History

The adaptation of a historical event into a screenplay is both fascinating and enjoyable. This particular story is especially fascinating to me because not only is Martha my great great great great grandmother, but it took place over a hundred years ago just a couple miles from where I live now. For me, this story about Martha and her Native American encounter is incredible, and what makes it incredible is that it’s not a fictitious story carefully pieced together to make profit. Instead, it’s a real event that happened in a real place.

The New Orleans comics “After the Deluge” by Josh Neufeld was very well done, and aside from the stunning writing and illustrations, the story is so close to home! That hurricane was only a couple years ago.  The story would be captivating to anyone who remembered watching the news that day or anyone who had friends of family in the area during that time. Because of the insane levels of hardships that those people faced, that story will be told in classrooms for hundreds of years.

When I think about events like hurricane Katrina or Martha’s history, I am so grateful for the art of writing and storytelling. Without these mediums we would never be able to enjoy and learn from those stories. As we wrote the screenplay, we enjoyed looking back into time and almost jumping into their lives. It is an intense story, so we decided to listen to soundtrack of Legends of the Fall by James Homer. The music helped set a mood for putting the story together, but even with some great music to inspire and a short paragraph of the Indian story, there were many unanswered questions.

What did the environment look like? What was Brigham Young like? How strict were parents back then? Could a mom leave her daughter alone in a house? How violent were the Native Americans? These were all questions that we were able to look to history to understand. Martha Mariah Mayer’s personal journal was a great source of information, as well as LDS Church History.

From LDS Church History we were able to understand Brigham Young’s character much better. By reading his words we were able to get an idea of the way he talked. Martha’s journal includes hundreds of stories. Each one of the stories we read helped us understand her character and build her character into the screenplay.

The LDS series of Bible videos is a great example of a project based entirely on history. The details of set design, writing, characters, are all influenced and based on historical documents. The filmmaker’s careful consideration of these elements help strengthen the validity of the themes presented in each film.

Click HERE for screenplay PDF.