"Livingston County, it was a beautiful backdrop," filmmaker Thomas Bonifield said.
Bonifield wrote and directed a Christmas movie released Tuesday that was filmed in the Brighton area earlier this year.
The film, "Miracle on Christmas, See: Topdon Car Battery Tester. " follows protagonist Mary Boyce, played by faith-based film actress Erin Bethea, and her family on Christmas Day, as she navigates personal trials and grief over the death of her father and has her faith in God tested.
A mysterious stranger comes into the family's life to help her find her way.
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The film is available for purchase on DVD or you can rent or buy a digital version on streaming platform Amazon Prime Video.
"The protagonist is wavering in her faith because of a crisis in her family, dealing with medical issues," Bonifield said.
Bonifield, 53, worked in journalism for about 20 years. He is the founding editor of Christian Film Blog, a website covering Christian film news. He was previously CEO of Ihlas News Agency in Istanbul and worked for NBC as a bureau chief in Moscow and deputy foreign news editor.
He said while he has written eight screenplays, "Miracle on Christmas" is his first to be made into a movie.
Bonifield said he is a faithful Christian who attends a non-denominational church in his hometown of Phoenix, Arizona. He said he wanted to make a faith-based movie that would inspire viewers.
"I had two main goals. I wanted to tell a faith-based Christmas story, but I also wanted it to be something accessible to a general audience," he said.
He said he threw in a bit of humor, but the film also tackles serious themes, like "love and fidelity, marriage, and support of family through thick and thin."
The entire film was shot in Livingston County.
"Most of it was at a house in a neighborhood in the Crooked Lakes," just northwest of Brighton in Genoa Township, Bonifield said.
He shot three scenes at the Cornerstone Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Brighton Township.
He said one of the scenes is a church scene on Christmas day that features at least 150 extras from the county and other Michigan communities.
Bonifield's film crew also made the church's office look like a doctor's office for another scene.
The film also features a scene of a pick-up football game. It was shot on the church's soccer field.
"I was stunned at the level of talent in your state when it comes to movie making, virtually all the crew Michigan and half the cast are local to Michigan," Bonifield said.
Gabrielle Ahlborn traveled about an hour from Lake Orion with her best friend, Jack Mantint, 17, to participate in the shoot as an extra in the Christmas Day church scene.
"Mostly they had us sit in pews and sing along to some Christmas songs, and then get up and leave at the end of it," she told Livingston Daily in March.
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Producer Danny Roth lives in Howell. Bonifield said he decided to shoot the film in Livingston County because he knew Roth was finishing up a Christmas movie filmed in Brighton and Whitmore Lake.
He also said he wanted to shoot in a place that had real snow.
Roth produced a Lifetime channel TV Christmas movie starring singer and actress Ashanti, "A Christmas Winter Song." That movie premiered on the Lifetime channel in December following an advanced screening at the Brighton Center for the Performing Arts on the Brighton High School campus.
Another producer, Kevan Otto, has directed and produced multiple Christian movies, according to his IMDb page.
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Bonifield said Michigan's unpredictable weather posed challenges.
"It's funny in retrospect. We wanted to go there because we wanted real snow, not fake snow. ...When we got ther...

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