The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey

Feature Film – Visual FX Design and Post-Production

Film and TV director, Bill Clark, saw KMA’s Eng-er-land at Sadler’s Wells and immediately asked the duo to work with him on a series of forthcoming TV commercials, as well as his debut feature film, The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey.

KMA were given creative freedom to generate the world in which the film’s action takes place. The completed film, shot entirely at Shepperton Studios against blue screen, has over one third of its frames containing composited computer generated backgrounds. New to the field, and aware of the magnitude of the task, KMA enlisted the help of students from the University of York’s Film & TV department and forged an innovative post-production partnership that saw one of the students immediately offered a job at leading Soho’s film facility, Molinare.

Tom Berenger and Joely Richardson star in the live-action adaptation of Susan Wojciechowski’s beloved children’s tome, The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey. The fable centers around two lonely, broken people. Jonathan Toomey (Berenger) is a woodcutter who buried his ability to love when he lost his wife and child, and thus earned the nickname Gloomy at the hands of misunderstanding local children. Thomas McDowell (newcomer Luke Ward-Wilkinson) watched quietly as the death of his father ripped away his childhood innocence – and destroyed his world. Now, Thomas’s single mother, Susan (Richardson) must sell their urban home and move, son-in-tow, into the countryside to live with her sister. When Thomas grows virtually inconsolable over the loss of a wooden manger scene bequeathed to him by his dad, Susan asks Jonathan to carve a new one for the young boy. In time, a most unexpected friendship blossoms between Thomas and the old woodcutter, that heals the wounds and melts the heart of each broken soul.