The Missing Chapter: Tessa Barton

In my effort to recapture the missing chapter of my life that I first wrote about here, I’d like to use my considerable clout to introduce both of my readers to some amazingly talented, yet remarkably good-hearted artists you’ll want to keep an eye on, because I suspect they’re going places.

Tessa and her brother Luke

Tessa Barton and her sister, Sophie, were an up-and-coming duo when Sophie collapsed and died completely unexpectedly at a church camp for girls. I remember I had a daughter up at the same camp around the same time, so the news felt like it hit pretty close to home. I can’t begin to imagine how it felt for Tessa and her family. We didn’t know them, but our hearts went out to them, and I knew many others felt the same.

I don’t think anyone would have blamed Tessa if she wanted to just hang up the performing thing after that. I got the sense that Sophie was more of the driving force behind the duo. But Tessa told me that she feels closest to Sophie when she is performing. So now she frequently gigs with her younger brothers. In fact, the video she sent us for her audition featured her singing with her little brothers.

You can sense that Tessa is an old soul when she performs. It’s not just her cool style of flowing clothes and hair that all combine into this cool updated bohemian ’70s thing. It’s her flowing lyrics. And it’s the rich texture in her voice that sounds like it is no stranger to tears. There’s a depth there. You can feel it as soon as she starts to sing.

Tessa was a last-minute fill-in on StarBiz. I remember calling her just a few days before we were scheduled to start shooting her episode, which meant she would have to clear several days from her calendar as a photographer. I know it meant some hasty rescheduling of some shoots, but I’m glad she did.

Tessa has several performances you can check out on the internet, including this song that she performed on the show (this version was recorded somewhere else). But I recently came across a charming little video that I hope she doesn’t mind me using as a way to introduce both of my readers to her, because this particular version was shot in the back of a car on the way to somewhere with her brothers. So it’s all a cappella, with what looks to be the car door and knees standing in for a set of drums and a guy singing into his hand supplying bass.

Maybe not exactly pristine conditions for recording a song. But to me, it shows how talented of a singer-songwriter Tessa is. A song that is stripped bare and recorded in a car yet still manages to grip you to the end? Good, good stuff. Enjoy, tell a friend, and keep an eye on Tessa Barton.

Creativity and the Tortured Artist

Whitney Houston’s premature demise brought back to mind a beautiful TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert. Elizabeth wrote the phenomenal bestseller Eat, Pray, Love. She talks about the immense pressure that comes upon artists to live up to their earlier successes, and how it frequently leads to self-destructive tendencies that can see us lose too many of them too soon.

Elizabeth suggests that the link between creativity and the anguish in the artist doesn’t need to be. There is a better way.

A good reminder today for us all, even if we don’t quite have the huge earlier success to live up to, but are just trying to find our way through our next creative project. If you’re the creative type, do yourself a favor and take 20 minutes to watch this sometime.

The Missing Chapter: Nik Day

Nik Day at work

In my effort to recapture the missing chapter of my life that I wrote about here, I’d like to use my considerable clout to introduce both of my readers to Nik Day.

When we were casting for StarBiz, Nik Day’s name came to us with some buzz. I’d never heard of him, but apparently he was making some waves in the local music scene. Sometimes that can be a bad thing, as big fish in little ponds can present some special challenges to work with. But my concerns disappeared as soon as he walked through the doors of the studio. Very unassuming. Pleasant. Slightly awkward, but in a sweet way. All I know is if I had his talent and looks at his age, I would probably have presented some special challenges to work with. But Nik was just flat out all around nice.

The original composition he brought to the show was “One in a Million.” It melted all the girls’ hearts (made our coach Kendra Lowe cry) (in a good way) and made all the guys want to be him.

Jeff, Ellee and Nik doing their "Life is Beautiful" thing.

In the group challenge, he was teamed up with Ellee Duke and Jeff Bartholomew. They struggled like crazy, and for awhile, I worried that they were going to come up empty. Nik’s forehead will probably be forever indented from where it kept plopping down in despair on the piano. But the song they came up with I’ll never forget. It was called “Life is Beautiful,” and when our guest mentor for that episode, country legend Collin Raye, heard them sing it for him, the man was moved.

Nik’s got a few videos out there on the internet. Great sound. John Mayeresque, but with 52% less “I’m all that.”

Here’s one a few friends made for him that I hope you enjoy. 9,487 views as of this writing. Seems like it should be more. Please pass it along. The music world could use more Nik Day.

When No Answer Means “No”

All the time.

(Not really, but that’s the way to play it. Don’t wait around. Keep moving the ball.)

The Missing Chapter: StarBiz

For those of you who follow my blog, and I do mean both of you, you may have noticed that there was a period of a few months last year when there were no postings at all. That gap was due to an all-consuming project I was working on called StarBiz. I didn’t post about it at the time because when I say it was all-consuming, I mean I’d frequently work until I couldn’t keep my eyes open at my laptop anymore, then get up at 5 a.m. to finish what I couldn’t the night before and then get to the studio for another all-day taping session that would go until midnight.

And I didn’t post about it when it was over because I didn’t know what to say. But it was a big part of my 2011, and it feels like it would be wrong not to at least make an attempt. So here’s my attempt.

StarBiz. Strange name, but a cool concept.

It was the brainchild of Aaron Edson and David Osmond, who had recently collaborated on David’s new faith-based album, Reflections, and had previously worked with us on Jonah (Aaron was the composer and David was Jonah).

I remember it was about a year ago at this time when Aaron laid out the concept to Ken and me as we ate ice cream around the fireplace at Farr’s in Orem. The idea was that they’d bring in a group of unknown singer-songwriters, have them play their songs for a panel of coaches, who would then work with them on their songwriting and performance skills. At the end of the series of workshops, they’d perform their songs again in front of a studio audience, and a number of them would be selected to move on in the competition. So, sort of like a smaller version of American Idol, except with singer-songwriters?, I asked Aaron.

He then told us about the wrinkle, and that was that during the workshops, the singer-songwriters would be challenged to write a new song in a short period of time incorporating the theme of a different non-profit organization each episode. The winning song would be professionally recorded and released on iTunes, with the proceeds benefiting the non-profit group. In addition, the contestants who participated in the writing of the winning song would receive special privileges in the competition, the details of which were still being worked out. Aaron described the pitch of the show being that most music reality shows took young people and made them great artists, but that StarBiz would be about taking young artists and making them great people. That was pretty cool, I thought. The music world could use a little dose of that.

BYUtv was interested. They were working on expanding their lineup of original programming, and StarBiz was among the shows they were considering. After a number of starts and stops, they eventually greenlighted StarBiz, and I was brought on by Aaron and David’s company to be the story producer.

You may wonder what the story producer on a reality show does. I wondered the same. The division of responsibilities was a little fuzzy, but I had decided that I would jump in with both feet and help anywhere I could in an effort to help the show be successful enough to get a second season. That was my prime directive. Whatever it took.

It didn’t get a second episode.

I’m not going to get into the whys. I’m not convinced I even know the full story. Suffice it here to say that perhaps our reach exceeded our grasp. That’s not a bad thing, though, because if you’re not stretching yourself, how will you grow? In the words of Mario (the race car driver, not the video game character, but probably could’ve been said by either), “If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” And pushing yourself means sometimes you’re going to end up off the track. This apparently was one of those times.

But when the plug was pulled, it was a major shock to the system. To be fully consumed in something, working day and night on it, and then it is suddenly gone? Like me, I know a lot of people in the cast and crew were, as my friends in England would say, gobsmacked. There was for awhile hope that it could be revamped and revived, but it hasn’t happened.

I felt bad about the cancellation in a bunch of different ways, professionally, economically, socially. I mean, I had made a lot of good friends during the seven episodes that we shot and was looking forward to continuing to working with them through the end of the 13-episode season that had been planned.

But perhaps the most disappointing thing of all to me about the cancellation was the premature demise of a very cool means to introduce to the world a new breed of talented young artists. In an era where music stars seem to be all about themselves and excess, we were finding beautiful young people with ridiculous amounts of talent, but who had a depth to them and seemed to recognize the responsibilities that came with their God-given gifts.

I was so looking forward to being part of the effort to help give these artists a little boost in the industry to see what they might go on to accomplish. And in the process, hopefully inspiring a rising generation of artists to consider looking at their talents a little differently than perhaps as a way of merely becoming a rich idol.

While the show may be gone, I’m hopeful that many of these talented young people will still be able to find a way to break into the industry. I think they would be a breath of fresh air.

I’m thinking that maybe I could use my considerable clout (thanks to both of you, my readers) as a blogger to help introduce some of these young artists who could change the music world. I’m thinking about a mini-series of posts over the next little while highlighting a few of them.

It may not be BYUtv, with its reach into 40 bazillion homes, but what it lacks in reach, it makes up for in being something within my control.

Those Blessed Words: Now Playing

I was working on a few video tags this week for Liken.TV. One of them was our “Now Playing” tag, which will air just before trailers and teasers for Liken movies that are, perhaps not surprisingly, now airing.

It involved delving into After Effects more than I have in the past (which isn’t saying much), but I like learning new things, so it was fun to get a glimpse of how the program works. It was also a fun challenge to find the right projector sound effects and a whoosh (gotta have a whoosh), not to mention the right piece of music to go along with it. (You can watch the 8 second masterpiece here.)

As I was watching it back, I was thinking how those two words, “Now Playing,” usually signals the culmination of a long road for a project. But in this case, for Liken.TV, it represents the beginning.

A couple of months ago, Ken pitched the idea of Liken.TV as a means of getting Liken out to a much larger audience than we have been able to reach in the past. It seemed radical. Creating a place where people could discover full-length Liken movies online, with the hopes that they might then want to bring more of the series into their homes. We can’t afford a statewide, let alone a nationwide or worldwide, advertising campaign. But this internet thing can be a great equalizer.

Cool concept, but we had never done anything like this before. That said, we’ve never let that limitation stop us before. So over the last couple of months, we’ve been diligently working out the various pieces needed to make Liken.TV come together. Turns out there is quite a few. The website structure. The streaming. Ad breaks. Ad server integration. Video players. Digital store integration. Getting the word out. The list goes on.

Currently, we’re in beta mode, although essentially that means we’re live, but please bear with us if you come across something that isn’t working right or is incomplete — we’re getting to them as soon as we can. Hundreds of people are visiting a day already, so that’s encouraging. Hopefully that will rise to the thousands. Realistically it needs to get into the thousands to work.

Still much to do, but for a moment, it’s nice to step back and see what Liken.TV is.

Now playing.

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If you want to help us spread the word, facebook is a good start. But emails or blogs or telling a friend what’s playng now or even hanging large banners from your roof work, too. Thanks!

Why I Support Mitt in 2012, Despite His Mormon Faith

In my blogging lifetime (going on six years now), I don’t think I’ve ever written a single political post. Nothing against political posts. It’s just that I think its a subject covered elsewhere in abundance by those far more well-versed than I. Likewise for religious posts, despite the subject matter of many of my projects being inherently religious. But these are unusual times, so I’m going to invoke, if I might, a one-time exception on both the politics and religion exemptions of this blog. Please forgive me.

Why I like this guy (and it's not just because of the graying temples, a look which I am reluctantly emulating)

Let me start with the bottom line: I support Mitt Romney in 2012, despite his Mormon faith.

I should probably point out, in case it’s not apparent, that I share the same faith as Mitt, which would seem to make me more inclined to support him. But for me, it’s had the opposite effect.

As we’ve seen already abundantly demonstrated, as the scrutiny and heat turn up on Mitt, that same scrutiny and heat are going to drag something that I hold sacred, my faith, through plenty of mud. It’s been through the mud before, so I know it can handle it, but mud is messy and I’m not a fan of messy (although one look at my desk might suggest otherwise).

Plus, just as Mitt’s political star appears to now be rising, it will fall at some point, whether he loses the nomination, whether he loses the November election, or even if he becomes president. Because even if Mitt wins, or especially if he wins, his approval rating, as it does pretty much for all presidents over time, is going to fall. In fact, I suspect he’d have the shortest honeymoon period ever. And a lot of those increasingly negative feelings toward Mitt over time would spill over to his faith. Fair or not, people will come to associate at least a degree of their feelings toward Mormonism with their feelings toward that “bum in the White House.”

Part of me would just as soon see Mitt’s faith sit this whole dance out, thank you very much.

But here’s the thing. We’re going through some hard times. And as much as I’d like to think that we’ve turned the corner and happy days will soon be here again, as I look around at conditions in this world, I suspect we’re in for a rough ride for some time to come. And I like to think of myself as an optimistic guy, but I suspect things will get rougher before they get better.

And that’s what makes me willing to send that man into the fray, even with my faith. In a sense, I feel like a parent who is sending his son to war. I’d prefer not to, but some things are so important that you’re willing to put that which you love most on the line.

If Mitt were to end up in the White House, this faith of mine (“Mormonism,” if you will) will be fine. But how we mortals who share that faith hold up remains to be seen. Whether we like it or not, I suspect the time is coming when we’ll find out. Game on.

Politics-wise, I may not always agree with Mitt. But if I were in charge of hiring the president, and I had the current slate of candidates in for interviews, Mitt would get the offer and I’d pray we could afford him.

I’ve had the privilege of knowing and working with a few great people in my time. You know the kind. The kind that no matter what situation they may find themselves in, no matter how hairy it gets, no matter how little sleep they’re working on, no matter how tempting the wrong choice may be, you trust that they will make the right call. It’s not just something innate, although that seems part of it. But they have taken the time to hone themselves. They’ve cultivated a decency, an integrity. The kind of person you would follow into battle. As much as I can tell from afar, Mitt’s in that camp. It’s not a very big camp.

I know he gets heat for flipping on some important issues, and I’ve struggled with that aspect of Mitt as well. A few months back, I was listening to a TED talk given by an economist, Tim Halford. Tim spoke about the dangers of the God complex, the feeling that no matter how complicated and complex an issue may be, you have an absolutely overwhelming belief that you are infallible in your solution. The problem with issues that rise to the executive office is that they are usually of the amazingly complex variety (the easy ones get tackled at far lower levels). But here we’re talking China, North Korea, Europe, Iraq, Walmart, healthcare, the college football playoff system (kidding about the last one) (sort of) and the list goes on. A decision one way sets off a chain of events another way, and it requires a degree of humility to open-mindedly assess the various alternatives and viewpoints, rather than assuming you already know the answer.

Whoever sits in that Oval Office, especially these next four years, is going to face some of the most complicated, complex sets of circumstances this country may have ever seen. No one can foresee what is coming down the pike. What I want is to know that we have someone in charge who doesn’t assume he already knows everything, but is willing to evaluate the situation, draw upon his sources (including, I hope, input from experts as well as his own wisdom and inspiration), and make an informed battlefield decision.

If I’m the coach (cue the inevitable sports analogy), and that’s my star quarterback out there, I know he’s going to throw a pick every now and then, but he’s the guy who got us here, and over the course of four quarters, he’s going to get us where we need to go, so I’m sticking with him.

Mitt’s my guy.

Now, back to whatever else it is I talk about here (what is it again?)…

The Ed Burns Model

I spent a few days in Southern California recently visiting my parents. They are wonderful and it is always good medicine to see them.

While I was there, I spoke with a relative of mine who is a successful screenwriter. We lamented the state of the industry, although our respective corners of the industry could hardly be farther apart (his movies are all studio projects with sizable budgets and ours are all independent with total budgets that would be unlikely to cover his project’s craft services).

Despite the differences, there were some clear parallels. The number of productions is way down. And those that do proceed have about half the budget they used to have. Non-”event” film theatrical releases are harder to come by. Most of the movie production dollars that are available are being thrown at the large “event” movies, leaving smaller projects gasping for air like fish flopping around on a pier. DVD sales are down. Retailers are fickle.

Ed at work

He asked me if I had heard about what Edward Burns is doing. I hadn’t. He told me a little bit about him, an intro that has seen me since trying to learn everything I can about what I’ve come to call the Ed Burns model.

Most people know Ed as an actor, with roles in such movies as “Saving Private Ryan” and “The Holiday.” But he broke into the business as a writer, director and actor in “The Brothers McMullen,” which won best picture at the Sundance Film Festival in 1995.

With those kinds of credentials, you might expect that Ed would want to keep climbing the ladder to bigger and bigger productions. But Ed is actively trying to go the other way. Ed prefers the freedom of not having studio oversight checking his every move or the pressure of having to find and satisfy investors, when so much of the equation of a movie’s success isn’t in his hands.

So Ed’s latest movie is pretty much the antithesis of a Hollywood movie. “Newlyweds” had a production budget of $9,000 and was shot in 12 days. Not a typo. We’re talking a single number 9, followed by three zeros. He broke it down as follows: $5K actors, $2K insurance, and $2K food and drink.

Now that kind of budget breakdown is leaving off quite a few things. Script? He wrote it himself. Director? Again him. Actors? Ed Burns is in it, of course. But he also went through casting agencies and got talented actors looking for an opportunity to break in via an Ed Burns film, paid them SAG minimums. Lights? He used natural lighting. Editing? I’m guessing he edited it himself, called in a favor or deferred payment. Locations? Begged, sneaked and occasionally traded for nice establishing shots featuring the restaurant’s signage. Sound? I read he occasionally used a sound man, but must have called in a favor or offered deferred pay, because sound didn’t show up in that budget breakdown above. Wardrobe? Hair? Makeup? He asked the actors to provide their own clothes and do their own hair and makeup. Music? Cameras? The list of questions you could ask about a budget like that goes on. But I think the point is that he stripped away all the “big deal” about making movies and boiled it down to shooting a story as simply as possible. And did I mention good actors?

For those of us who have been working in independent movie making for some time, a lot of that stripped down approach sounds familiar. Except we’re not Ed Burns, which makes it a little harder to call in as many favors from people, especially those who maybe don’t need to do favor work as much anymore. (Dangling the “Dennis Agle card,” for example, doesn’t quite pack the same punch as dangling the “Ed Burns card.”) So Ed has a reverse multiplier factor budget benefit working in his favor, but he’s earned it, so my hat is off to him.

But what is most intriguing to me about the Ed Burns model is what he’s doing after production. Previously, the hoped for path was to somehow miraculously get your low-budget indie film made (no small feat in itself), get it into film festivals (another miracle), hope that it becomes a festival darling (huge miracle) and gets picked up by some Miramax or Fox Searchlight or some such (forget about it), who then releases it to a smallish number of theaters, where it has a brief run before going to DVD. If all goes well, maybe not a lot of money in it for the filmmakers, but perhaps it propels some of the key players to the next rung up, and maybe someday one of them will be making the next summer blockbuster involving a comic book character.

But Ed is working on bypassing all that and going straight from movie maker to you sitting there in your home in as few steps as possible. Digital delivery. On the release date, you can rent or buy Ed Burns’ new movie for a few dollars, put it up on your home theater or your laptop or iPad. Not Netflix streaming, which is still pretty much inaccessible for a lot of indies, or if it is accessible, at a fee level that is not sufficient to keep making more movies. This is more direct than that. Still some work to be done on facilitating the matching up of indie films with their home audiences, but that appears to be the emerging platform that independent filmmakers need during this painful transition period from physical to digital. Bypassing studios altogether. Flattening out the distribution channels.

Movie maker to movie watcher, with very little in between.

Delivery mechanisms are progressing that make it easier for independent producers to reach the audience directly. (We’re working on that at Liken right now with our Liken.TV model, which is now in beta; you should visit.)

Ed acknowledges that maybe it isn’t quite the same as having the red carpet Hollywood premiere with spotlights and limos. So he satisfies his desire to see his movie with an audience by attending a few film festival screenings, but the reality is that for the smaller movies that Ed wants to make, the other avenue just isn’t there anymore. Movie prints and marketing are so expensive that it’s prohibitive for most smaller films to see any kind of theatrical release, let alone having a profitable theatrical release. So if he wants to continue to find a way to make the kind of movies he wants to make, this streamlined distribution channel is what is available to him, so he’s taking it.

There was a time when a title that didn’t have a theatrical release meant it was a bomb, but Ed sees that stigma fading. He said he isn’t making millions through this channel, but the upper six figures is feasible and that’s enough to enable him to keep doing what he loves. (Of course, upper six figures is something most independent movie makers can barely imagine, but we get Ed’s point.)

What does all this mean to me? Let me tell you:

Still working that out.

Ed’s movies have an edge that seem to appeal to more of a cutting edge audience that is game for digital movies at the moment. But I think digital delivery is gaining a level of acceptance that might make more types of projects likewise viable. Might not yet be ready to the extent that it would make sense for a Liken. But I think it might be ready for something a little simpler, that if it did well, could help make a Liken feasible, at least until making a Liken is feasible using the Ed Burns model.

As the barriers to movie making and delivery come down, it will mean that more low-budget fare will be competing for audience eyeballs, and much of it is likely going to be crass, cloying or just plain bad. But I think stuff that is well-written, well-acted will stand out. At least I hope so.

Still working out the details with Ken. But something is brewing. Something a little different for us.

It feels like it’s time to do a feature…

Lessons from the Long Way to Nineveh

I haven’t blogged in ages. But it’s the last day of 2011, and I figure it’s time to do a little catching up.

Yep. It's out. Piece of cake.

Here goes: We released Jonah.

A little easier to say than do. It took five years and was unlike any experience I’ve ever had before.

The whole journey has offered me a little “liken” lesson of my own. I could relate to that fellow Jonah, in the sense that like his roundabout route to Nineveh, the path we took to the completion of Jonah was anything but a straight line.

To put it in context, over the course of our first four years, we released a total of eight Liken movies. Little did we know when we released “Samuel” back in 2006 that it would be half a decade before we would release our ninth.

There were lots of contributing factors, not the least of which was the downturn in the economy. It hit many independent production companies hard, and ours was no exception. The audience base for Liken was growing, but it had not yet grown to the point where it could sustain future productions without outside assistance.

Nobody had entered into this thing to get rich. In fact, it felt more like being called to the work as stewards. We poured everything we could into it. Like-minded individuals from all walks of life likewise pitched in in various ways, from financial support to picking up a hammer to help build a set.

But the downturn in the economy made it harder than ever to find the resources to continue the effort. In the meantime, we found ourselves needing to take on more and more outside work in an effort to feed our families while pouring what resources we could into Jonah. It made progress much slower than we had ever experienced before.

Here’s the thing I’ve been mulling, though. Just as it could be argued that Jonah’s unexpected detour provided him with some much-needed growth, it now feels as though our unanticipated change of plans provided us with experiences that, in retrospect, have greatly blessed this project as well as those of us involved in its creation.

In 2006, shortly after Samuel came out, when it became clear that we didn’t yet have the resources to launch into production of Jonah, we looked for ways to make the unexpected delay work to benefit the project. Before Jonah, our previous modus operandi was to write the script and songs, rehearse them over a couple of Saturdays, shoot the production over the course of a very few days, and pray that what we shot worked in the editing room.

This time, thanks to some valued input from others, I got to spend far more time working on the script, rewriting, digging to figure out what it was about. For me, Jonah was about our longing to feel like we belong. And how if we go where God would have us go, we will eventually discover the “why” we belong there, even if it doesn’t make sense at the moment. In retrospect, that theme seems to sum up much about the journey this project took. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After another year went by, we not only had the script done, but had mended a fence that needed mending and had some beautiful and fun songs for our musical, thanks to Aaron’s excellent work.

Normally, that’s when we’d dive head first into production, but we recognized that we still didn’t have sufficient resources to proceed. To keep the project moving forward, we decided to hold our staged readings. It was an amazing process that surprised me by how much we ended up revising a script that I had thought was ready to go. Already this “detour” we were on had been a great blessing. But there were more blessings to come.

Finding Jonah

When it came time to cast the lead roles in our movie, we felt blessed to be able to land so many talented artists. Casting the role of Jonah was especially challenging. We wanted someone who could play a prophet noted for his defiance in such a way that he would still be someone our audience would want to root for. David Osmond brought an endearing charm to the role, tapping into that side of all of us who have received a daunting challenge that we weren’t exactly thrilled to face.

In retrospect, I realized that if we had been able to go forward with the production of Jonah when we wanted to, David would not have been available to us due to health issues he was experiencing from his battle with multiple sclerosis. The extra time we needed coincided, we believe not coincidentally, with the time David needed to regain his health sufficiently to tackle the demands of this role.

We were also delighted to be able to bring back to a Liken movie Katherine Nelson, who had her first acting role in our second Liken. If we had made Jonah when we wanted to make Jonah, Katherine wouldn’t have been available to us, because she was a little tied up being Emma in “Emma Smith: My Story.”

There was something else different that the delay allowed us to do, and that was our full-fledged stage production, with five weeks of rehearsal, and a nine-night run at the SCERA. This approach was expensive, despite a largely sold-out run, but turned out to be a worthwhile investment, as it allowed our actors to really get to know their characters and to experiment with various deliveries in front of an audience to see which approach felt best. Plus with our actors so well prepared, this approach allowed us to expedite the shooting process.

Once we wrapped production, we turned our attention to post-production, which we knew would be far more involved than any previous Liken. For one thing, we knew we were looking at our first feature-length running time. Previous Liken movies usually ran about an hour. Jonah, it would turn out, came in with a running time of 83 minutes.

Also, because a fair amount of the movie takes place under the sea, our special effects work was more demanding than anything we’d ever done, with the replacement of our plain blue backgrounds from the stage with richly colored computer-generated backgrounds filled with undersea creatures swimming across the screen.

Along the way, the computer-generated effects crept into the above-sea scenes as well, as our FX team shared with us their concepts for replacement backgrounds of the Nineveh scenes as well as the scenes aboard the ship as it makes its fateful trip. But as much as we wanted to incorporate the special effects enhancements throughout the movie, we had pretty much exhausted our funds for the project.

It was at that point that we learned about a relatively recent phenomenon that I don’t think even existed when we first started Jonah. It is called crowd-source funding, and after launching our campaign on a website called Kickstarter, within 40 days, more than 400 people collectively pledged thousands of dollars to back our special effects work on Jonah. As helpful as the funds were, even more meaningful to us was the support of so many. It had been several years since we had released a Liken, and we weren’t sure if our audience still remembered us, let alone be willing to back us.

And now, after a five-year journey, “Jonah and the Great Fish” is at long last out. Looking at it now, it is hard to imagine how the movie might have been different had we been able to make it on our own timeframe.

While I may have preferred the short route, sometimes the greater blessings come from the long way.

The Homecoming

It had been a long week at work in Texas. Ken, Josh and I were really looking forward to coming home. But then we met a pair of guys who put our eagerness to come home into perspective. Elders Taylor and Wright hadn’t been home in two years. I did the math — that’s 10 percent of their lives.

Elder Taylor was a big, hearty fellow from Wyoming. Elder Wright was more reserved, but a pleasant fellow from Utah. Both were equal parts nervous and excited. Both had cowboy hats in their carry-ons that they were planning on breaking out for their big arrival on the other end of the flight. Elder Taylor proudly displayed his as the most ugly hat ever (I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d seen worse in this very airport). Elder Wright called his a legacy hat, explaining that it had been passed down from elder to elder, but was about to make its final transfer.

I tried to reflect on my own homecoming when I was in their shoes deep in the previous century. It’s a pretty vague memory now. Pretty sure there was an airplane involved (yes, they had them back then) and my family. The vagueness of that memory gave me an idea about halfway through the flight.

I found the missionaries on the very back row of the plane. I asked if they would mind if I tried to capture their arrival as best as I could on my iPhone. I knew it wouldn’t be high quality, but at least it would help them possibly preserve the memory of this special occasion a little better than I preserved mine.

Of all the ways this scene played out in their minds over the past 24 months, I’m pretty sure neither of them imagined it turning out like it did. In a way, I think it turned out better.

Scenes like these are played out in airports throughout the world constantly as families welcome home their missionaries. To those of other faiths, I think it is sometimes easy to overlook that these young men and women are parts of families who have a giant hole in them until this homecoming day.

The video turn out almost unbearably choppy. Beyond what Final Cut Pro’s SmoothCam feature can handle. I was trying to keep up with elders, but the iPhone is so light and my backpack was so heavy, every step I took shook like Godzilla was hot on my heels. I almost couldn’t bear to cut it together, but I finally decided to do my best to look past that and just enjoy the moment with these two young men and their families.

Welcome home, fellas.