This past Tuesday and Wednesday we shared some great fellowship with Stephen and Alex Kendrick (the Producer & Director of Fireproof and Courageous) down in Albany, Georgia.

Stephen and his wife Jill welcomed us into their home; in addition to sharing their film-making experience, they poured love and grace into us personally, encouraging us in our marriages and our walk with the Lord.

The meeting revolved around the script, which we spent most of our time reading and brainstorming. Stephen and Alex love the Lord, love to have fun, and love to work hard. At one point, Alex jumped up and said, “Ok, here’s how I’d direct this scene…” and then proceeded to lay on the floor, illustrating how the hero would wake up after being knocked out in a bomb-blast.

We were encouraged and humbled that the Kendricks would take so much time and energy to help us as we enter the last stages of writing Beyond the Mask. As we complete this round of final polishes on the script, please pray that the message of finding hope and identity in Christ will shine through loud and clear.

“We wanted our final set piece to be both historical and fantastically imaginative at the same time, and we found this contradiction in Windmill Island,” Nick, the Production Designer, told us.

In the early summer of 1776, Windmill Island (also known as Smith’s Island) sat off the shore of colonial Philadelphia in the Delaware River. Located just south of the Drawbridge Wharf, the island stretched a half-mile west from Arch Street and was approximately one block wide.  Several decades before the time of our story, two immigrant brothers had constructed an octagonal windmill on the northern end of the island, giving it its name. They also built three docks on the western side, facing away from the city, and dug a channel into the interior of the small land mass.  Because there is no evidence that the windmill was ever in operation, it is unclear what the brothers actually built it for. By the 1770s, Windmill Island was abandoned…and there it sat unused until in the 1830s it was deemed a “shipping hazard” by the US government, and dredged under.  Hmm…a shipping hazard? Or perhaps, was Windmill Island destroyed to bury once and for all the role it played in a rogue British East India Company plot against the American colonists? This island offered us the perfect mixture of historical fact and mysterious background; Windmill Island will be the Bad Guys’ Hideout in Beyond the Mask.

In early October of 2011, our volunteer team began construction on the windmill set. Sadly, no, it’s not actually on an island in the Delaware. Built on the edge of a pond on our Michigan backlot, our windmill currently stands about twenty feet high, although the final product in the film will stretch almost ninety feet into the sky.  Alongside the mill, we have recreated two of the three docks that originally reached into the Delaware, and several of the warehouses and barns.  To give this set the weathered, neglected look that it needed,we primarily used recycled lumber.  Some of the wood came from ripped-out decks, and some was scrap from Amish sawmills.  One construction volunteer brought a U-Hall truck full of pallet planks, which being used for the shingle siding on the windmill.

The Art Department has done a fantastic job, pulling together an incredible location from the varied materials they used.  Stepping onto this set pulls you back to the historical 1700’s and yet leaves you with a feeling of its mystery…

The weather is finally warming up here in MI, and we look forward to more progress on the sets as the production moves towards filming later this year.

~Sara & Shannon Burns

January is a very exciting month for the Beyond the Mask project. Our main objectives are to (1) secure investments for the production budget, and (2) complete the final draft of the screenplay. Depending on how fundraising progresses, we will make final plans to begin shooting late spring or early fall of this year. Currently, Chad (in Champagne, IL) and Aaron (north of Detroit, MI) are meeting with potential investors in their areas; later in the month they will be visiting other major cities, including Colorado Springs and Washington DC, as we look to connect with people who will partner with us to create this Christ-centered action-adventure film.

In the mean time, pre-production development continues, as our creative team expands across the country. This week, production designer Nick Burns is in Michigan working on the design and construction of the top-secret final set piece. In addition, he’s meeting with lead costume designer Marilyn Burns to discuss big-picture ideas for the Main Characters’ costuming. In New York, our visual effects supervisor (Ethan Ledden) is working on test renders of an experimental 3D model of one of our major sets. Down in Ohio, Gabe Everson, our extras’ costumer, is designing and creating sample costumes. Philip Smith (a gunsmith and colonial craftsman in Florida) has begun the construction of a 18th century sniper rifle.

More picture and details to follow soon! Please keep us in your prayers.

Steven Kendrick with Chad and Angie Burns

Director Chad Burns and his wife Angela met with Steven Kendrick (producer of Courageous, Fireproof, and Facing the Giants) last night. We discussed our shared passion to point people to Christ through film. We deeply respect the tremendous work that the Kendricks are doing to impact our culture and are excited to glean from Steven’s expertise. Over coffee in Georgia, Steven offered encouragement and valuable insight into our story’s theme and business plan. Steve suggested that as we continue to approach investors, we emphasize our ability to create excellent period sets and costumes and to leverage large volunteer networks–core strengths of Burns Family Studios.

The talk with Steve reminded us of the importance of coming back frequently to the truth God has laid on our hearts to share. We believe the deepest desires in a person can only be satisfied through a relationship with Jesus Christ. We ask that you pray with us that this theme is clearly displayed in the finished film and in the lives of those who are working to bring it to completion.

In any film, sets are a key element of the production design. However, with a period-action-thriller like Beyond the Mask, the importance of good sets (and the difficulty of finding or creating them!) increases exponentially.

This coming Thursday through Monday, Production Designer Nick Burns will be in Michigan with Producer Aaron Burns to conduct our second major location scout. The script calls for 70 unique sets, everything from the deck of a 1200 ton British East Indiaman to the interior of a tavern in colonial Philadelphia. The location team’s job is to find whole sets, or pieces of sets that can made to look like the locations that the script calls for. Places that can’t be found, or are prohibitively expensive or difficult to film in, must be built from the ground up, or created with CG.

On the list for scouting this trip are four historic villages in the greater Detroit area, two European styled mansions built around the turn of the last century, and several authentic colonial styled homes and farms in northern Oakland County. We’ll keep you updated with pictures as we go!