Christmas Evelyn

Posted on December 17, 2008

On Tuesday, I started working on a 17-minute short that my church is producing for Christmas. It’s called Christmas Eve, which is a play on the main character’s name of Evelyn (”My friends call me Eve,” she says). It’s going to be screened seven times on 12/23 and 12/24 at Gateway Church’s north and south campuses.

Shooting this film was a great experience. By “great” I mean “hard.” I was on set for a little over 24 hours. During that time, we had to deal with high winds, bitter cold, freezing rain, panhandlers, inebriated barhoppers, jerks who took pleasure in deliberately interfering with a shot, a dearth of extras for the climactic party scene, locations we lost at the last minute, a script that changed day by day (which was my fault, mainly), and so on.

Oddly enough, I actually prefer it that way. Smooth sailing is never as much of a challenge, and therefore never as much fun or as satisfying, as stormy waters. On this project, we had a wonderful cast and crew. The few extras that did show up for the party scene were an energetic bunch and a joy to work with. My suggestions for script changes were met with respect (always) and acceptance (often). I saw some rough cuts of a few scenes, and they look amazing. I can’t wait to see the finished product.

I took some photos during the filming. You can see them all at the Flickr set by clicking the photo below.