, not denied that my wife will be richly paid from the Witnesses project. (My wife and I are the two executive producers for this undertaking.) You can depend upon it, declared one, that she’ll come away heavily laden with ill-gotten money, extracted from our unwitting dupes.

Why is he posting this? Is he trying to promote *this film*? Or is he just trying to draw attention to himself? He really seems unhinged:

However, this zany bunch of malicious madcaps are also confidently predicting how horrible the film will be, even though it likely won’t ever be made at all. Bad script. Wooden acting. Historical whoppers. Avoidance of tough issues. Slanderous smearing of enemies. And so forth.

How they can know such things remains a mystery.

Indeed it does, particularly since nobody said anything about "knowing." As he himself said, folks were "confidently predicting." Last I checked, "predicting" (or guessing, or speculating, or prognosticating--or, hey, yes: even prophesying--and they *do* still have prophecy in the LDS Church these days, do they not?--or any other term that refers to making statement concerning an unknown future) is quite a long distance away from knowing. Why worry about any of this when the film is still unfinished?

Well, the most telling detail is the fact that--as far as I know--for the first time, he named the actual production personnel on his blog. You get this:

Oddly, though, the critics to whom I’ve referred here claim not to know certain things — such as the identity of the principal film crew — that have been up on the Witnesses web page from the very beginning. In fact, the foremost agitator among those critics has suggested that I’m actually hiding the names of the crew. (More can be learned about the crew at Pella Media Inc — a link that (surprise!) has been up on the Witnesses web page since it first appeared.)

Four principal figures have been involved thus far in the development of this project, and they certainly appear to be serious filmmakers: Russell Richins (producer), Mitch Davis (scriptwriter), Mark Goodman (scriptwriter and director), and James Jordan (scriptwriter and cinematographer) have worked together for years with Lee Groberg and others on such projects as Fires of Faith: The Coming Forth of the King James Bible (2012), Handel’s Messiah (2014), and, for PBS, Trail of Hope: The Story of the Mormon Trail (1997), First Freedom: The Fight for Religious Liberty (2012) and Joseph Smith, American Prophet (2017). And Mitch Davis, who has been a participant in many of these projects, is also well known for, among other things, his own 2001 film The Other Side Side of Heaven.

No, actually: I don't think anyone claimed "not to know certain things." Rather, I *do* think people (i.e., me) pointed out that the personnel haven't ever been named on SeN. (Have they? It may be that I missed the entry. I know, I know: I deserve castigation for not reading *every* posting on SeN. What can I say? I just don't have the stamina of a Midgley or a Kiwi57.) So, you really have to wonder about the marketing strategy that the Executive Producer is employing. Why is it "wise" to do a "promotional" post that is really about telling the whole wide world that there are people on the Internet accusing you of doing this film in order to line your pockets? Why broadcast that to everyone? I guess the assumption must be that this woeful and completely "unfair" speculation re: financing is something that needs to be publicly "refuted," and then we can all get back to "business as usual"? I wonder what other motives might be at work here.