A little information about our production:
We came together as four families with daughters in the 3rd grade (and younger ones too) that wanted to make a movie to capture them in time, as well as take the opportunity to teach them a little about acting and honor a noble Shakespearean work. We chose Midsummer because of the multitude of "girl parts" and that it was a comedy. We needed more kids to round out the cast so we reached out to friends to let us borrow their kids for many, many weekends in a row. We shot this in Burbank, California over the summer and into the fall of 2005. Initially my friends Joe Kell and Valerie Mahaffey decided that we would use the traditional Shakespearean dialog, but that the story was long and complex and we needed something to help our younger viewers understand who was in love with whom and why right away. That is where Joe came up with the idea for the additional "Stevie and the Sprites". Not only do they talk about the story to clarify what is going on, it was a great way to use our 4 and 5 year old girls!
Joe and Valerie played "theater games" with the kids early on to help them understand about acting and how you relax in front of the camera. The kids were like sponges, learning all of their lines by heart, and remembering them for long after. There are only a couple of places where we needed to do ADR (dialog replacement) when the microphones didn't get the best sound on the best take, and one of the actors came in at the last minute on the last day of shooting when our first Duke go the flu. We had to shuffle around a bit to make some cue cards and swap roles that day! We made our own costumes, did our own makeup, did our own camera and sound work and edited the whole thing together ourselves. We used our backyards for the most part as sets, and show some footage in Griffith Park in LA. We had a few professionals in the crowd as Joe is an actor, and now a director. His wife, Valerie, is an actress who has been on Broadway, in films, and on TV regularly. Dan is a movie producer and editor, and I worked at Disney for years in Distribution. Cheyenne made most of the costumes. It was really a labor of love.
We have had about 280,000 hits on YouTube so far, and have sold hundreds of DVD's. I would say that 90% of them go to teachers that are introducing their classes to Shakespeare, and so far 100% of the people that see it, love it. Our latest project was a feature film called Summer Eleven that is now available on Netflix and many other distribution platforms as well as on DVD. It is the story of 4 girls turning eleven in the summer before Middle School. Our daughters that starred in this film (Sarah, who plays Helena, is mine) are now in college.
If you have any troubles or questions, please send me an e-mail: watchforsnakes@gmail.com
John