Dancing With Angels

My sister and I had developed an interest in filmmaking about 3 years ago. We used to make short comedies and just had a lot of fun with it. Well, last year, my sister and I got really serious about movie making so we decided to change a story that my sister wrote into a screenplay. It took a long time to do all of this. My mom helped me a lot by reading over everything and changing words to make them fit better in the dialogue. My mom was just as much into the project as my sister and I were. Information on the movie can be found here... www.dancingwithangelsmovie.net

Well, anyway, we had shot 3/4 of the movie last summer with our friends. My sister and I directed it and acted in it and my mom helped direct and she filmed it. In the middle of production, my mom started having very bad migraine headaches. So, after awhile, she went to the emergency room to see what could be wrong. Well, to our surprise, she had brain cancer. The doctors gave her a year to live with all the treatments possible. So, there wasn't much hope. We decided to go for alternative medicine to see if that would help. I really believed the Lord would heal my mom. I had so much faith, almost too much, if there's such a thing. Well, She was diagnosed in August of 2006 and she past away January 2007. She didn't live long, and God did not choose to heal her, but I know he has a plan for my life and taking her out of the picture must have something to do with it. Although this is so hard to grasp and understand, I know I have to continue to put my faith and trust Him.
So, back to the movie. My mom had told us before she died that she wanted us to continue with this movie. She must have seen something that we couldn't see because she just knew this movie would change people's lives. After a few months, my sister and I agreed to continue with the movie. Not only continue, but to start completely over! That wasn't easy and without the help of our friends, they Naylors, that wouldn't have been possible. So, we worked more on the script and we did all the preparation for production.
On May 8th 2007 we started production!
It was such a great experience.
We learned so much about filming, directing, lighting, and even trusting more in the Lord!


Production lasted for about 10 days. Some days were such a blast and some were so hard. We had an average of about 4 hours of sleep per night so that didn't help on the hard days.
The entire cast and crew were so great and fun to work with.
The Lord has definitely blessed me so much by being able to be apart of something like this. I really wish my mom could have helped us finish though.

We had a lot of really neat things happen while filming. Well, maybe at first they weren't considered "neat", but God ended up provided so that's why I say "neat!"
We had 2 actors that decided they couldn't do their parts last minute. Well, it's not easy finding someone who can give up their time to fill a part last minute, but the Lord provided the people and things turned out okay. For one scene, we were shooting at a restaurant. When we got home, John (camera operator) was importing the video footage and he couldn't find the restaurant scene. We were all very bummed about this. It would have cost me a whole bunch of money to reshoot the scene. Then, we decided to just pray about it and turn our problem over the the Lord. Then, we decided to go play some volleyball to get our minds off of it for awhile. After we played, we came back inside finding that the footage was there on the tapes! Not only that, but when John went back home, he brought the tapes and started looking back through them. He couldn't find the restaurant scene! The Lord must have put the scene there on the tape for us so that we could import it! Since it's nowhere to be found to this day!!!!
God is Awesome!!!

We also didn't have anyone to play a doctor for us and we didn't have a waiting room to use for the movie. After walking into a doctor's office asking, they said yes without any hesitation! The Lord has definitely provided!

During production, we had 3 news reporters come to interview us about our project. It was a great witnessing opportunity for us! We ended up being in several newspapers and on Channel 11 news.
The best part about it all was that one of the newspaper reporters emailed me and told me how she had changed her life and become a Christian after reporting our movie and story. I was just so overwhelmed with God's goodness and how he has been changing lives with the movie before it was even finished! My mom was right, she knew it would change lives, and a big part of it changing a life was the part about my mom dying. Somehow it doesn't seem worth it to me because I'm very selfish and I want my mom here, but I know it was WELL worth it for my mom.

Right now, the movie is in post-production. We are doing a lot of editing and seeking the Lord's will for what he wants us to do with the movie after it's finished.
What is so hard for me is that I know what I want to do, but I have to make sure to take myself out of the picture and do what God wants me to do. After all this movie is for Him!