Train Set (W6:D2)

Thirty-five miles northwest of Albany lies Shellman, Georgia—population 1,084 (according to the 2005 US Census estimate).

On Monday and Tuesday, Shellman was the location for one of the most intense scenes in FIREPROOF … and all of the moviemaking equipment required to make it happen. And that includes a train!

“I think we doubled the population of Shellman,” says David Nixon, assistant director for FIREPROOF. “We had six pages of script to shoot in two days, which is very difficult to do. But the Lord’s hand was on us the whole time.”

One example: as the crew was discussing the difficulties in positioning (and repositioning) a car in the scene, someone mentioned how beneficial a forklift would be. A man who lives near the tracks who was watching the filming said he had a forklift in his garage. Problem solved!

“It just keeps amazing me how the Lord has blessed all of Sherwood’s productions,” he says. “We get to experience miracles every day.”

The train scene is another tense one, much like the fire scenes shot in Week 4. And that was just in the filming of the scenes!

“It was stressful because we had do so many composite shots with so many different camera angles,” David says. “But with the forklift available and the train moving much faster than I thought it would, things turned out. We even had the vice president of the train line driving the train.

While the faith-based storyline drives FIREPROOF, moviegoers will notice some differences between this 2008 release and the first two Sherwood films.

“With this movie, Sherwood has really ramped up the production value,” David says. “We’ve been able to take things to a whole new level. Usually you have a $100-million budget to do what we have been able to do on less than a fraction of that!”