OUR CHARACTERS.

Here's my take, for better or worse. At some point every religious film that I've watched reaches a moment when the story seems to grind to an awkward halt. It looks out of the screen, stares you in the eyes, twists your arm, and tries to force the filmmakers values on the audience. In effect, it tries to tell you that the material that has been presented is (and I'm going to put this in all caps for effect) THE TRUTH.

At that point, you either agree or disagree. You either remain with the story or you don't. And almost every time, I don't.

I have always understood that a spiritual relationship is a very personal thing directly between myself and deity. I like to think that connection exists between me and God, and that we have an understanding about what his expectations are for me personally. I don't want a film, a film that I've just paid for (in ticket sales or time) to point its finger at me in judgment, especially when I feel like I know where I'm standing in that personal relationship.

As Mormons especially, we have a very clearly defined hierarchy of stewardship for judgment. And at no point did I sign up to have my entertainment preach to me about my personal relationship with God.

I hope that makes sense. But I've always understood unrighteous judgment to mean holding one individual responsible for the expectations of another.

The way I always explain it, we know where the iron rod is and we know where it leads. But nobody tells us how fast we have to walk along beside it. I was always struck by the fact that the scriptures seem to support the idea that we are each held to a different standard, and that grace makes up the slack.

We know from the New Testament that a single mite can outweigh a bag of gold, because only God really knows what we are holding back in our pockets. Or to put it into another context, some of us really do only have two talents. And if we come back with four, that pays the price of admission.

So how does this figure into our storytelling philosophy?

First, character design. The cool thing about tightening the story around a group of LDS neighbors all living in the same ward, was that I could assume a certain base of common belief and tradition. From there, I narrowed my sights onto a group of four guys and their wives and kids. These guys are all in their mid-thirties, and they get together a few times a week to shoot hoops in somebody's driveway. They're all pretty active, have kids. What I'm trying to say is that they share common goals. Everybody's got their hand on the rod, and they're all shuffling forward into the mists of darkness.

They're not perfect, but they're trying. And each one of these characters holds themselves to a different standard. Some hang out in the foyer during sacrament meeting and check sports scores on their iPhones, others feel like they need to sit in the front row. But, they all recognize the value in getting to church on Sunday morning. These aren't stories about right versus wrong, or good versus evil; but rather stories about the conflict between good and greater good... If that makes sense.

I started to play these scenarios out in my mind and discovered that there was an incredible amount of drama letting these good people with different standards interact.

I didn't need to take these characters full-throttle into crises of faith, because on a smaller level they were all dealing with crises of commitment. These people don't need to necessarily be evil in order to have conflict, and nobody needs to question their testimonies, because they can keep their beliefs while failing to measure up to their own expectations as the personally understand their relationships with God.

I decided that I didn't need to tell the stories of the people in the great and spacious building, not when there was so much happening alongside the iron rod.

Second, story design. Once I'd figured out how to handle my characters, I needed to shake up their own senses of well-being. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, the pilot revolves around one of these four guys accepting the calling to serve as bishop. He is as worthy in the beginning of the episode as he is in the end... But, what has changed in his life? Expectation. From his church, his friends, his wife. He's suddenly responsible for living a higher standard. And we follow him a little bit as he adapts his decision-making to encompass this new responsibility.

It's his first day on the job, he makes mistakes. And those mistakes have consequences. But nobody needs to trespass the laws of God or curse the heavens to create drama.

I've planned a lot of these moments for the series. And in the end I hope that you'll see that each of these characters, despite their bumbling along the way, have managed to 'double their talents' and become better versions of themselves. Because that's the greatest success I could wish for any of these characters.

Hopefully, along the way, you identify with a few of these people.