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<\/a>How Sherwood Baptist Church became a hot spot for making Christian movies \u2014 including <\/i>Facing the Giants and the upcoming <\/i>Fireproof, starring Kirk Cameron.<\/i><\/p>\nThe regular film world has the Coens, the Wachowskis, and the Farrellys \u2014 brothers who collaborate on producing and directing both blockbusters and arthouse flicks.<\/p>\n
The Christian film world has the Kendricks \u2014 a couple of associate pastors in Albany, Georgia who made a couple of ultra-low-budget movies with a mostly volunteer cast and crew as part of their church\u2019s outreach program, and then hit it big when the second film, Facing the Giants<\/a><\/i>, grossed just over $10 million at the box office.<\/p>\n Now they\u2019re putting the finishing touches on their third film, Fireproof<\/a><\/i>, due for a theatrical release on September 26. The film concerns a firefighter whose marriage is on the rocks, and whose father challenges him to take \u201cthe Love Dare\u201d \u2014 a series of recommended activities that might, just might, help patch things up.<\/p>\n In some ways, the Kendricks\u2019 films, all produced through Sherwood Pictures<\/a>, have gotten bigger and better. The budgets have increased exponentially \u2014 from $20,000 on their first film, Flywheel<\/i>, to $100,000 on Facing the Giants<\/i> and now $500,000 on Fireproof<\/i>. The sounds and visuals show more technical polish. And their newest film even has a professional Hollywood actor \u2014 Kirk Cameron \u2014 in the lead role.<\/p>\n But Fireproof<\/i> remains a ministry, produced almost entirely by members of Sherwood Baptist Church<\/a> in Albany. And the Kendricks wouldn\u2019t have it any other way.<\/p>\n \u201cWe love each other, we love being together,\u201d says Stephen Kendrick \u2014 co-writer and co-producer of the Sherwood films \u2014 of his fellow churchgoers. \u201cWhen we\u2019re done shooting, we want to go share life with them, we want to go catch a movie with them, we want to go hang out, we want them to come to our Christmas party. There is a family kind of theme there that God has built, where we\u2019re not just trying to put on some cool Hollywood face when we\u2019re in front of the camera.\u201d<\/p>\n The church has used the unexpected success of Facing the Giants<\/i> to reach out to the wider community<\/a>, too. Alex Kendrick \u2014 who co-writes and directs all of Sherwood\u2019s films \u2014 is quick to note that, after the movie theaters and the distributor got their cut, only a small portion of the grosses went to the church itself. But even that small portion was enough to allow the church to move ahead much more quickly than expected on an 82-acre sports park that will be open to the community.<\/p>\n And then there are the thousands of responses from people all around the country, and even the world, who say their lives have been touched by their films. \u201cSo spiritually we\u2019ve had the ministry we were hoping for,\u201d says Alex. \u201cIt\u2019s built morale among our church members, doing something as an entire body. Financially, it\u2019s been worth it. Ministerially, it\u2019s certainly been worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n Better art, better stories<\/b><\/p>\n Where do they go from here as filmmakers? The Kendricks say they are eager to get better as artists and storytellers, and they even recently released a slightly improved and slightly shorter \u201cdirector\u2019s cut\u201d of their first film, Flywheel<\/a><\/i>, on DVD<\/a>. (The original version was put together in just ten days, after the hard drive with all the edits was accidentally destroyed just a couple weeks before the premiere.)<\/p>\n Some people would say the Kendricks should start hiring professionals \u2014 and indeed, they have<\/i> hired a handful of people to oversee some of the more technical aspects of their more recent films, such as the sports footage in Facing the Giants<\/i>. But for the most part, they want to continue relying on volunteers, both in front of the camera and behind it \u2014 though they know they face certain challenges in doing so.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough we would like every aspect of our movie to be excellent, the number one priority for us is the ministry,\u201d says Alex, who starred in the first two films and has a small role in Fireproof<\/i>. \u201cThe most important message we could ever share with the world is the message of the gospel. For us, we do not want to put somebody in front of the camera who proclaims it in the movie and doesn\u2019t believe it themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n He cites End of the Spear<\/a><\/i>, which cast a gay man<\/a> as martyred missionary Nate Saint, and The Nativity Story<\/a><\/i>, the teenaged star of which became pregnant<\/a> shortly after playing the Virgin Mary, as examples of Christian films that got \u201chit hard\u201d by casting lead actors who \u201cplay the person who gives that message in the movie but doesn\u2019t believe it himself or is living a life completely contrary to that.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, relying on little more than friends and family does give the Kendricks some extra hurdles to overcome. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a two-sided coin,\u201d says Alex, \u201cbecause we love the novelty and the nature of what we\u2019re doing with a church making a movie. But the flip side of it is, it\u2019s much more difficult to shoot and edit bad acting. Because you\u2019re left with wonderful people doing it for the right reasons, pouring themselves into it, but they\u2019re not experienced Hollywood actors.\u201d<\/p>\n The solution, he says, has been to cast people in roles that are very similar to their actual selves. \u201cIn all three of our movies, [the actors] are basically playing somebody very similar to themselves, so it\u2019s less of a stretch,\u201d he says. On Fireproof<\/i>, they got a couple of acting coaches and spent more time on rehearsals \u2014 and, of course, they cast Cameron in the lead.<\/p>\n Cameron worked for free<\/b><\/p>\n Cameron \u2014 the former Growing Pains<\/i> star who has since worked on such Christian films as Miracle of the Cards<\/i> and the Left Behind<\/a><\/i> trilogy \u2014 had seen Facing the Giants<\/i> with his family and liked what he saw. He then surprised the Kendricks by asking if he could be in their next movie \u2014 he even auditioned<\/a> \u2014 and, like all the other actors, he essentially worked for free. (Instead of paying Cameron a fee, the church made a donation to Camp Firefly, the non-profit camp he founded.)<\/p>\n \u201cWe were so grateful for Kirk, because he strongly<\/i> believes in this movie and what it\u2019s about \u2014 the principles and the message,\u201d says Alex.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd he\u2019s trying to model and live it in his own personal life,\u201d adds Stephen.<\/p>\n For the Kendricks, the fact that they got a Hollywood actor in their newest film \u2014 and one who shares their vision for ministry \u2014 is just one of many ways in which God made it possible for them to make an ambitious movie on a shoestring budget.<\/p>\n When they asked a fire chief for permission to use his reserve trucks, he offered them the free use of some brand new vehicles that hadn\u2019t even been used by any of the fire crews yet. (\u201cWe had trucks as nice as a $200 million Hollywood movie,\u201d says Stephen. \u201cOh yeah, nicer than Backdraft<\/i>,\u201d Alex concurs.) And when they asked if they could shoot some scenes in a hospital, they were given free rein of a wing that was about to be remodelled and was thus free of patients and hospital staff.<\/p>\n \u201cDoes it make sense that everybody rolls over and says, \u2018Here\u2019s our best stuff, for free. What can we do to help you?\u2019 Does that make any sense?\u201d asks Alex. \u201cWe didn\u2019t pay a dime for any of that. So we saw the favor of the Lord go before us in every aspect.\u201d<\/p>\n So many things \u201cshould not have worked\u201d the way they did, he says, \u201cbut we\u2019ve learned that therein lies the reason that God is glorified, because when you\u2019re in a position where he has to come through for it to work, then he gets the credit.\u201d<\/p>\n Artistically, \u2018we\u2019re learning\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n Thanks to DVD and their distribution deal with Provident, which is owned by Sony, Facing the Giants<\/i> is now available in 13 languages, in 57 countries, and is spreading the ministry of Sherwood Baptist Church much further than any of its makers could have imagined. Time will tell if Fireproof<\/i> gets that kind of recognition, but for now, the Kendricks are enjoying the opportunity to learn about color tones and the other various subtleties that give their efforts the look and feel of a regular movie.<\/p>\n \u201cHopefully, on a storytelling level, we\u2019re engaging. Hopefully, on a spiritual level, the Lord\u2019s speaking to hearts,\u201d says Alex. \u201cFrom an artistic level, we\u2019re learning. If you look at Flywheel<\/i> and then Facing the Giants<\/i> and then Fireproof<\/i>, you will see some progression.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd we\u2019re not content to stay where we are. We want to continue to get better in that regard. But there\u2019s something fun, too, about this. There is<\/i> a blessing in being able to use church people. They\u2019re doing it for the right reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n For more info, go to FireproofTheMovie.com<\/a>. See also FireproofMyMarriage.com<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n \u2014 A version of this article was first published at Christianity Today Movies.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How Sherwood Baptist Church became a hot spot for making Christian movies \u2014 including Facing the Giants and the upcoming Fireproof, starring Kirk Cameron. The regular film world has the Coens, the Wachowskis, and the Farrellys \u2014 brothers who collaborate on producing and directing both blockbusters and arthouse flicks. The Christian film world has the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109],"tags":[272,274,1429,270,2135,548,273],"class_list":["post-17653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianitytoday","tag-alex-kendrick","tag-end-of-the-spear","tag-facing-the-giants","tag-fireproof","tag-flywheel","tag-nativity-story","tag-stephen-kendrick"],"yoast_head":"\n