Two Weeks on Set: Miracles, Milestones & the Making of Able to Stand

We have now wrapped the first two weeks of filming, and with only one significant challenge so far, it has going very well. The young couple who are playing the lead character and her boyfriend are great actors, and great people. A real joy to work with. And the fun part is that they are engaged in real life. You’ll get to see their natural chemistry enhance our movie. The day they filmed the proposal, all three men on the crew (plus Tom and Judy) had watery eyes when they were finished.

For those who haven’t heard, our movie is following a family through the final end-time events until the Second Coming. Sadly, most Christian end time movies are either pure error (such as the rapture) or pure fiction (with zombie apocalypse themes). God has put it on our hearts to portray a greater truth. Revelation 6:17 asks the question: For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand? The answer comes in Chapter 7: The 144,000. We’ve never seen a movie about them, have you? Yet, isn’t that something we should all be striving to be a part of – those who are standing for God through all of the final tribulation, deceptions, and plagues? You can see the page about the movie on our website here: www.endtimesprophecy.com/movie. A deeper dive into the characters in the movie are on our now-hidden casting call page that you can still view here: www.endtimesprophecy.com/casting-call.

We have also filmed the younger flashback versions of our lead character (played as an adult by Melissa Doering – this is her first full length feature film, although you’d never guess that when you see her performance) and her brother (played as an adult by Austin Yuros), their mother (played by Carly Fawcett) who is dying, their father (played by Leland Klassen, who is a main character in the movie), and the grandfather (played by Dave MacKinnon). Grandpa Luke has a dual role, first as the loving father comforting Leah’s father (his movie son) after his wife died, and near the end of the movie as being personated by one of satan’s demons, out to steer our lead character away from truth, after the final Day of Atonement – during the 5 months of Revelation 9).

Here is an image from the demon grandpa shoot. (Tom is running sun blocker, he is next to our sound man (Alex), our cinematographer is watching through his eye piece, an actor not in this scene is behind the white sun shade, and the director is out of range in this shot.) The funny story from that is after “Leah” rebukes the demon in the name of Yeshua, Dave yells “Nooooo…” That location is about as far away from the kitchen as you can get, but the kitchen staff (who you’ll meet in the next photo) could hear it – during repeated takes. They didn’t know what it was. They thought it might be some kind of mystery wildlife or something. Bigfoot, perhaps??? No, just a great actor portraying a demon in disguise.

Below are the actors and extras who have received the first plague, along with two of the make-up artists. (The third, our cinematographer’s wife, and their two young daughters had left by the time this picture was taken. They were also “plagued” for the scene). On the left is our son-in-law, Brian (he plays betrayer/law enforcement), next to ShaunaLynn (our cook, who drove all the way from Missouri to help us for the entire month of filming), our granddaughter, Savannah (who is working in the kitchen with ShaunaLynn), an actor, Burt Steuart (who plays a former pastor who rejected truth), our director/make-up artist from Montana (Chris Tempel), our make-up artist (Lili Park, who will also play the former pastor’s wife in the movie), and Alicia (Tom’s daughter, wife of Brian, mother of Savannah, and full-time kitchen worker as well). Alicia, an RN in real life, was the nurse in the emergency tent who was handing out an ointment “until they find a cure” for the plague. Because obviously, all of the people who receive the plague are not going to admit that they are lost and are receiving a judgment from God. (Both Chris and Lili also helped us with the script for the movie as well. We have received much help from many.)

ShaunaLynn (a volunteer who came all the way from Missouri to feed us all) is doing an amazing job in the kitchen. She is doing all the baking – bread, muffins, and completely spoiling us on Friday nights with several different types of pizza. All homemade. She is enjoying herself, and we are delighted. Not just by her cooking, but by her generous heart. Plus she has a great laugh that we love hearing. (Her miracle was that her passport, which first got delayed, and then erringly got marked as an inactive file, arrived the day before she had to leave.)

We’re tracking miracles, both large and small. An example of a small one was when I (Judy) realized I had some avocados that needed to be eaten, so I took them with me to supper. ShaunaLynn was in the middle of making “Cowboy Caviar”, bemoaning the fact that we didn’t have any avocados. She about jumped out of her skin with excitement when I walked in with four perfect ones (maybe it was five?) in my hands. I didn’t know she wanted them, she didn’t tell anyone she was making something that really needed them, and the timing was literally within seconds that I had them in her hand. She was almost ready to scrap that plan and quickly try to come up with an alternative. But it was that very moment (a good five days into filming) that I was inspired to take them with me to the dining hall.

The biggest challenge we had was with an actor we had to let go, which put us in a bind. No movie wants to have to fire an actor on the third day of filming. Not only did it cause us to have to reshoot over a day of filming, but we needed someone to play that character, and fast! We looked through everyone who had submitted that we hadn’t auditioned, with no luck. Our young couple had an acting friend, but it really wasn’t a good fit for his schedule and with him being from Vancouver instead of Kelowna (like the one we let go), we would have to pay extra travel days and gas. Plus he looked too young for the part.

I’m not quite sure how it happened – if someone else suggested it or if he came up with the idea – but Alicia’s husband was willing to cram a lot of dialog overnight and audition the next morning. Our director (who is amazing, by the way – another miracle that we found him, and bigger miracle both that his passport arrived in time and that a BC Director’s union would give him a waiver – no union easily allows people to hire outside of their control) – but back to the story, our director was impressed, and Brian is now our new Damien Mercer. Brian is so friendly and outgoing, but he has to portray a bad guy. When he first tried a scene, our director wasn’t sure Brian could do it, but after an evening and morning of practice, he had nailed it. Another blessing and miracle. We know that God is seeing us through this project.

We are blessed with a great cast and crew, all of which are miracles stories on their own. The day before filming was to begin, Judy was driving out our gate to find a stranger there. He had heard about our movie from another friend (who we trained as the prop firearms safety person). He has wanted to be involved with movies, and “happened” to mention to our armorer that he had decided he needed to take a step to follow that dream (he has a plumbing business currently). He volunteered to help in any capacity, and we “just so happened” to still need someone to run the sound equipment. He is such a great help with the sound/microphone (“boom” in movie-speak) and all around willing and prayerful heart, that we decided to pay him anyway. A modest amount, but a worker is worthy of his hire. We have a Bible text for that!

Our cinematographer just emailed us out of the blue, practically begging to help with our movie. He has experiences at the highest levels (like having worked on Donald Trump’s campaign, then for Charlie Kirk at Turning Point USA), and “just happens” to own about $200,000 of movie cameras, microphones, and related equipment, including the same kind of camera that Tom Cruise uses on his films. And he was willing to work at a tenth of what his role would generally cost. Our director has nicknamed him “Hollywood”, so we’ll probably post him as Josh “Hollywood” Twigg in the credits.

Perhaps the biggest miracle was that we got not one, but two, British Columbia unions to give us exemptions so this project could go through. That just doesn’t happen. Long stories, but in the end, the Director’s Union agreed to give a last-minute exemption so our Montana director could get a Canada work visa, and the Actor’s Union agreed to give an exemption to an insurance requirement that was proving impossible to meet. Yet they both relented!

So many stories to tell, miracles that are happening, great acting, a team that is gelling together really nicely, many opportunities to witness on set. A ton of work, but a work for The King of the Universe, so there is no better job in the world. Tom jumps in any way he can. Here he is posing with the “clapper board”. Our director likes to involve visitors to the set (like Alicia, Savannah, ShaunaLynn) to do it. He tells us to “mark it”. We call out, in this instance, “Scene 22, Shot 1, Take 1, mark” (and then click the top part down to the bottom part. Scene is the section of the movie being filmed, shot is the camera angle, and take is which try we are on. The mark makes it simpler to match up the audio track with the video track. We’ve all seen videos where the audio is slightly before or after the lips moving, and it is quite a distraction. This process enables him to keep track of all of the scenes and shots for when he starts lining them up to edit.

What has surprised us the most is how a movie gets made. The other day, we filmed a lot of scenes, put in a productive 8 hour day, and at supper, Chris was so excited because we had filmed a solid ten minutes of movie! All of that work for ten minutes run time. That’s how intense the process is. With each scene, we have numerous shots (camera positions). For example, in the proposal scene, we shot the entire scene focused on the man from two different angles (shots 1 and 2) and the entire scene on the woman from a couple of different angles (shots 3 and 4), then the two of them walking both to and away from the scene of the proposal (shots 5 and 6). When Chris edits (post-production), he can cut back and forth between both shots to give the scene from multiple vantage points. Of course, that all takes time, positioning and repositioning. The result will be far more professional and engaging than a single camera angle of the entire scene.

There are so many stories we could tell now, but you’ll just have to wait. It’s so busy around here. In additions to the “miracles” list, I’ve been tempted to keep a “daily emergencies” list, but I decided not to focus on that aspect. It comes with the territory, but the miracles are far more fun to tell. “Hollywood” is filming on the side to create a documentary on the making of the movie. He wants to sit down with a lot of the actors and crew and get some of the stories they have to tell, so that will happen some day, just not sure when.

We’re scheduled to wrap up the filming on September 17, and wish the movie would be ready for viewing by then, but that is not how it works. The first layer of editing is selecting, assembling, and building a file with all of the many, many shots over the 126 movie scenes. (Not all are detailed. For example, just an image of the outside of a filming location is a “scene” that is only a few lines on a page in the script, while other scenes are 2-3 pages of dialog and action.) Then the real work begins – color finetuning, audio finetuning, special effects (like making the demon dissolve), and last is the music.

Cinematic music is a game all its own. I’ve discovered that you don’t just take music and overlay it. Instead, you find a scene where you want music, you time the length, you determine what type of music (Chris will give about an 8 note example of what he has in mind), and then the music gets written based off of that. We’ve had another miracle in the music department. The very morning after Chris broke it to us that we needed to have thousands of dollars for a composer, we woke to an email from a supporter of our ministry that we had been in limited contact with up until that point. In the email, he said that he was a composer with a full studio, and attached several pieces of music that he said we could use. Of course, that was before I learned that we most likely can’t use anything pre-written, because the odds that it is the exact number of seconds of the scene, or matches the type of music that the scene requires (there is suspense, danger, happy family, falling in love, etc.). So when Chris gets the first part of the edit, he’ll share that with our composer, and they’ll work together to get it created. We’re not holding the composer to this, because it is very likely far more entailed than he anticipated, but with God, we know that everything will work out for His glory.

Meanwhile, since we started filming, we’ve had a much-needed uptick in donations for the project. God’s timing is always perfect. At this point, we have 62% of our overall goal met, with a couple of other commitments made that could bring us somewhere around the 68% range. If you haven’t joined in with making this movie possible, please pray and be open to how the Holy Spirit leads. After all, He has precious promises for those who fill His storehouse through their tithes and offerings.

Malachi 3:10  Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. 

If you have not yet joined in this project, we humbly ask for your support to help get us past the finish line.