Dallas Jenkins (creator of The Chosen) has spoken about moments during filming that he calls “Parting the Red Sea” moments. Many times there was a seemingly unmovable obstacle, such as problems securing a filming location, weather, or technical difficulties along with a pandemic that only seemed to stop The Chosen from happening. It was demoralizing to Jenkins and his cast and crew, but it stretched their faith to new heights. Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:2-4 Amazingly in each case, God did not just remove the obstacles. Rather, he used them to make The Chosen even more beautiful than anyone ever dreamed. The rewards were well worth the struggle in the end, as they so often are. It was literally God casting the vision He had for The Chosen through these seemingly unmovable barriers. And the same was true for us. In our case while filming “Faith Healing,” we didn’t always have too much, but we never had too little. We always had Enough. These are what I now call “Five Loaves and Three Fish” moments. One thing that filmmakers are always worried about is time. Just because you plan something down to the smallest detail with a margin for error doesn’t mean you will finish on-schedule, and we never did that week. Instead, we finished filming early nearly everyday of production! Not to mention that by some miracle, we were able to get 3 hours ahead of schedule on a couple of days. That first day (or more accurately night) of filming, we expected to be on-set until 3 or 4AM because we were filming 3 long, difficult scenes. We arrived on-set at about 3PM that afternoon and left at about 1:30AM with everything we needed and more. The next day, we started at 3PM to give everyone a decent rest period and had dinner at about 8:30PM. By that point, we were about 2 hours ahead of schedule with one short, simple scene left to film. This allowed us to get ahead and finish 3 hours early again the next day and also give our cast and crew a little bit of reprieve! When you are a low-budget, independent filmmaker like we are, one of the best ways to pay people is with free food. That was something I was especially worried about, especially on the second-to-last day of filming when we were expecting to have at least 15 - 20 high school students as extras. I was trying to be very conscious about the money yet generous that week, and food is a significant cost to production. So what do you feed a bunch of high school students for not a lot of money? Chick-Fil-A! I had ordered about 20 orders each of grilled and fried nuggets the week before, and the whole day I was praying that it would be enough for everyone. Amazingly enough, it was! In fact, we had 5 or 6 orders leftover! This moment reminded me of the story of Jesus Feeding the 5,000. When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick. As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.” Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.” “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered. “Bring them here to me,” he said. And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children. Matthew 14:13 - 21 The disciples gave Jesus all they had, which in their minds was not enough. Jesus thanked His Father for the seemingly insignificant mere morsels, and in the end, they had 12 basketfuls of leftovers. Jesus took what they had and multiplied it, and He wanted to make sure that not a single crumb was wasted. Believe me! Not one leftover nugget was wasted by anyone that day. Returning to the topic of extras, this was our first film with them, and on the first day of filming, everything went wrong with that. The first scene we filmed was a party. We put out calls on every platform we have access to, but no one showed up. We had to figure out a way, and on-set, we came up with a solution. Instead of a party, we turned the scene into an intimate get-together, which worked just as well, if not better. We had two of our crew members, Mikayla Denny and De’ja McCray, join the scene as cast members. Neither of them have much acting experience, but they improved all their lines and the scene was perfect! The whole night was executed flawlessly because of our crew’s adaptability. The following Saturday, we were filming several church scenes, about 20 people showed up. I wasn’t expecting a full-house, but I was hoping we would have enough people to fill the frame and make it look like a full-house, and we did. We were able to restate the extras 3 or 4 times to get 3 or 4 different shots that all had a full house in them. The scene was beautiful and perfectly conveyed the message of redemption I was looking for. Then came one of the most important days of production. The day we filmed at Trinity Christian School. This was the day where extras had to show up, otherwise the whole project would suffer. Even before cameras started rolling, I knew God was working in and through these scenes in particular. About one month before filming, Jason and I went to Trinity to scout out the location and plan the scenes. While we were meeting with the athletic directors, they mentioned that their league was featured as extras in the Kendrick Brother’s film Overcomer. They offered to reach out to some of the parents and see if their kids would be interested in participating. What a miracle! That day, 12 Trinity students came out and ran back and forth on the track for about 6 hours (not consecutively) while we filmed. Not once did they complain or anything. They just did it. They had a great attitude the whole time and it was probably the funnest day of filming we had. No one likes to talk about money these days, but an indie filmmaker is usually worried about how to compensate their cast and crew. Movies are not cheap, and there are a lot of miscellaneous expenses that have to be paid. I as the executive producer was in-charge of the money, and along with food, lodging, credit, and footage, I promised to pay everyone a decent amount of gas money. At first, the number we tabulated between these and other expenses seemed impossible to reach, because it was. There was absolutely no way we were going to be able to raise that amount, and there was no way I was going to be able to fund the film out of my own pocket. Because of this, there were moments where I seriously considered cancelling the production. But it never came to that. As we got to work, so did God. God did not miraculous provide the money. Rather, He divinely intervened to provide us with props, supplies, locations, and even food and lodging for us. That way, we were able to cut back expenses and lower our budget, and in the end, it was enough. I was able to pay off the bill for Faith Healing without having to dip into my own money at all. Everyone got what they were due, including a small stipend as well. It was truly a miracle, and I am taking it as a sign of what is to come for us and this film. I owe it all of this our incredible cast and crew, including the extras, who were honestly more like a family that whole week of filming. There aren’t that many jobs you can go to where you look forward to coming to work everyday with people you love. But I loved waking up everyday to go film with these people who kept us on-track and made the week on of the funnest ever. They all had a good attitude and worked hard, even having to wear multiple hats in this film. That’s how I know we had the right crew, even if it was a skeleton crew, but it was the best cast and crew I have ever worked with. These problems may seem small or insignificant, but to me, they are a testament of God’s planning and provision. He can take something that is seemingly not enough and multiply it so we can all eat and be satisfied with 12 basketfuls of leftovers. Or in our case, 5 or 6 orders of Chick-Fil-A chicken nuggets leftover.
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