Aspiring Christian filmmakers gathered at the 2009 National Religious Broadcasters Convention – NRB – to hear Alex Kendrick, writer and director of Flywheel, Facing the Giants, and Fireproof, talk about how he made the movies and get some advice on making their own movies.
Alex didn’t originally set out to make movies. He didn’t even go to film school. He graduated with a degree in communications. He grew up in a Christian home where his father made a huge impact on his life. Alex’s father was diagnosed with MS in the 80’s and dealt with depression for some time afterward. Finally his father gave his situation over to God and decided he would praise God whether He healed him or not. Soon after, Alex’s parents started a Christian school. That school is now in its twentieth year. Alex said he saw his father “face his own giants.”
For the past 10 years, Alex has been the Associate Pastor of Media at Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany Georgia. In his interview, he made it clear that he wanted to make movies. The church said that was fine, but first they wanted to work on their own station. In 2002, after working on the station for four years and reaching into 50,000 homes, Alex read an article by George Barna that stated the three most influential factors in our culture today are TV, internet, and movies. He went back to his pastor, showed him the article and told him he wanted to make a movie. The church was in the middle of a building program, so Alex was going to have to pray the money in. God didn’t disappoint, before long Alex had a 20,000 dollar budget to work with. Miniscule by Hollywood standards, but that’s all God needed.
Alex got together with his brother, Steven, who was heading up the church’s prayer ministry and they started asking God for a plot. The result was Flywheel.
Flywheel was shot in late 2002 and 2003. Alex said “We did everything wrong. It was chaos.” The only thing they did right he said was praying every day before shooting.
After shooting, he went to the local Carmike to see if they would show the movie. The manager “looked at me like I was an idiot,” he said. But he agreed to call the home office and ask about showing the movie. Immediately Alex and his team went into prayer. It wasn’t long before they got a phone call saying the home office decide to give them a screen for a week.
The movie still had to be edited and while Alex was slaving away, trying to make the deadline, a friend walked into the room, tripped over a cord and the hard drive containing all the edits for the film came crashing to the floor. The drive was overnighted to a recovery service, but it was too badly damaged to save and the premiere was days away. Once again Alex and his team went into intense prayer while they re-edited round the clock.
The film was finished at 6:30 on the morning of the premiere. A DVD was burned and rushed over to the theatre where the show had completely sold out. Alex said they later found out that people had actually come to see how bad the movie was. But, as the movie went on, he began to notice people around him were crying. Alex said he could remember thinking “This can’t be working! Are you serious!?”
After one week, out of sixteen screens, Flywheel was the theatre’s second highest grossing film. Naturally the Carmike asked them to stay. After six weeks, the film had made 37,000 dollars and sold 4,200 tickets. They were then asked if they wanted to show the movie at a few theatres in nearby towns. Of course, Alex agreed. So he hauled his projector from one theatre to another, staying a month at a time. “You know you’re low-budget if you have to haul your own projector to the theatre,” Alex joked.
“Well, that was the extent of my vision”, he said. But God wasn’t done yet. Some weeks later Blockbuster called and asked for a copy of the DVD. After seeing the movie, Blockbuster asked to buy 8,000 copies.
Since then, a quarter of a million copies of Flywheel have been sold. The movie has been translated into thirteen languages and is available in fifty six countries.
“I still don’t understand what God did there,” Alex said, “ except for the fact that we did not compromise and we sought Him and just prayed as hard as we could pray.”
After Flywheel, Alex and Steven began praying for another plot. They wanted a “God idea instead of a good idea.” Facing the Giants was that idea.
Facing the Giants was based on real events. The chronology was changed, but everything that happens in the movie happened in real life at one time or another.
This time they had a 100,000 dollar budget to work with. When they began the process of auditions, Alex and Steven knew they didn’t want to put anyone on screen that was talking the talk, but not walking the walk. So at each audition they asked the question “is there anything in your life that would prevent God from blessing your work on this movie?”
Alex’s big vision was to get into 40 theatres this time around and maybe another blockbuster deal. But after production wrapped in the spring of 2005, no doors opened to them. Time went by and God allowed their vision to die.
“God got us to the point where we had to live out what we say in the movie. In the movie the message is ‘will you praise God whether you win or you lose? Will you praise God whether you have a baby or don’t have a baby? Will you praise God whether you save your job or lose your job?’ And the message that I tried to put into Facing the Giants was, number one, you can’t face your giants on your own and number two, God is worth worshipping whether he gives you what you want or not, just because He’s God. It’s not about you.”
Finally, Steven brought up the fact that they had used a song from Third Day in the movie, but they hadn’t actually gotten permission to use it. So, they called Provident Music to ask for the use of the song. Of course they asked to see the movie first and Alex wasted no time in sending them a DVD.
After weeks of sitting on a desk, the DVD found its way to the secretary of Terry Hemmings, President of Provident Music, who brought him the DVD while he was eating lunch. He decided to watch it for about five minutes before going to a one o’clock meeting. He ended up not finishing his salad and cancelling his one o’clock appointment. Eventually all the staff was in the room watching the movie in tears. The next day Alex and Steven got a call from Terry Hemmings who said, “We’re in.” He then went on to ask if he could send the DVD to Provident’s parent company to see if they would distribute it. Provident Music’s parent company is Sony.
Facing the Giants was released in 400 theatres in the fall of 2006. The film made 10.1 million dollars. Since then over 2 million DVDs have been sold. Alex said they lost count after 5000 salvations. Of course, those were just the ones that they were contacted about. They even got a call from the Green Bay Packers who wanted to know if they could use the death crawls from the movie.
Once again Alex and his team entered into a season of prayer for guidance about what to do next.
One morning while Alex was out jogging, God spoke to him and said, “I want you to focus on marriage.” Then God gave him the concept of the love dare. So, over a period of three months, Alex and Steven began to write Fireproof. According to Alex, they “bathed” the process in prayer.
After Facing the Giants’ success, Alex received a call from Kirk Cameron. He told Alex that if he ever did another movie, he would like to be involved. But, Alex didn’t think Cameron was right for the part of the Fire Captain. He wanted a big, strapping specimen of a man. He felt that he had found the man for the part, but when they asked him “the question,” the man had to say yes, and he bowed out of the production. So, Kirk Cameron flew in from California at his own expense and stood in line to audition with everyone else from the congregation. After the audition, they knew they had the right guy.
This time, Alex and Steven had a staggering 500,000 dollar budget to work with. But, “because we prayed and sought God for months and months and months and decided we’re not rushing this, we’re gonna do it God’s way without compromise; right focus, we’re not doing it for money, we’re not doing it for egos, the movies belong to the church, we’re gonna throw ourselves into it. We start doing this, and God starts opening the doors ahead of us.”
Fireproof was released in 800 theatres and was number four at the box office during its opening weekend, grossing 6.8 million dollars. Overall, the film brought in 33.5 million dollars, exceeding their expectation again (they were only expecting 15 to 20 million).
Alex was mum when it came to what Sherwood Pictures might be doing next. He said they have a few ideas, but they’re still in that season of prayer just as with the first three movies. Whatever they end up doing, you can be assured that it will be bigger, better, and more powerful than anything they’ve done before.
Listen to an excerpt from Alex’s story at the 2009 National Religious Broadcasters Convention. You can only listen to it here on CWNEWZ.
| Published in : The News, Ministry News |
| Keywords : News, Ministry News, NRB 2009: The Making of Flywheel, Facing the Giants, and Fireproof, Alex Kindrick, Fireproof, Movie, Facing The Giants, Flywheel, NRB, National Religious Broadcasters, Convention, filmmakers, movies, Christian, director |
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