My idea of making a movie, of any kind, really started back in 2006, when one of my friends decided to make her own movies. I was “lucky” enough to be an actress in both films, and then double for another girl and work a little bit on scheduling for the second one.
Those adventures started me writing my own scripts. From the beginning, I wanted to make movies that would glorify God and change people’s lives in a good way. I also wanted to only make narratives (fiction films). I thought documentaries were, for the most part, pretty boring. So, if you look through my shelves, you will come across several feature length scripts, a few more scripts for shorts, and some others that never got beyond the first few lines of dialogue. And many of them need a LOT of work.
From 2006 to 2010, I wrote scripts, tried to learn about film-making, and planned for films. Then, in 2010, I made a short documentary, called Forgotten, about a historic, old church, Mammoth Cave Baptist Church, that we ran across that spring when we visited Mammoth Cave National Park. The next project was a short practice film called Business is Booming: The Case of the Missing Cookies, that we shot in Omaha with my cousins in the summer.
Now, somewhere along the way, God began to change my heart about making non-fiction/documentary films. I honestly don’t know when or how He did it, but, somehow, He did.
The content of All I Want for Christmas came from an idea that has been going around our house for the last two years at the holidays. You see, we’ve kept in touch with some missionaries (Dr. Paul and Tania Becker and Michelle Maly) who volunteered at the orphanage where Vera used to live. Because of them, we know some of what has happened to the kids who were originally in Vera’s class. As of today, though others have been added to the class, there are only two left who were there when Vera was there. The rest have been adopted, reclaimed by parents who were released from jail, run away, or were moved to a different class at the orphanage.
Michelle, in one of her ministry update letters, recounted something we’ve never been able to forget about a conversation she had with one child at the orphanage. This is what she said:
“As I talked to A…, he wanted me to know that he prays every night for a family to come to adopt him. He explained that sometimes at night he is tired and just wants to go to sleep, but no matter how he is feeling, he always makes time for a special prayer. I asked him what he says to God. . .
“Dear God, please help someone find me a family. They don’t have to be rich, I just want a family. Amen”
This afternoon my conversation with him continued when he pulled me to the side and asked me again if I knew anyone who would adopt him. I tried to explain that I am praying for God to send him a family, but he longs for someone to come for him now. My heart was breaking as he lowered his gaze and quietly asked, “Why doesn’t anyone choose me?”“
It was about that time, that our family began praying earnestly, daily, for a family this young man in particular, who about that time had come to know Jesus as his Savior. Later, at Christmastime 2009, some of the missionaries to orphans in Ukraine, asked people to send boxes of Christmas presents for the kids. As we boxed up packages for the two boys we knew from Vera’s class, we couldn’t help thinking that what they really needed was a family. Yes, it’s great to send presents, but stuff can never make up for what they really need and many really want. The song, I’ll Be Home for Christmas, really got to us, too, because we knew that they wouldn’t even have a home for Christmas.
By the time the holiday season came around in 2010, the same thoughts were still running through our minds. Sometime in November, I was thinking about it all, and suddenly, I had a brainstorm for a film. I rushed to find a paper and pen, and by the time I want to bed that night, God had given me the majority of the script for All I Want for Christmas, the lyrics for the song All I Want for Christmas, and the melody for the chorus of the song. That just doesn’t happen. Really, it doesn’t. I have a million papers sitting around with song lyrics on them, and I’ve composed several songs without lyrics, but almost none with both.
Over the next month, I worked rather sporadically on the script for All I Want for Christmas. I knew I wanted to enter the film in the Envision Film Festival–not to win a prize–but because I figured that, at a smaller festival, there would be a bigger chance that the film would actually be shown. And that was the goal–for people to see it and be changed by it.
By the time our Christmas visits with family were over and the calendar turned to January, I realized how little time we had and that we were going to have to move really fast if we still hoped to be able to enter the film at Envision, since the deadline for entering was January 31. And so began one of the craziest months in my life.
Early in January, my dad made an announcement telling our church about the project and asking for help in a few ways. That afternoon at church, I started asking some of the young men if they would be interested in playing the part of the Narrator. That same day, John-Paul offered to do the cinematography for the film with his very nice HD camera. He also offered to bring his lighting equipment over. Now, that was totally unexpected. I had been planning to use our Sony camcorder, which doesn’t take very good quality video, but it was all I had to work with. Instead, God unexpectedly used John-Paul and his camera to take the quality of the film up by a really big step.
That week, I emailed Chad and Carl, who had been out of town on Sunday, to see if Chad would be interested in auditioning for the part of the Narrator and whether Carl would be willing to record the audio for the film. The answers were affirmative.
Everything went along pretty smoothly until the week of the film shoot. Because of everyone’s busy lives, I was finding it very challenging to conduct auditions for the part of the Narrator. In addition, John-Paul found out that he had a prior commitment, in a different state, on the evening of the shoot. So, there I was, still without a narrator, without a cameraman, and without someone to set up lighting, less than a week away from the shoot.
Eventually, I was able to cast Chad as the Narrator, but that still left a complication with the camera and lighting. So, I called up Stephen Higginbotham, who was also interested in cinematography, to see it he could come and run the camera and lights. He was able to. So, I went to bed relieved. The next day, I got an email from Stephen saying that he wouldn’t be able to make it to the shoot, because he found out that he had to be at a pickup shoot for Creed of Gold, a feature length film for which he was Director of Cinematography. I understood, and Stephen thought his brother Joshua could do the lighting and camera for our film–and he had no prior commitments for the evening of the shoot.
So, Friday, January 21, 2011 rolled around and the cast and crew of All I Want for Christmas congregated at the Carpenter house. With such a small crew (my parents, Ben, Joshua, Carl, and me), everyone wore several hats. One of many unexpected blessings was Carl’s aid in directing Vera and Chad in acting and dialogue. I was nervous (it was my first really serious film to direct), and I was a little afraid to say exactly what I thought when it came to Vera’s and Chad’s performances, because I didn’t want to hurt their feelings when there was something I thought they should change. That’s where Carl came in. Somehow, he knew exactly what I wanted from them and was able to voice exactly what I was thinking many, many times over the course of the evening, making my job a lot easier.
It was a long, crazy night, but it was good. Chad and Vera did an amazing job in front of the camera, and Joshua, Carl, Ben, and my parents did a phenomenal job and more than you can imagine to make it all happen on the other end of the camera. We finished shooting at 2:30 am, Saturday morning. Then, someone accidentally pushed “reformat” on the SD card containing everything we had shot, and all the video we had shot disappeared.
Carl thought he could recover the video, since, he said, only the pathways to the files had been erased and not the files themselves. So, he took the card home, saying he would find the files in the morning. However, the next day, I found an email from Carl with a “4:23 am” time stamp. Praise God, he had recovered every last file!
The next evening, John-Paul came over to shoot the opening credits, which were all shots of the Christmas tree. That night went off without a hitch, though after all the bending we did to it, I’m not sure the tree will ever be the same again!
Then began the long process of editing the film. Long, but enjoyable. Well, except for the time crunch on Jan. 31st! Anyway, we also had to record the piano and vocals for the soundtrack. God blessed our family with a digital piano that would allow us to record the piano end of the music and then be able to transfer it to the computer for editing and recording vocals. So, my mom recorded the piano tracks, and then we both recorded vocals. Another “God thing” was the music for the film. Not only did He give me the music for part of the song All I Want for Christmas, but He also provided two other original songs, one of which, called Everyday Hero, my mom had written months before this project had even started and the other, The Key, she had written in 1982. My mom had asked God to give her a song for her high school graduation, and He gave her The Key, a song written with 5 flats. My mom says that if it were up to her in her own strength, she would have written it in the key of C!
I spent quite a while searching the internet for free photos to use in the film, during the song All I Want for Christmas. Most places wanted me to jump through a million hoops in order to use the photos. However, one site owner was willing to let me use his photos for free, as long as I put the site in the credits. That was a real blessing. Not only that, but God used photos8 to provide the perfect still photos for the film.
Anyway, somehow, God brought it all together, which brings us to Jan. 31st, the deadline. To enter at Envision, the film had to be postmarked by the 31st. We missed the mail pickup in our town, so we headed to a town north of here in the middle of the first day of an awful ice storm. We made it to the post office with only moments to spare.
And so ended the craziest month of my life. I am still in awe of the way God worked everything together for good. I am very thankful for my incredibly supportive family, without whom I don’t think this project ever would have happened. I am thankful for friends who were willing to give of their time, skills, and equipment to make the project possible. I am thankful for the prayers of family and church family. And I am thankful to God, without Whom this project would have been completely impossible. It was a lot of work and it took a lot of time and it made life really crazy, but it was a good crazy, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
The continuing story on the post production end of things is that a few days before the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival deadline at the end of September 2011, Stephen came and spent a total of about 20 hours, over two days, one of them until 3 am, working on color correction and some other aspects of editing.
It was great to be able to work with my family and friends and to be able to make a movie. But the biggest reason this project stands out, and why I’d do it again, is that it has eternal significance. More than anything else, that’s what made it worth it. God gave me the opportunity to speak up for those who can’t speak for themselves and to potentially change lives forever. That’s an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything else in the whole world.
“Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all the unfortunate. Open your mouth, judge righteously, and defend the rights of the afflicted and needy.” -Proverbs 31:8-9
“Deliver those who are being taken away to death, and those who are staggering to slaughter, Oh hold them back. If you say, ‘See, we did not know this,’ Does He not consider it who weighs the heart? And does He now know it who keeps your soul? And will He not render to man according to his work?” -Proverbs 24:11-12
God really blessed this project – and me. I am still in awe of His work and amazed by the willingness of my family and friends to give of themselves to make the project happen.
For Him and for the children,
Megan Carpenter
Writer/Director/Producer
