Day 54:We’re Making a Movie | Making CHOSEN

A month ago, I wrote a blog called Making This Short Film Is Kicking My Ass (In a Good Way).

Well, it is still kicking my ass.

The difference is that now we are officially greenlit, so I suppose it gets to kick my ass all the way through production.

Today is Day 54 of making Chosen, and as I write this, we have raised $12,670 of our $15,000 crowdfunding goal. That is 84 percent funded, which is enough to successfully complete our Seed&Spark campaign and officially move forward with making this film.

I keep looking at that number because I remember when it said $590. I remember when $3,000 felt huge. I remember getting to 50 percent and being excited for about seven minutes before immediately doing the math on how much we still needed. I remember the days when the number barely moved, and I wondered whether I had officially run out of people I had ever met in my entire life to ask for money. Fundraising for a film is a very specific kind of humbling.

You spend years writing quietly. You create something because something inside you tells you that you need to create it. Then one day, you take this thing that has mostly existed between you and your laptop and announce to the world, Hello. I believe in this story enough to ask you for $15,000 to help me make it.

That is wild behavior when you really think about it.

But people gave.

In fact, they gave $25, $50, and $100. Some gave $500 or $1,000. Businesses came on as sponsors. Friends shared the campaign. People who couldn't give connected me with people who could. Others offered services, equipment, advice, introductions, or their time. Some of the people I thought would show up did. Some people surprised me. Some didn't show up at all. Fundraising will teach you a lot about people, but it will also teach you a lot about yourself.

And somehow, all those individual acts of generosity added up to more than $12,000.

Chosen is officially greenlit. Which is wonderful, but it's also the moment when you realize:

Oh, now I actually have to make the movie.

The part where all of this becomes real

Over the last few weeks, Chosen has started becoming something much bigger than a screenplay sitting on my computer.

I have spent hours looking at audition tapes, sometimes watching the same person more than once because they did something with a line that made me go back and listen again. These are characters who have lived in my head, some of them for years, and now there are actual human beings saying their words back to me. Someone will make a choice I didn't write into the script, or pause somewhere I hadn't imagined a pause, and suddenly I can see another possibility for a character I thought I already knew.

That has been one of the strangest and most beautiful parts of this process.

I'm also receiving emails from people I've never met who want to work on the production. People are sending resumes and reels, telling me about their experience, and asking if there is a place for them on Chosen. I'm having conversations about cinematography, sound, schedules, contracts, locations, equipment, wardrobe, transportation, lodging, rehearsals, food, production assistants, and all the things that have to happen before anybody ever gets to stand in a room and yell, "Action."

And there are so many little things.

I think that has been one of the biggest surprises for me. Of course I knew making a film would require a lot of work, but there are the big things you know to think about, and then there are approximately 4,732 smaller things hiding underneath them.

You cast an actor, and that feels like one thing checked off the list until you realize casting the actor creates six new things that need to happen. You bring someone onto the crew, and now there is another conversation to have, another meeting to schedule, and another person who needs information from you. You solve one problem and discover the solution has somehow created three new questions.

I am constantly learning something that makes me realize there are five other things I need to learn.

And there are meetings. A lot of them.

Meanwhile, regular life has the audacity to continue

Perhaps the funniest part of deciding to make a movie is discovering that the rest of your life does not clear its calendar in support of your dreams.

I still have a nine-to-five. I still operate my copywriting business. I still have the literary side of my creative life, including a novel that I am getting my ducks in a row to release in 2027, which means there are things I need to be doing now if I don't want 2027 to arrive and have me staring at the calendar wondering who authorized time to move that quickly.

I'm still a wife and a mother. There are still groceries to buy, school things to remember, appointments to keep, people I love who need my attention, and laundry that does not care in the slightest that I am making an independent film.

And somewhere inside all of that, I am also supposed to sleep.

I think this is the part of being a creative entrepreneur that we don't talk about enough. There isn't always a beautiful, clean transition where the life you were living ends and your dream life begins. Sometimes the dream shows up right in the middle of everything else.

It squeezes itself between work meetings and client deadlines. You answer a production email during lunch. You watch audition tapes after you've finished the work that pays the bills. You make notes about your novel while thinking about something you need to handle for the film. Your Google Calendar starts looking mildly threatening.

For now, at least, this is what building the creative life looks like for me.

And I am learning that being a filmmaker isn't separate from being a writer or a copywriter or an entrepreneur. It is another extension of the same creative life I have been building for years. It just happens to require significantly more people, considerably more money and an alarming number of spreadsheets.

We raised the money. And I'm still raising money.

One thing I want to be clear about is that being greenlit doesn't mean we reached our entire budget.

Our goal has always been $15,000, and as of today, we've raised $12,670. Crossing the 80 percent threshold means Chosen gets to move forward, and I am incredibly grateful for that. But every dollar between where we are now and that $15,000 goal still matters.

It matters because the closer we get to production, the more concrete the expenses become. These aren't numbers sitting in a budget anymore. They are people. They are equipment. They are meals. They are transportation. They are the crew members who make it possible for the actors and me to focus on telling the story. And after October 11, we still have an entire film to finish through editing, sound, color, and post-production.

So while the Seed&Spark campaign is ending, I am not finished fundraising for Chosen.

If you've been following this journey and wanted to contribute but didn't get a chance to do so through the campaign, I am continuing to accept support via PayPal. [DONATE TO CHOSEN VIA PAYPAL]

And if you have already donated, sponsored, shared, connected me with someone, offered a resource or simply continued to ask me how the film is going, thank you. I don't say that lightly. More than $12,000 didn't appear because one person wrote a giant check. We got here because a whole lot of people decided that what they had to offer mattered.

It did.

This is what I prayed for

I would be lying if I said I wasn't overwhelmed sometimes.

I am. But there are moments when I look at everything that needs to happen between now and October 10 and genuinely wonder how I am going to get it all done while continuing to do everything else my life requires of me. I am nervous. I am excited. I am tired. I am learning. And depending on the hour, one of those feelings may be significantly louder than the others.

But I've been trying to catch myself when my brain gets too far ahead of me.

Because when I start thinking about the emails I haven't answered yet, the meetings I still need to schedule, the decisions I haven't made, and all the things I don't know that I don't know yet, I have to take a breath and remember something.

This is what I prayed for.

I prayed for opportunities to tell my stories. I wanted to make films. I wanted to build a creative life big enough to hold all the different kinds of writing and storytelling that I love. I wanted people to read something I wrote and see enough in it to want to help me bring it to life.

And now there are actors sending me auditions for characters that once existed only in my imagination.

There are people emailing me because they want to work on my film.

There are businesses that put their names behind this project. There are people who gave their money because they believe this story deserves to exist beyond the page. There are meetings on my calendar about a movie that I wrote and will direct.

There is a date on the calendar when we will actually make it.

October 10. That is not some someday date anymore. It is six weeks away.

I don't want to miss this part

There is a temptation when you're building something to keep looking toward the next milestone. First I needed to write the script. Then I wanted the script to place somewhere. Then I needed to figure out how to make it. Then I needed a location. Then a crew. Then actors. Then money. Then enough money to get greenlit.

And even now, there are plenty of next things waiting for me.

I want to finish raising the $15,000. I want us to have a smooth production. I want to get into that editing room and discover that we captured what we needed. I want to finish the film. I want to submit it to festivals. I want to sit in a theater someday and watch Chosen with an audience and hear where they laugh and feel where the room gets quiet.

I want all of that.

But I don't want to become so consumed with getting to the next thing that I miss this thing.

Because this is part of making Chosen, too.

The audition tapes. The emails. The meetings. The spreadsheets. The people saying yes. The people giving $25. The sponsors giving $500 and $1,000. The person who forwards an email. The person who tells someone else about the film. The crew member who says, "I'd love to be part of this." The nights when I close my laptop knowing there are still 15 things I didn't get to.

This messy middle is part of the dream.

Maybe that's what Day 54 is teaching me.

Sometimes getting what you prayed for doesn't look like arriving somewhere. Sometimes it looks like being really, really busy because the thing you asked for is finally asking something of you.

So yes, making this short film is still kicking my ass.

In a good way.

And somehow, 54 days into this thing, more than $12,000 raised, a production taking shape around me and October 10 getting closer by the minute, I can finally say something I wasn't able to say when I wrote my last update:

We're making the movie.

And I'm trying my best not to miss what a blessing it is to be able to say that.