Making a Short Film Is Kicking My Ass (In a Good Way)| Making Chosen

Every room asked a different question. Where will the camera live? How will the light change throughout the day? What colors belong in this space? Before a film is made, it's imagined again and again until every decision serves the story.

Yesterday evening, I walked into the house where we'll film Chosen, and for the first time since I began writing the screenplay, the distance between imagination and reality felt surprisingly small. Charles, our sound mixer, had already arrived by the time my son, my unofficial production assistant for the evening, and I found parking. After meeting the homeowner, I stepped through the front door and instinctively made my way toward the living room. The couch sat where I'd seen it in the listing photos. The window caught the light exactly as I'd hoped it would. The hallway leading toward the back of the house looked so familiar that I almost forgot I had never actually been there.

Writers spend an extraordinary amount of time inhabiting places that don't exist. Before a reader encounters a setting on the page, we've already walked through it hundreds of times, deciding where conversations unfold, where people hesitate before speaking, and how light moves through a room at different times of day. Months before I ever set foot in that house, I had quietly furnished it in my imagination. What surprised me wasn't that the real house resembled the one I'd pictured, but how completely it seemed to welcome the story I'd been carrying around for so long. The living room already belonged to Janice. The colors felt right. The proportions of the room felt right. Even the carpet, something I hadn't consciously thought much about while writing, seemed exactly where she would have stood while confronting a lifetime of regret, longing, and unanswered questions.

The neighborhood carried that same sense of quiet familiarity. A restaurant sits next door. It doesn't feel frozen in time, nor does it seem eager to erase its history. Instead, it occupies that complicated space between what once was and what is still becoming. Standing there, I couldn't help thinking that the setting mirrored the emotional landscape of Chosen itself, a story about people learning to live with the distance between the lives they imagined and the lives they ultimately built.

While I wandered through the house trying to reconcile imagination with reality, my director of photography studied the windows, thinking about how natural light would move through each room over the course of a shooting day. Charles paused periodically, listening to sounds that most of us automatically tune out: the steady hum of an air conditioner, the faint traffic outside, the subtle interruptions that audiences never notice unless a sound mixer has missed them first. We discussed wardrobe colors, furniture placement, camera angles, and the logistics of returning once the cast has been finalized so we can block every scene before production begins. It was the kind of conversation that only happens after a project has quietly crossed an invisible threshold. No one questioned whether the film would happen. Everyone was already talking about how to make it better.

Scouting the location for Chosen

The drive home, however, reminded me that making an independent film means learning to hold two realities at the same time. My son settled into the back seat with his tablet while I replayed the afternoon in my mind, grateful that a place I had imagined for so many months had finally revealed itself to be real. At the same time, another conversation was unfolding quietly in my head, one that had nothing to do with lenses, blocking, or production design. I found myself mentally composing follow-up emails, thinking about businesses I still hoped to contact, remembering conversations with people who had enthusiastically offered support before disappearing into silence, and calculating how much farther the budget still had to travel before it caught up with the vision.

When my husband came home later that evening, we talked about both parts of the day because they have become impossible to separate. We talked about how exciting it was to watch the film become tangible, but we also talked about sponsorships, fundraising, and the long list of conversations still ahead. The creative work and the practical work have become intertwined in ways I never anticipated. One hour I'm thinking about wardrobe palettes and camera placement; the next I'm introducing myself to business owners, writing grant applications, or wondering whether one more follow-up email might finally become the conversation that changes everything.

When I first decided to direct Chosen, I assumed the greatest challenge would be learning the mechanics of filmmaking. I expected to spend my time studying lenses, understanding production schedules, learning how to communicate with actors, and making creative decisions under pressure. Those things have certainly required attention, but they haven't been the hardest part. The most difficult lesson has been recognizing that hard work, while essential, has never guaranteed an outcome. You can prepare carefully, sacrifice your time, invest your own money, make thoughtful decisions, and pursue a dream with genuine integrity, only to discover that none of those things obligates the world to meet your effort with success.

That realization has unsettled me because, for most of my life, hard work has been the way I've made sense of uncertainty. If I didn't know something, I learned it. If an opportunity seemed out of reach, I worked longer, read more, asked better questions, and trusted that persistence would eventually open a door. Looking back, I can see how deeply that belief shaped my life. It wasn't simply about ambition; it was about believing that my future rested primarily in my own hands. Filmmaking has gently, and sometimes not so gently, challenged that assumption.

Over the past several months, I've learned that independent filmmaking moves according to a rhythm no one really prepares you for. A promising conversation may end in weeks of silence. A grant that seems like a perfect fit can become inaccessible because you happen to live in the wrong county. A potential sponsor enthusiastically promises support before quietly disappearing. Then, just when disappointment begins to feel familiar, someone says yes, restoring enough hope to begin the entire process again. The emotional landscape shifts so frequently that certainty becomes less useful than endurance.

I don't write any of this to complain. In many ways, I feel profoundly fortunate to be doing this work. Every conversation about Chosen, every production meeting, every supporter who has decided to invest in the film has reminded me that stories are rarely brought into the world by a single pair of hands. What has surprised me is how much of this journey has involved confronting my own instinct toward self-reliance. I've spent years believing that if something mattered deeply enough, I should be able to carry it myself. Asking for help from the people closest to me has never been particularly difficult. Asking strangers to believe in something that exists so vividly in my imagination and only partially in the world has required an entirely different kind of courage.

At this stage in my life, I no longer believe courage is the absence of fear, nor do I imagine there will come a day when every uncertainty disappears before I take the next step. I still care what people think of me. I still wonder whether a sponsorship email will go unanswered or whether a grant application will end in another polite rejection. Those thoughts haven't vanished simply because I've grown older. What has changed is that they no longer have the final word. Somewhere between writing the screenplay and walking through Janice's living room yesterday, I realized that this film is asking more of me than technical skill or creative vision. It is asking me to trust people, to invite them into something unfinished, and to accept that the stories worth telling often require a community long before they ever find an audience.

This film is kicking my ass.

For the first time, I think that's exactly what it was supposed to do.

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A Final Thought

One of the things this process has taught me is that independent films aren't made because one person has a good idea. They're made because, somewhere along the way, enough people decide the story is worth carrying together.

Right now, Chosen is in that in-between place.

The script is written. The location is secured. Our director of photography and sound mixer are on board. We're moving toward an October production, but there's one reality I can't write my way around: we have until August 31 to reach at least 80% of our crowdfunding goal. If we don't, every pledge is returned, and this chapter of the journey comes to a halt until we can find another way forward.

So today, I'm asking for your help.

If you'd like to be part of bringing Chosen to the screen, I'd be honored to have you join us. Whether your gift is $10, $50, $100, or more, every contribution moves us closer to hearing the first call of "Action" in that living room that already feels like Janice's home.

Support Chosen on Seed&Spark:https://seedandspark.com/fund/chosen-shortfilm

If you're a business owner, entrepreneur, foundation, or community leader who believes in investing in independent storytelling, I'd love to talk with you about becoming a Story Partner. Story Partners receive on-screen recognition, premiere benefits, and become part of the community helping bring Chosen into the world.

Learn more about becoming a Story Partner: Chosen Story Partners

Thank you for reading. Thank you for encouraging me. Thank you for believing in this story before the cameras have even rolled. I hope the next time I write about that living room, it's from behind a monitor, listening for someone to call, "Action."