Our History

Introduction

Living Scriptures, Inc. (LSI), founded in 1974 in Ogden, Utah by Jared F. Brown and Seldon O. Young, originally sold audio cassette dramatizations called “The Family Hour.” In 1976, Brown and Young developed the telemarketing pioneer NICE Corporation; they were the first to design a computerized system based on telemarketing, building the largest telemarketing company in the USA. In 1988, NICE Corporation was sold to Cincinnati Bell. You may know it today as Convergys.

This sale funded our earliest development of the animated Book of Mormon videos. Later, more LDS-oriented entertainment media business was developed, which includes the award-winning Docudrama of the Restoration and Modern Prophets documentary-style productions, as well as dramatized audio tapes, CDs, music, and books.

An Animated Endeavor

LSI was known for the first 14 years of its corporate life for its dramatized audio cassette collections. Through the combination of good storytelling and quality voice talent, the most expansive collection of scriptural audio entertainment blossomed and grew. As the VCR took hold as the entertainment media of choice in the mid-80s, a new era of imagination for the LDS market was dawning: how could Living Scriptures bring the life-changing scripture stories to life on TV?

Brown knew that it couldn't be done cheaply. LDS videos would have to be as exciting and interesting as anything else on TV. They had to look and sound like first-rate professional productions. So he turned to one of the foremost artists in the world of animation, Richard Rich, director of such Disney® animated features as The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron, as well as assistant director on The Rescuers and Pete's Dragon.

Together they planned out what it would take to turn the dream into a reality. The talent was available; besides Rich's own team of designers, artists and animators—many former Disney pros themselves—they'd get Lex de Azevedo and Kurt Bestor to compose the music, Orson Scott Card and Brian Nissen to write the scripts, and draw on great acting talent in Utah and Los Angeles to supply the voices. With the animation style of the Disney classics, and a personal, individual touch only Richard Rich could provide, Book of Mormon and Bible heroes came to life for the first time in animation.

The real challenge was the cost. Each animated video cost forty times as much as one of the half-hour audiotapes that, until then, had been Living Scriptures' main product. Millions of dollars would be at risk; everything depended on the answer to one question: will enough LDS families buy the videos to pay for the cost of producing them? The answer wasn't a sure thing at all.

In addition, when you adapt scripture to film, you have to invent things—dialogue, actions—that aren't there in the scriptures, yet still maintain the purity of the scriptural story. This is the same challenge that the LDS Church faced when they produced their live-action film based on the Book of Mormon titled, The Testaments: Of One Fold and One Shepherd. They approached it the same way by using literary license with characters not found in the scriptures.

Brown, a scriptorian in his own right, found his favorite stories from the Bible and Book of Mormon, pored over them, outlined and titled them and subsequently sent them to the script writers, Orson Scott Card, and with later productions, Brian Nissen.

Building a Bridge to the Scriptures

In preparing the script for an animated video, Scott Card, an internationally recognized author, first tried to see the story from a child's point of view. What will a child be able to understand? What will a child care about? Often this means focusing on a child character in the story. “We never contradict the scripture,” says Card. “We just fill in a few of the gaps in the story. It's in those gaps that we add touches of humor, heighten the excitement and find ways to help children understand.”

The early Book of Mormon productions paved way to the Animated New Testament, Animated Old Testament and Hero Classics productions by NEST Family Entertainment, where the oversight of an inter-denominational Advisory Board helped to steer these later series to be useful to families of many faiths. The accurate storytelling, beautiful music, amazing voice talent, and classic animation style has made these 69 movies timeless and enduring. When obstacles to the expensive and ambitious undertaking blocked the way, literally through hard work and faith, and support of many customers, miracles happened.

The goal has never been to replace the scriptures. Our mission is to help children and families to love the stories found therein. We hope that every viewer will find their understanding of the story increased, and be filled with love for the scriptures and the great men and women whose stories are told. We want these DVDs to lead people back into the scriptures, to experience them in ways they never did before.

Church History Comes To Life

In the early 90s, as the LDS market hungered for more to supplement their knowledge of the Gospel and the Church, Living Scriptures began work to meet the need. LSI branched out into a live-action, documentary-style series that could fill the interests of its adult customers. The Docudrama of the Restoration video series envelopes more than 6 years of research, scripting, filming, and editing, and has resulted in largest video panorama of the LDS Church's early beginnings to its present day global presence. These award-winning videos, with little-known stories of the faith of our forefathers, bring you and your family closer together as you experience the history of the LDS Church.

As production of The Docudrama of the Restoration series was completed in 1999, many customers asked if we could create stories specific to the Presidents of the LDS Church. In December 1999 we released the first video, Joseph F. Smith in this impressive Modern Prophets series, to coincide with the LDS Church's study that year about this great man. Where the Docudrama series retold the historic events of the Church, Modern Prophets allows viewers to see that history reflected in the stalwart lives of its prophets, from Joseph Smith to Howard W. Hunter. Word-of-mouth grew fast and it quickly became a best-seller with our customers, and a multiple award-winner at film competitions like the Houston Film Festival and the Telly Awards.

Yet awards and strong sales aside, there was a mission behind this series to preserve the testimonies of these great men's lives in a comprehensive film series. And to accomplish this we saved “the best” for last. Preparing the fourteenth film, the story of the Prophet Joseph Smith, became a special opportunity. At the time the Church was producing its impactful Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration for the Legacy Theater in Salt Lake City and visitors centers around the world. Using the same directing and writing team of that film, T.C. Christensen and Gary Cook, together with many of the same cast members, we were able to produce Praise to the Man. Viewers embraced Praise to the Man for the Modern Prophets subscriber release in November 2004. The film's individual retail release in November 2006 became the best-selling DVD at Deseret Book for the Christmas season, and still remains a strong selling DVD from week to week.

New Technology and New Ways for Enhancing Learning

In the late 90s, the exciting DVD format entered the market. Brown and his development team could see the interactive power this new media harnessed. By early 2001 customers began asking for our movies on DVD. Quickly demand for digital media became the majority of what we sold. Our earliest DVDs provided the films on this new format, but while they were being released the multi-year development of the interactive Complete Learning System was underway. Our movies were legendary for making the scriptures "fun" but we also wanted to enhance their ability to teach the scriptures even better than could be done with videocassette media. DVD technology finally made interactivity possible in a way more widely accessible than PC software. However, taking the time to develop an enhanced animated product line while the DVD format quickly overtook the market proved a challenge.

In spring 2005 the first animated Complete Learning System DVDs were released. The rest soon followed. Together with re-mastered films, we added hundreds of menus and interactive quizzes, researched supportive scriptures and tied them into each film, and developed a full Spanish version on each DVD. For the first time parents can more easily help their family make a meaningful connection with the scriptures. Kids can have fun and still measure what they learn. And now our animated DVDs are completely useable for those who speak Spanish or just wish to learn a second language. In spring of that same year LSI launched LDSFamilyFun.com to provide free, interactive learning resources for owners of the Complete Learning System, as well as for potential customers.

Now, better than ever, these powerful stories become part of a child's life. Children love to see the same stories over and over and acting them out. As children immerse themselves in these stories—especially if done with involvement of a parent or teacher—their testimonies grow.