The following is posted here with the permission of the author, who posted it on another board today:



I work in film production, and worked on both temple films when they were re-made. The first we filmed entirely on stage at the LDS Motion Picture Studio in 1988; the second was filmed out on location in 1990.



The studio built a complete film processing lab in order to avoid outsiders seeing the footage when the film was processed. It was an astronomically expensive undertaking, and for a number of years afterward they kept the lab running to process church stuff, but eventually the costs WAY outweighed the benefits, and they have since shut it down (smart since everything is moving digital anyway).



There are at least three of us who worked on the temple films who are now openly gay and no longer mormon. I know of at least two others who are still active and in (public) denial.



I have TONS of stories about those experiences.... I cannot even tell you what a horrible experience it was for everyone. Everything went wrong, all the time. Tempers flared. There was so much tangible tension on the set all the time. At the time, of course, everyone thought it was satan trying to prevent the projects from being made -- but now, looking back, I think it is way more accurate to say that the energy just was not lining up.



We would drive endlessly, leaving at 3am, to arrive on this huge church-owned ranch on the Utah-Wyoming border, a ranch so vast you can stand there and horizon-to-horizon was all church property. We'd film all morning, then take a long break in the middle of the day, then film again all afternoon-evening. The hours were horrendous; often the weather was awful. One day we all fled to the trailers because a huge stampede of mad cows came crashing through base camp, tearing through everything.



We had code-names for all the characters so that anyone picking up our walkie-talkie broadcasts would have no clue what we were doing. Adam and Eve were referred to as "Jack and Jill" and Peter James and John were called "The Three Bears." We nicknamed the film itself "Chronicles." God and Jesus were "the shiny guys."



Before production, the entire studio was dedicated by Hinckley as a Temple, and no one was allowed on the lot without a recommend. I think once both projects were done it was assumed the studio was "un-dedicated" since no one came back to remove the official designation as a "temple."



The scripts, wigs, and other props were kept in a large vault (pretty much exactly like the big bank vaults you see in movies) and every morning we had to count every page of every script to make sure none were missing; scripts were never set around anywhere but were always in someone's personal possession; at the end of the day we again went through every copy of every script to count pages. (Forget that anyone could have taken a script to the copy machine down the hall and made 50 copies; no one really admitted that at the time!) But it was almost freakish how terrifically important we all were. You would have thought Armageddon was on the verge of happening if we slipped up on one thing.



We filmed the altar for Adam and Eve on a private ranch here in Utah, but when we made contact of course no one told the owners what film it was. One morning after we had built the set but before we started filming, we got a call from the owners, completely unhinged and upset because they had found a stone altar on their property and thought we were doing satan-worship!! At that point, the church told us to let them know about the project so they would not freak out again. That location was awful; deep mud everywhere, and we had to make new roads to get our equipment to the set. Then of course the helicopter was a nightmare, because of the wind it created....



Anyway, I am rambling, but this thread brought back a ton of memories.



As far as the ceremony itself, the creepiest thing to me at the time of my first experience was that - before the ceremony even begins, you have to raise your hand and covenant to abide by what you are not even aware of at that point, or else you can withdraw, of your own free will. How can you covenant to accept everything you have not yet even seen? That was wacked to me. But of course, with everyone you know sitting around you, it's not like you would dare say "wait a minute, tell me what I am getting into and THEN ask me to covenant about it."



For years I kept all my paperwork related to the temple films, thinking one day they would be a really cool souvenir to show my kids. But after my catharsis of getting ex'd, one day I just threw it all into the dumpster along with my temple clothes and garments.



My last trip to the temple was devastating. I was in a terrible marriage to a mentally-ill wife, and of course was struggling greatly with my homosexuality, and in the celestial room I just prayed for help and guidance - why, when I was trying SO hard, was everything in my life so miserable? Why was god not there to help me be strong? Why was I forced to go to the temple alone and not with my wife, whose illness was religiously-induced, and who therefore was never able to draw strength from church, but only increased misery? And I sobbed in the celestial room and there was utterly no response from the universe. I was completely bereft of comfort; and I somehow new that if solace was not to be found even in that 'holy' place, that something was terribly wrong - and not necessarily with me.



It would be a few years before I got divorced and then came out. But that last trip to the temple was the beginning of the end for me. As I left, I was determined never to return. I would later lie my way through interviews, knowing I would never use my recommend, but knowing I HAD to have one or I would no longer be allowed to work on church films.



For some of us, it unravels slowly, and for others like a bolt of lightning. But when you come to now certain aspects, and, frighteningly, when you *allow* yourself to ask the searing questions, part of you knows, even then, that you're on the way out. At least in retrospect it feels that way.

