Come What May movie made by homeschoolers

Come What May is the first release from Advent Film Group (AFG), but the production group founded by George Escobar is planning on producing many more movies in the future. Inspired by Sherwood Pictures (creators of FIREPROOF, Facing the Giants, and Flywheel) AFG has constructed its own model for creating great movies for a faith-based audience.

"Like Sherwood Pictures, we believe Christian filmmakers should always work alongside organizations already in service for the Lord. We will always be under another's covering and authority," George says. "While Sherwood has its home church, with Come What May, we partnered with Patrick Henry College."

The college's academic rigor is attractive to home-schooled students. George, a home-school parent advocate, sees the potential of these motivated and talented students to become a generation of trained and gifted filmmakers. The AFG model pays the young filmmakers as they learn the craft through the actual making of movies.

"There was a core team of 40 home schooled student from across 16 different states that worked on the movie," he says. "We tapped into the speech and debate clubs for home-schoolers, in particular the NCFCA league. That is our 'secret sauce.' These students and their parents are already dedicated to becoming 'Communicators for Christ' and have a proven track record for hard work and accomplishment. Graduates from NCFCA go on to dominate the debate tournaments in college."

With a team at the ready, George and others worked on the script. The central plot is based on a real experience that Patrick Henry College's Moot Court team faced in a national tournament. Having to choose between what is right and what could win is a challenging dilemma, especially when it comes to a life-and-death issue like abortion.

"We want to tell stories that the Lord will bless," George says. "That means removing our own agendas and ego from the writing process. We enlisted the help of PHC students and faculty during the story-development phase and during the final script polish.

"Ben Adams, a PHC alumnus, worked with me on the six-page treatment. Manny Edwards, my collaborator, wrote the first draft and together we worked on all subsequent drafts, as did David Hallbrook, the college's Director of Communications, who is a Pulitzer Prize nominee author. Finally, Dr. Michael Farris, a constitutional attorney who is the founder and chancellor of PHC, wrote the legal brief for overturning Roe. Our shooting script was the eighth draft, followed by one more draft during pickup filming."

Come What May was filmed over five weeks in Virginia during the summer of 2007. In early 2008, the crew shot an additional seven days of pickup filming. After months of sound mixing, editing, and other post-production work, the DVD was made available through AFG. Later in 2008, Provident-Integrity Distribution signed an agreement to market the movie and the Come What May trailer was highlighted on the FIREPROOF DVD.

You can read more about production in Stories from the Set.