• Sandra L. Martin writes and directs movies she produces with her cinematographer husband. 
  • They made their first Christmas movie in 2020 after COVID-19 shut down a lot of film production.
  • This is how she keeps titles like "My Sweet Holiday" fresh within the formula audiences want to see.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Sandra L. Martin, a 59-year-old filmmaker from Kansas City, Missouri. It's been edited for length and clarity.

Like a lot of people, I grew up watching old classics. I loved watching Audrey Hepburn and Barbra Streisand, so I fell in love with that style of moviemaking.

That moved on to directors like Nancy Meyers and her particular style of romantic-comedy and drama films. She made movies that I could watch with my kids when they were younger, like "The Parent Trap" and "Father of the Bride."

I remember that when I was younger and I didn't like the way a movie ended, I would always rewrite it in my own head.

My husband, Isaac Alongi, and I both come from small-business backgrounds. Isaac owned a photography studio for many years, and through that had a huge Christmas-card business.

He had dreamed of making movies since he was 8 years old, but it wasn't until he started getting involved in movie projects with friends that I thought, "Well, what if we did our own project together?"

That's how I started to make movies. It developed through him, and I got the bug.

He's a cinematographer, I write and direct, and we produce it together. My first was a film called "Trust Fund," which was released in 2016.

A group of people standing looking at what a movie camera is capturing on a film set
Sandra L. Martin says it's a "huge challenge" to keep Christmas movies "fresh."
Isaac Alongi

It was very big for our first movie, and was funded by investors and ourselves. That was fun, but a big learning experience. At that point, I'd gone to some classes and done lots of reading, but I didn't really understand what writing for a budget meant. I was writing a script based on what Isaac wanted to shoot, so I threw in private jets, trains, sports cars, and a trip to Italy.

Now, we mostly make films for other people. I've directed 12 films so far, and I've done three Christmas movies in the past two years. We've made movies for companies like Hallmark and Lifetime.

They'll come to us with a script or a book and say, "Can you make this movie?" We then have free reign to come up with locations and cast. We film it, we give them back a movie, and then they'll distribute it in foreign regions and to TV networks such as Lifetime or Hallmark.

The production itself will usually last around two to three weeks, but I'll start writing months, or years, in advance. Before we shoot, there's also pre-production, which will usually last around a month or two and involves all the casting and logistics.

I hadn't made a Christmas movie until 2020

When COVID-19 locked everybody down, all of our work was canceled. Hallmark usually films their movies in the summer to deliver for the holiday season, but we heard that they would make no movies because nobody could work.

Me and my husband said to ourselves that if there weren't going to be any Christmas movies, then now would be a great time to make one. So we got busy.

I wrote a script, and we made our first Christmas movie, "My Sweet Holiday," in Kansas City in June 2020. It was a learning curve. To stay working during COVID, we took our crew size down dramatically, we ate outside whenever possible, and had individual meals — no buffets. Of course, we used masks and lots of hand sanitizer, as well.  

The city film commission even came to set to see how we were doing it.

It was a learning curve. It was 96 degrees on our first day of shooting and we were putting people in wool coats trying to keep them from sweating on screen.

We had reindeers and learned how to use a snow machine, but when you have a really loud machine in the background, you have to go back and re-record the dialogue. You also have to be careful about what you show and don't show. In summer, there are flowers and green trees, or people in shorts walking past in the background.

I learned from that experience that you have to write for your locations and what you have available, as well as your budget.

That's partly why we decided never to shoot another Christmas movie in the middle of summer again.

We shot our latest movie, "It's Christmas Again," in January and March 2022

We filmed the main part in the small town of Franklin, Tennessee, and we were able to use the decorations that the town put up, which saved us so much money. We didn't have the summer colors and our extras weren't in shorts, but it did come with challenges, too.

We were shooting in bitter-cold weather, and a snow-and-ice storm came through on our first day of filming. The movie is a musical, and we were set to film at a beautiful, old school.

When we arrived, it was covered with a thick layer of ice. There was no way our dancers would have been able to safely dance there, but at the 11th hour, we found a new location for 100 dancers and background actors.

Keeping Christmas movies fresh is a huge challenge

It's easy to fall into a formula where someone moves from the big city to a small town. There's obviously a market for that, but I like to try doing something a little different.

Anytime you tell a story, it's about your character and trying to figure out who your characters are and what they would do.

You put them in lovely or funny situations — something where they have to figure out how to make themselves better or how to improve the world. Even if you're dealing with some of the same stories, it's all about the characters.

Christmas movies are now an industry, and a booming industry at that. There's such an appetite for them, but if you want to do a broadcast Christmas movie for someone like Hallmark or Lifetime, they're pretty stringent on what they want to see. They're afraid that the audience won't care for something new.

They've found something that works really well, so they deliver it. It's like a superhero movie — you pretty much know what you're going to see when you go in.

I always prefer to write movies that are uplifting, fun to watch, and always have a happy ending. No matter what kind of movie I'm making, that's my brand. It's a natural fit for Christmas.

Families are always looking for things to do together, so I love giving them that.