JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Years ago, a St. Johns County father and son were building a shed in their backyard.
It was then that Kenny and Kamron Krebs quickly realized the complexities of being a carpenter, and thought it would have been cool to learn the craft from Jesus, who according to Christian belief was a carpenter before his public ministry.
“Someone should make a movie about that,” they said to each other.
More than a decade and $3 million later, the Krebs family did just that — made a movie, despite knowing nothing about the movie business.
They wrote and produced “The Carpenter,” and two of Kenny Krebs’ adult sons are the stars.
“We made the movie as...my testimony to my kids and my grandkids about what’s important in life,” Kenny explains. “But it turned out better than we thought.”
The Krebs family owns a manufacturing company that makes materials for construction work. Concrete Reinforcements, Inc. has plants in Jacksonville off Pritchard Road, Texas, Arizona, and Indonesia.
To make the movie, the Krebs hooked up with established movie director Garrett Batty and shot the film in South Africa to make the scenes look more authentic.
Fortunately, there was already a TV set there. It had been used in the American TV drama “Of Kings and Prophets,” which also had a Biblical theme.
The Krebs take viewers back to the year 29 A.D.
The carpenter Yeshua (that’s “Jesus” in Hebrew) bails the main character Oren out of trouble.
Oren is played by Kenny’s adult son Kameron Kregs.
To repay Yeshua for his kindness, Oren becomes the carpenter’s apprentice. But Oren’s side hustle is MMA-style fighting, and his quest is to become the ultimate prize fighter.
Playing the part of Oren’s MMA trainer Levi in the movie, is Kameron’s real-life brother Kaulin.
Kaulin explained how set designers worked magic to show the brothers working out with weights.
“They made these fake foam rocks that looked amazing,” Kaulin said smiling, still in disbelief. “It looked like a real stone, and then wrapped, they hand braided the ropes themselves and fashioned them around the rocks, and created all kinds of pulley systems with wood blocks.”
Even younger brother Kameron stepped up his game as the lead actor.
“There’s a UFC gym that I was able to train at for about 6 months before shooting [the movie],” Kameron recalls. “And [I] did a lot of studying of Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu, kickboxing, boxing, wrestling, and this is a lot of hours in the gym...a lot of ice baths.”
The movie was originally meant as a legacy gift to the family’s future generations but became so much more after tragedy struck the Krebs family behind the scenes.
Kameron lost his newborn son to cancer 7 years ago, and patriarch Kenny developed colon cancer.
“I thought I was going to die,” Kenny Krebs said. “It’s a miracle I’m even alive right now. I’ve had eight operations and surgeries. I wasn’t able to go to South Africa because I had a major tumor taken out.”
“Yes, he missed the entire filming process, which is kind of a bummer to work on it for that long and then miss that,” son Kaulin said.
Those tumultuous times are why the movie, meant to share life lessons about faith and tenacity with their kids and grandkids, is now a gift from the family to everyone.
“It’s basically for encouragement,” Kenny explained. “[For] when you’re down or troubled or when tragedies occur in your life, how you find strength.”
You can watch Joy’s entire 20-minute conversation with the Krebs father and sons on the latest episode of “Discover The Joy: The Purdy Podcast.”
The movie, rated PG-13, hits theaters, including in Jacksonville, on Friday.