Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Religious Music & Entertainment
Interview: Chad and Aaron Burns (Beyond the Mask, 2015)

Interview: Chad and Aaron Burns (Beyond the Mask, 2015)

Last updated on: April 8, 2016 at 10:28 am by Peter T. Chattaway

Interview: Chad and Aaron Burns (Beyond the Mask, 2015) 2016-04-08T10:28:08-07:00 Peter T. Chattaway

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Filmmaking is a family affair for many writers, directors and producers. One thinks of the Coens, the Wachowskis, the Farrellys, and other siblings who collaborate on films. This phenomenon extends even to the Christian filmmaking subculture, with fraternal teams like Alex and Stephen Kendrick (Courageous), Bobby and Kevin Downes (The Moment After) and Jon and Andrew Erwin (Moms’ Night Out).

Filmmaking is a family affair for Chad and Aaron Burns, too — but the director and producer of Pendragon: Sword of His Father and Beyond the Mask, the latter of which opens in Canadian theatres this week, have gone about things a little differently. For one thing, they are cousins, not brothers.

“We decided to go the cousin route this time,” says Aaron in a phone interview. “I’m from Detroit, and I still live in this area, and Chad is from the St Louis area, but as kids, our families would get together and play in the back yard or whatever.

“Our filmmaking career kind of started almost accidentally. It’s a long time ago now, but we were just shooting movies in the back yard with the family video camera. So over the next several summers, we were just telling stories for fun, filming them, and then I was going off to college, and I said, ‘Hey, let’s make a feature film,’ and that was our first film, Pendragon, which was an all-volunteer effort.”

Released in 2008, Pendragon — a riff on Arthurian legends set in 5th-century Britain — won the ‘Best Family Picture’ award at the Oklahoma-based Bare Bones International Film Festival, which celebrates independent films with budgets of less than $1 million. Encouraged by their experience on that film, the Burns cousins decided to make another period piece, albeit one that’s a little closer to home this time.

Beyond the Mask, a swashbuckling action film that takes place in the 18th century, concerns a mercenary who teams up with American revolutionaries against his former bosses in the British East India Company — partly to win the love of a woman, and partly out of a larger bid for redemption which, of course, he learns he cannot achieve without committing himself to something larger than himself.

“Thematically, we felt the Lord leading us to deal with this matter of identity, where we find our sense of self, our sense of worth, our sense of value,” says Chad. “And not only that, but how do we overcome the evil that we find inside of our own hearts?

“So it’s a story of a guy with a really bad past, and he’s got some stuff he doesn’t like about who he is and what he’s done, and he wants to change that, and he goes through kind of a two-step process of trying to change.

“The first step, he tries deception, and he literally puts on a disguise, in this case the assumed identity of a vicar, a good man, but that good identity, that lie, can never fix the underlying problem. So that’s exposed.

“And then in the second beat of the story, our hero says, ‘Well instead of just lying and pretending to be a good person, what if I can actually do enough good deeds to balance the scales of justice, and to earn my way back to the kind of respect that I want from this girl?’ And so he really sets out on a quest to try and balance the scales. And that also fails him.

“And the basic message of the Christian gospel is that we ultimately can’t save ourselves. The problem that we have is so deep inside of us, with our broken heart, that we need outside help — and that comes in the form of a Saviour, and that’s Jesus Christ.

“And so our hero finally realizes that, through deception or through good effort, he can’t save himself, and he comes to a point where, standing in the wreckage of his own best efforts, he encounters the grace of Christ.”

The film was produced with grassroots support, including a Kickstarter campaign that gave them the seed money for meeting with writers and investors, as well as a record-setting theatrical-on-demand campaign that saw the film play in over 400 theatres in the United States in April, followed by a regular theatrical release in June.

Aaron says the film had a $4 million budget overall, but half of that came in the form of donations-in-kind.

“We just saw this incredible outpouring of love and enthusiasm from people who believed in it and said, ‘Listen, we want to see this kind of movie made, an action-adventure story that’s a fun story to watch, but woven throughout it are these clean family values and then in addition to that has a gospel-centred message.’ So it’s kind of a unique film in that way, and a lot of us produced it through a very unique system as well,” he says.

The money and the effort are certainly on screen: Beyond the Mask has some pretty good production values for an independent faith-based fim. Chad notes that there are 700 visual-effects shots in the film — to put that in perspective, the original Star Wars had a then-unprecedented 360 effects shots — because the story is set 240 years ago and the filmmakers had to recreate a world that no longer exists.

“There are hundreds of period costumes that were hand-sewn for the movie,” he adds. “The entire audio design, every single layer, probably every single exterior sound, it all had to be constructed from the ground up, from scratch, because you can’t just take a microphone out on a street corner and get sounds that are going to work for a period piece. So this movie has really benefitted from a huge team of people that have come together to create that period experience.”

The film also benefitted from some convenient, cost-saving locations. While the film is set in and around certain historical landmarks in the Philadelphia area, it was actually shot in the Detroit region — because there are little-known replicas of those landmarks in Detroit.

“Here’s what’s so crazy,” says Chad. “Henry Ford and the other auto barons of the last century made a lot of money, and they had to do something with it, so it kind of became a fad to reconstruct period buildings. So the auto barons literally went over to Europe and just picked out manors and had their architects rebuild them in the Detroit area.

“We shot at two huge mansions that are modeled off the European continent from the 1700s, that were rebuilt in Detroit. So that was the first thing.

“The second thing is — a lot of people don’t know this — Henry Ford himself was a great lover of history, and so he rebuilt, brick for brick, a full-scale replica of Independence Hall in Dearborn, Michigan. No joke. So we filmed at Independence Hall in Detroit, and not at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.”

The cousins had help in the creative department, too. The script was co-written with Paul McCusker, who produced Focus on the Family’s Adventures in Odyssey radio series, and Stephen Kendrick — who, together with his brother Alex, has had one of the most successful streaks at the box office in Christian-movie history.

When I mention that I interviewed the Kendricks once, and was struck by the enthusiasm with which Stephen explained some of the low-budget tricks that he and his brother used in films like Fireproof, the Burns cousins concur that he was an energizing presence on the set of their own film.

“He’s really been a mentor to us,” says Aaron, who is also one of the associate producers on the Kendricks’ next film, War Room (which opens August 28). “Just such a strong man of faith, and a man of courage, and such a fun, high-energy personality.”

The cousins also scored a casting coup when they got John Rhys-Davies — of Indiana Jones and Lord of the Rings fame — to play the lead villain. (I interviewed Rhys-Davies last year on the set of Killing Jesus, in which he played one of the high priests.)

“Oh, man, that was huge,” says Aaron. “A couple months before we officially launched the casting, I sent Chad an e-mail with a picture of John Rhys-Davies dressed in period costume and said, ‘Wouldn’t this be fun?'” Their casting director said, “Well, let’s send him a script and see what happens,” and the rest is history.

The Burns cousins are already thinking about their next feature — Chad says they are “leaning” towards making another period piece — but first they have to finish distributing and promoting Beyond the Mask.

So: with the film coming out in Canada this week, what’s the pitch for Canadian audiences, given that this country was on the other side of the American Revolution?

Chad points to the film’s enthusiastic fan reviews and international cast, while Aaron points to the film’s entertainment value: “It’s a lot of fun for kids of all ages, no matter what your background is.”

— Beyond the Mask opens in Canadian theatres August 14 and comes to DVD and Blu-Ray September 8.

Chad Burns and Stephen Kendrick on the set of Beyond the Mask:

John Rhys-Davies with the Burns cousins on the set of Beyond the Mask:

pendragon sword of his father

stephen kendrick

war room 2015

Previous Post

August 9, 2015

Life of Brian and the Jesus film were distributed by the same company to the same theatres at the same time.

Next Post

August 17, 2015 Ray Winstone on family, politics, and that injury he got while playing King Saul in Of Kings and Prophets

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Anglican Planet Articles BC Christian News BC Report Bible Movies Bible Review Blog Books & Culture Campus Times CBC Radio Christianity Today ChristianWeek Essays Faith Today Festival Cinemas Guide Film Journals Georgia Straight Interviews MB Herald National Catholic Register Salvationist Today's Christian Two Chairs Ubyssey Uncategorized Vancouver Courier Vancouver Sun

Select a Month August 2025 April 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 May 2024 February 2024 December 2023 May 2023 March 2023 November 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 September 2019 July 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 April 2012 January 2012 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 November 2003 October 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 March 2002 January 2002 December 2001 November 2001 September 2001 August 2001 July 2001 June 2001 April 2001 March 2001 February 2001 December 2000 November 2000 October 2000 September 2000 August 2000 July 2000 June 2000 May 2000 April 2000 March 2000 January 2000 October 1999 August 1999 May 1999 April 1999 February 1999 January 1999 December 1998 November 1998 October 1998 August 1998 July 1998 June 1998 April 1998 March 1998 January 1998 November 1997 September 1997 July 1997 June 1997 April 1997 March 1997 February 1997 January 1997 December 1996 October 1996 September 1996 June 1996 March 1996 February 1996 January 1996 April 1995 November 1994 September 1994 September 1991

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which Psalm did Moses write?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Psalm 72 Psalm 23 Psalm 119 Psalm 90