VOLITION - A FILM BY TIM MORGAN

http://www.thedoorpost.com/hope/film/?film=420351f1aefa2b42b1772fe9d5cc044a

During the making of this film, there were a few ‘mishaps”.  And perhaps a miracle or two… 

November 26, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The RED One has been described as the “Lamborghini” of digital film cameras; shooting in 4k resolution with a dynamic range close to that of traditional cameras, the RED prices at about $25,000, with all the necessary gadgets. And so, when a rented RED One was dropped on the second day of shooting the powerful pro-life short-film “Volition,” 22-year-old director Tim Morgan, and his younger brother and collaborator, Matthew, thought the game was up.

“At that point we thought we had to throw in the towel, because there was no way we could continue filming that day,” Tim Morgan told LifeSiteNews in a recent interview.  And with only three days to shoot scenes in three different locations depicting three different historical periods, the film was already on a tight, if not impossible, schedule. It was beginning to look as if Volition was not meant to be after all.

Its circuit boards cracked, the camera refused to start up for ten minutes … at least, not until members of the cast and crew gathered around the camera and prayed over it. At that point it fired up, and the shoot was completed.

Tim says that in the whirlwind of post-production he and his brother completely forgot about the incident - until they sent the camera back to the manufacturer. The manufacturer, he relates, said that “all the circuit boards were cracked and there was no way this camera should have been able to work.”

This incident, which the young director posits may be a veritable miracle, is just one of a host of remarkable stories that surround the making of “Volition.” Indeed, the creation of the short film is steeped in coincidences and startling circumstances that hint that “Volition” yet has some definite purpose to serve.

I for one am glad that that camera worked.  This film is great.  I had a few problems viewing it and had to let it “catch up” with itself, but it was worth the hassle.

That’s not the only “miracle”.  Funding for the film also had a little help from “somewhere else”…

Morgan relates, for instance, that for most of his life, while he had always been “pro-life,” he had never given much thought to the issue – that is, until last year when he attended the massive prayer rally, “The Call.” “That’s when it really hit me, hit my heart,” he says, “that there is a need for just some sort of voice in the arts, in the entertainment world, in defense of these unborn babies.”

At this point, however, Volition was, if anything, but a seed of a thought, without any definite form. It was one night, while doing some work in Israel, the birthplace of Christianity, of the Christ-child Himself, the ultimate proof and testament to the sanctity of human life, that Tim found himself in a fever and unable to sleep. “So I woke up and started a hot bath and pretty much wrote the whole outline for the movie that night,” he relates.

But with an elaborate script that called for scenes in Nazi Germany, the pre-Civil-War American South, and modern times, money was an issue. For six months after Tim wrote the script the brothers sought investors interested in making Volition a reality; but none were to be had. It was then, however, that they received an unexpected phone call from The Doorpost, an online film competition that they had entered some time back, and never thought twice about.

Now the representative from The Doorpost was telling Tim that the competition had selected the brothers as finalists and that they were offering them seventeen and a half thousand dollars to make any film of their choice on the theme of “hope.”

“It was like a door opening out of nowhere,” Tim says. “All of a sudden I have this budget for a movie I’ve been looking to get the budget for.”

You can read more here.

Watch the film here.

And learn more about Doorpost Films here.