Each team researched information and contacted area scholars and authorities on these subjects and began organizing interview questions for taping sessions. The teams then moved into production in conducting and recording the content expert interviews and finding historical documents and photographs to support key information from the interviews. After traveling from St. George to Rexburg shooting fourteen hours of interview footage, the tapes were transcribed and catalogued to begin the editing process.
In the meantime another team began pre-production on the recreation sequences of the massacre and the execution of John D. Lee. Over one hundred hours were put in to cast twelve principles and 68 extras, arrange costuming, procure the services of a wrangling team that provided wagons, horses, weapons, and properties, find a suitable location for the recreations, and arrange the production equipment, film acquisition, and processing. No small task for first-semester motion picture students.
The team went into production with three photographic units to tell the story, a 16mm film unit, a DV Steadicam unit, and a DV unit for audio acquisition. The recreations were shot in two days during Spring break involving over one hundred people including Dixie State College theater students, local actors, professional wranglers and the Motion Picture Production Class students. At the end of two days and 20 hours of production, a recreation of the massacre and the execution were in the can.
The documentary went into a second phase of post-production where the interviews were organized along with the written narrative and the recreation footage to create a production script. The production design was taking shape with the producers and the graphic artist who designed the documentary’s look and feel.
The final narrative sequences went into pre-production where Marvin Payne was cast to host and narrate the program. Another production team then produced narrative sequences. More historical photos and documents were filmed to complete the telling of the story.
Once all the visual and audio information was acquired, the media went into the editing phase of production. Over three hundred hours of editing produced a program that has stirred audiences at special screenings at the Eclipse Film Festival and over venues in St. George.
