Who needs Morocco
when you’ve got Goshen, Utah?
To film “The Bible,” R. Downs traveled 5,000 miles to Morocco from
her home in Utah. She found herself over there with sand in places she
never knew existed. When she got there, it was freezing cold. By the time she
left it was blazingly hot.
The staff of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Media
Services Department doesn’t have quite so far to go when they film the New Testament.
They looked at Morocco, considered going there, and ended up building the set
down in Goshen. They travel 60 miles south from Salt Lake City to the church’s
Jerusalem movie set.
The
massive facility the size of two football fields was completed in 2011. Since
then, it has been used to film segments for the church’s Bible Videos series;
videos for the Sunday School curriculum; online Mormon Messages Videos; and
even a video for the Piano Guys.
You’d never guess The Piano Guys were
on a set last year.
One goal was to build the thing so that
people think where in the world is that?
It
wouldn’t make sense for a Hollywood studio to go to the expense of creating a
huge stinking set of ancient Jerusalem; for the LDS Church, it made perfect sense.
Typically, with a movie set, you build it, you film on it and then you tear it
down, but with a standing set the expense isn’t wrapped in a single shoot but
spread out over, hopefully, 30 years or more; the cost savings are huge. It’s a
fantastic set that’s all ready to go with just a few finishing touches to the set
decoration as opposed to the building a set building. That’s not counting all
the money saved by not sending actor’s directors and crew to Morocco. It takes quite
a group, so the costs are enormous. Plus you avoid the extreme cold, extreme heat
and the sand that crews encounter in Morocco. Well at least you avoid the sand.
Which isn’t to say that it’s altogether easy to film in Goshen? There are
plenty of flies in the summer, and there’s the distinctive aroma of farm
country.
Well,
it’s outside, yes there are flies, ants, and there’s a dairy not far off so there’s
that dairy air.
DR. KARL WALLACE D.D.S.
