MANIFEST PICTURES LLC
MIRAMAR, FLORIDA

Manifest Pictures exists to glorify God through the production of faith-based, family friendly, feature-length films. , the first production of the company, occurred during June and July of 2016 in South Florida. The film is expected to release in December of 2017. The name of the company originates in Colossians chapter 4, verses 3 and 4: “ have just posted the Trailer for the film, which will release on December 5th. Look for another post soon with a very long list of places the film will be available! We are so excited!!! We always begin with the following disclaimer: It is impossible for you to know less about filmmaking than what we knew when we began the Salted Christmas journey. This series of articles is not designed to teach anyone in the industry anything. The series is simply intended to share with our friends some of what we’ve learned about the art, the skill, and the business of filmmaking. One of the questions we get from time to time relates to that fact that with Salted Christmas, we are first time filmmakers. Normally, when beginning a new endeavor, starting small recommends itself as a prudent approach. Of course, we see the point. Why start with a feature film? Why not start with a 5 minute experiment and work our way up to a 30 minute short film and finally, once the skill somewhat approximates the passion, attack the leviathan feature film? Great question. The answer must arrive in first person from our founder, Don McChesney. “In November of 2014, I was walking around, minding my own business, and a powerful wave of desire to make a movie washed over me. After a brief moment in the sun, enjoying the idea and thinking how fun it would be, I felt the clouds of crazy begin to gather. I realized very quickly that I knew nothing of filmmaking, already had a full time job to which I felt called by God, and would struggle greatly to find the resources (whatever they might be) to undertake such a project. So very quickly I felt completely nuts and wanted the aforementioned desire to fade away lickety-split. But it wouldn’t. I did what I always do anyway: I talked to God about it.” “Not doubting my call to Equip Education, I petitioned the Lord to remove the thorn in my brain. I prayed this prayer for a week or two but the desire kept growing and even began to consume me. I couldn’t think of anything else. I should pause, here, to note the way I work with and relate to God. Generally, I pray about things and ask for guidance, but I never hear an audible voice either inside or outside my head (a good thing, some might say) in response to my petitions. So I’m never perfectly sure if something I want to do is from me or from God. But when I think God is making suggestions (I find Him to be very polite, although quite persistent) I disambiguate by taking steps in the direction I believe He wants me to go, one foot in front of the other, carefully and cautiously, eyes and ears open. At each step, I’m trying to see if I sense Him clearing the path or rather blocking it up.” We always begin with the following disclaimer: It is impossible for you to know less about filmmaking than what we knew when we began the Salted Christmas journey. This series of articles is not designed to teach anyone in the industry anything. The series is simply intended to share with our friends some of what we’ve learned about the art, the skill, and the business of filmmaking. After a lot of hard work on the part of our graphic designer, Nick McChesney, we are happy to release the official movie poster for Salted Christmas! We hope you like it. Production: Children and Animals! We always begin with the following disclaimer: It is impossible for you to know less about filmmaking than what we knew when we began the Salted Christmas journey. This series of articles is not designed to teach anyone in the industry anything. The series is simply intended to share with our friends some of what we’ve learned about the art, the skill, and the business of filmmaking. Filmmaking is just a bag full of problems which come in many different shapes and sizes. Children and animals pose particularly interesting challenges due to their inherent unpredictability. But on the other hand, what would the film be like without those angelic childhood faces and barnyard sights and sounds! In Salted Christmas, we really only had one child, the foster-child character “Beena” played by Sydney Vazquez. For this role, we wanted an actor young enough to play a child who was not exerting much influence on her situation but old enough to take direction. We also wanted somebody cute. The icing on the cake would be someone who could act! We didn’t hold out much hope of finding anyone that met all three of these criteria. But as usual, God’s favor covered every aspect of this production. With production scheduled for June, we still had no actor when we attended an Easter sunrise service on the beach. Sitting on the towel in front of us with her family was Sydney. Because she is a petite human being, she appeared younger than her five years at the time of production. She also had prior acting experience and a great attitude. And of course she was as cute as could be. What shocked us was her acting. We also had a piglet (which we rented for the day for $100) and a dog (borrowed) on set and they both caused essentially no problems and performed exactly as we hoped. They each had only one scene so it was easier, but we are forced to mention that we needed the pig to run straight and then make a left turn and he did exactly what we wanted two times in a row. So a project we hoped would be a quick, final effort will consume considerably more time an energy than we expected. Oh, well, we live and learn. Fortunately, we recently saw a wonderful trailer online which we like so much we were moved to contact the creator. He lives in New Zealand and turned out to be a wonderful guy who does this for hire! So once again we are employing the services of a talented professional in the production of the trailer. He is currently producing a trailer and we are simultaneously producing a completely different trailer and we’ll see what happens at the end.