The "Difficult Journey"

I was working in documentary film mostly as a grunt, camera operator, motion graphics designer, and even sound designer when the need arose. My wife and I were homeschooling our two boys at the time, and I was reading them an abridged, modified version of Pilgrim’s Progress called “The Dangerous Journey” which was

essentially Pilgrim’s Progress albeit far shorter and easier to understand. The artwork, in particular, was whimsical and fantastical, and at that moment, all the way back in 2008, I thought to myself, “that would be a great film.” But, I wanted to do it gritty, a bit different, the “dirt under the fingernails” approach. It took a while to really move on it, and that journey began in probably 2011-2012.

First, we tried a crowdsourcing campaign for about $800,000. We managed to raise $200,000, but the campaign did not succeed. So I reached out to a few contacts I had in LA. Dan Mark (and later on, his wife Rachel) really became awesome partners. We also added a veteran, David Kang, to the producer team, and we networked our way to thinking we might potentially have 2.5 Million in the bank and possibly be shooting in South Africa or even Hungary. After long, long, fruitless delays, that too did not happen, and we just couldn’t get traction. A couple years went by...

The story here is about perseverance and a little divine intervention as well. But, I was about to bail on this project in 2016-ish. Afterall, I was busy teaching film at a local college, teaching video to high school students, making short films, and also working as a freelance motion graphics designer.

One night, I was driving home and had this moment where I feel like God literally said something to this effect. “Matt, you had this idea many years ago to do a journey story, small crew, trekking through the woods about a man that finds salvation. Spend maybe $150,000. Get beautiful locations, unique costuming, and create the illusion of scale. Do that vision!” This kind of thing doesn’t happen too often to me, so I listened.

Honestly, it was like an epiphany. And I shared this with my team. No joke, we were funded a few weeks later. After 5 years of trying to go big, it was this small idea that gained traction. Now I didn’t make the next Oscar winning film by a long shot, but Heavenquest was birthed out of faithfulness, perseverance and honoring an idea that was given, quite strongly, years back.

And so in 2017. We made that movie!

With all our sweat, hard work, $250,000 in the bank, a diverse cast from all over the world, beautiful locations, an amazing crew and post production team, virtually no pre-production, and no actual script, we set out on this journey. And in 2019, it was completed and released in 2020. It reviewed halfway decent with all the Christian movie folks, and the little miracle in all this is that we did a fantasy movie based in the Pilgrim’s Progress universe for $250,000. To keep perspective, a single episode of Game of Thrones is about 9-11 million.

So when you watch any endeavor like this, the story behind it was as difficult as what you see on screen. (Without the actual swordplay) If you expect Lord of the Rings, you may be disappointed (I would be)

, but know this: we were good stewards of what God gave us, we did the absolute best we could, and we met some amazing people. This movie, although not for everyone, is the little engine that could. And for some, it’s been a real blessing as a clean, action packed, message-filled story we can all relate to.